Comparison of Citation Tracking in Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science

Pointing Users Toward Citation Searching: Using Google Scholar and Web of Science Robert Schroeder (bio) Much has been written about citation indexing since Eugene Garfield's seminal article in 1955, "Citation Indexes for Science: A New Dimension in Documentation through Association of Ideas."1 In the 1960s, the discussion was about Garfield's Science Citation Index and later its successor, Web of Science. For almost half a century, these were the only available tools for tracing scholarly discourse forward in time. Now there are two new tools. SCOPUS is a commercial product from Elsevier and was launched in November 2004. Google Scholar also arrived on the scene in November 2004. Because Google Scholar is freely accessible from the Google site, students and faculty are finding and using it. They are beginning to ask librarians for their professional opinions of its efficacy. Practicing reference and instruction librarians need to understand the strengths of both Google Scholar and Web of Science so that they can appropriately recommend them for use by their patrons—whether they are undergraduates, graduate students, or faculty. Since April 2005, 10 studies have been published that directly compare the citation features of Google Scholar to those of Web of Science. In an effort to better understand the advantages and disadvantages of these tools, the author undertook an investigation of this research. Although the parameters of the studies varied greatly with respect to the disciplines, dates, and sample sizes, analysis of these preliminary studies can help us gain an initial—albeit sketchy—impression of the relative strength and weakness of each service. The results of this effort are reported here as an informal meta-analysis, followed by some recommendations for utilizing these tools across a range of needs. The coverage of each database is both overlapping and complementary. Web of Science is comprised of a known list of highly prestigious journals. The extent to which disciplines are covered is well known, but it is limited to these journal holdings. Although Google Scholar overlaps with Web of Science in some of its coverage, it also includes conference proceedings, books, preprints, and a variety of versions of articles available in open access databases and institutional repositories. Search results do, however, include many "false hits"—non-scholarly sources or titles that are similar to, but not [End Page 243] exact matches for, the target citation. These spurious links cause the researcher to spend much more time analyzing and evaluating the sources. Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. Overview of the scope of the 10 studies Date coverage is also complementary, with Web of Science consistently providing older articles. Google Scholar often returns more current results due to its ability to access early versions of works in progress and open access articles available on the Internet. Although the controlled vocabulary in Web of Science is less than perfect, it wins hands-down over Google Scholar, which is totally lacking in any of the finer points of indexing. [End Page 244] Click for larger view View full resolution Table 2. Summary of positive and negative characteristics of Web of Science and Google Scholar from the 10 studies The findings from these initial studies suggest a variety of uses for both of the databases' citation features in academic reference and instruction. For instructing undergraduate students in the use of the "cited by" features, Google Scholar's lack of advanced search functions may actually be a boon. Most students today are familiar with the look and feel of the "one box searching" of Google. Having a similar uncluttered look, Google Scholar appears less intimidating to novice users, allowing them to focus on the concepts involved in citation searching and analysis. Google Scholar acts as a bridge from the known quantity of Google to more advanced instruction required for Web of Science. Discussing the strengths and weaknesses of both databases is a good way to begin a dialog about when Google Scholar might be an appropriate tool [End Page 245] for research and also allow librarians to make a stronger case for why other databases such as Web of Science need to be used as well. For many of these same reasons, Google Scholar...

