Microsoft Academic: A multidisciplinary comparison of citation counts with Scopus and Mendeley for 29 journals

Mike Thelwall

Journal of Informetrics, 2017, vol. 11, issue 4, 1201-1212

Abstract: Microsoft Academic is a free citation index that allows large scale data collection. This combination makes it useful for scientometric research. Previous studies have found that its citation counts tend to be slightly larger than those of Scopus but smaller than Google Scholar, with disciplinary variations. This study reports the largest and most systematic analysis so far, of 172,752 articles in 29 large journals chosen from different specialisms. From Scopus citation counts, Microsoft Academic citation counts and Mendeley reader counts for articles published 2007–2017, Microsoft Academic found a slightly more (6%) citations than Scopus overall and especially for the current year (51%). It found fewer citations than Mendeley readers overall (59%), and only 7% as many for the current year. Differences between journals were probably due to field preprint sharing cultures or journal policies rather than broad disciplinary differences.

Keywords: Microsoft Academic; Citation analysis; Early citations; Google Scholar; Mendeley (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157717302900
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:infome:v:11:y:2017:i:4:p:1201-1212

DOI: 10.1016/j.joi.2017.10.006

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Informetrics is currently edited by Leo Egghe

More articles in Journal of Informetrics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().