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 Ritchie, S. M., Young, L. M., & Sigman, J. (2018). A comparison of selected bibliographic database subject overlap for agricultural information. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, 89. http://doi.org/10.5062/F49Z9340
 Abstract
 Objective – To determine the most comprehensive database(s) for agricultural literature searching.
 Design – Data collection and analysis was conducted using a modified version of the bibliography method, overlap analysis, chi square tests, and data visualization methods.
 Setting – An academic library in the U.S.
 Subjects – Eight commonly used bibliographic databases, including comprehensive agricultural indexes (AGRICOLA, AGRIS, and CAB Abstracts), specialized databases (BIOSIS Previews and FSTA), and multidisciplinary databases (Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science).
 Methods – The researchers selected three review articles that represented sub-topics within the field of agriculture. Sources listed in the bibliographies of the three review articles were used to build a bibliographic citation set for analysis.
 Using a modified version of the bibliography method, 90 citations were randomly selected from the above-mentioned citation set. Researchers then turned to the 8 selected databases and searched for all 90 citations in each platform. Search queries were crafted in two ways: unique title strings in quotation marks and combinations of terms entered into the “title”, “keyword”, “journal source”, and “author” fields. Citations were considered to be covered in a database if the full bibliographic record was located using the above-mentioned search strategy.
 Next, chi square tests were used to evaluate if the expected number of citations from the sample group were found in each database or if the frequency differed between the eight databases. The overlap analysis method provided numerical representation of the degree of similarity and difference across the eight databases. Finally, data visualizations created in Excel and Gephi enhanced comparisons between the eight databases and highlighted differences that were not obvious based solely on the analysis of numerical data.
 Main Results – Researchers found that comprehensive databases (AGRICOLA, AGRIS, and CAB Abstracts) were not in fact comprehensive in their coverage of agricultural literature. However, the results suggested that CAB Abstracts was more comprehensive than AGRICOLA or AGRIS, particularly in regard to its coverage of the sub-topics “agronomy” and “meat sciences”. However, coverage of the sub-topic “sustainable diets” lagged behind multidisciplinary databases, which may be explained by the fact that the topic is interdisciplinary in nature. The superior coverage of CAB Abstracts over other comprehensive databases is consistent with findings reported by Kawasaki (2004).
 The analysis of specialized databases (BIOSIS Previews and FSTA) suggested that citations within the scope of the database were covered very well, while those out of scope were not. For instance, the sub-topics “sustainable diets” and “meat science” are out of scope of the biological sciences and thus, were not well covered in BIOSIS.
 The multidisciplinary databases (Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science) provided the most comprehensive coverage agricultural literature. All three databases covered most citations included in the data set. However, researchers noted that all three databases provided weak coverage of trade published items, books, or older journals.
 Conclusion – The study found that multidisciplinary databases provide close to full coverage of agricultural literature. In addition, they provide the best access to content that is interdisciplinary in nature. Specialized and comprehensive databases are recommended when research topics are within the scope of the database. Also, they best support in-depth projects such as bibliographies or comprehensive review articles.

Objective:The primary aim of the study was to perform sequential analyses together with a citation analysis on the characteristics of the studies published in the Turkish Archives of Otorhinolaryngology (TAO) in the periods of 2010–2014 and 2015–2019.Methods:The studies published in the indicated periods were reviewed for study type, study topic, language and country of origin. Then, the citation analysis of the articles was performed through the Google Scholar and Web of Science (WoS) databases for the indicated periods. The estimated annual impact factors (EIF) of TAO from 2017 to 2020 were calculated by dividing the total number of citations performed in the projected year to the total number of citable articles published in the preceding two years.Results:The total numbers of articles published from 2010 to 2014 and from 2015 to 2019 were 144 and 214, respectively. In 2010 to 2014, the most frequent study topic was head and neck with case reports ranking highest among study types. In 2015–2019, the most frequent study type had changed to original investigation and topic to general otorhinolaryngology. There was a remarkable increase in the total number of citations in 2015-2019 according to Google Scholar and WoS databases. Also, there was a remarkable increase in the EIF values for 2019 and 2020.Conclusion:Although the increase in the number of citations and impact factor values cannot be appreciated as a single indicator for the success of a journal, the results of the presented study showed a promising advancement in the scientific quality of the TAO, driven by the inclusion of the journal to national and international indexes and by changing the language of the journal to English, as well as the well-orchestrated editorial efforts.

Summary 1 Published molecular phylogenies show that many plant groups in the Canary Islands are monophyletic despite the fact that the short distance between the islands and Africa should have led to many independent colonization events. 2 Low establishment rates of later migrants owing to niche pre-emption by earlier, already established, colonists could explain these patterns. The apparent monophyly is, however, also compatible with multiple colonizations, with later colonizers making only limited contributions to the total gene pool (and therefore being undetected in the molecular phylogeny) or being wiped out by stochastic processes. 3 Experimental evidence for niche pre-emption and species-specific interactions in plants is weak, with survival and establishment of a newly immigrant species depending on the overall composition of the community, rather than on the presence of a particular ‘ecologically similar’ species. 4 Although niche pre-emption might have contributed to the observed patterns of monophyly, we do not think that phylogeographical data from Macaronesia can be taken as evidence for its action in the geological past.

Google Scholar and Web of Science: Examining gender differences in citation coverage across five scientific disciplines

The topic areas around sustainable urban planning and environmental health have grown in emphasis and research over the past few decades as part of the growing larger topic area of transportation and manufacturing in human-automation interactions. This increase has correlated with the increased attention to overall environmental health as a greater point of local and global work. With the growth and emergence of these subjects, it is pertinent to explore a possible link and connection between the two topics and their respective importance. In this study, a literature review and analysis were conducted using data from Google Scholar and Web of Science and analyzed using Vosviewer, MAXQDA, and Harzing Publish or Perish. Dual searches with the key terms “sustainable urban planning” and “environmental health” were conducted in Google scholar and web of science databases and analyzed for emergence and relevance using site trending analysis tools. Following these two topic area searches, Vosviewer, Harzing Publish or Perish, MAXQDA and Mendeley facilitated a co-citation analysis and content analysis to direct efforts to perform a larger literature review from scholarly articles over a broad range of publishing realms, home countries and authors. The results of the literature review presented results showing a possible connection between trends in both keyword topic areas and the need to analyze these emerging areas further due to their relatively new age. It is believed that future work can best push the fields of sustainable urban planning and benefit environmental health the most through definition of sustainable indicators and metrics, incorporating new technologies, and gathering and leveraging best practices. Human-computer interaction will play a pivotal role in promoting the emerging field of sustainable urban planning to a larger world audience by facilitating the creation and spread of the above future work areas.

Over the last decade, researchers have become increasingly interested in students' beliefs about the nature of knowledge and how these beliefs develop. Although initial psychological accounts portrayed epistemic development as a domain-independent process of cognitive maturation, recent studies have found trajectories of epistemic development to vary considerably across contexts. However, few studies have focused on cultural context. This article examines the role community values and practices play in fostering particular epistemological orientations by comparing the epistemological beliefs of 5th, 8th, and 12th graders (N = 200) from General and Religious schools in Israel regarding 2 controversies: belief in God and punishment of children. In both controversies, older participants were less likely than younger participants to consider the controversy rationally decidable. However, this shift emerged earlier in the God controversy than in the punishment controversy. In the God controversy, General pupils were less likely than Religious pupils to consider the question rationally decidable or their own beliefs infallible. But no such school differences were observed in the punishment controversy. Qualitative and quantitative analyses linked these differences to divergent discourse practices at General and Religious schools, suggesting that the relations between learning and epistemic development are more intricate than has been assumed hitherto. Epistemology is an area of philosophy concerned with questions of what knowledge is and how it is justified. Although few people give these questions such detailed and sustained attention as professional philosophers, anyone attempting to acquire, produce, or evaluate knowledge relies, at least implicitly, on some set of epistemological beliefs. Such beliefs are of obvious interest to educators. To understand how students acquire, evaluate, and justify knowledge, we need to understand what they consider knowledge to be. And to help students become discerning consumers and responsible producers of knowledge, we need to understand how people learn to exercise reflective judgment in the face of competing claims. The psychological study of epistemic development is undergoing something of a renaissance. Interest in this area can be traced back to Piaget (1970) Piaget, J. 1970. Genetic epistemology New York: Columbia University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], Dewey (1933) Dewey, J. 1933. How we think Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Co. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], and beyond (e.g., Plato's Theaetetus). But only recently have psychologists begun to draw together hitherto disparate strands of empirical inquiry to chart in detail the course of epistemic development from infancy to adulthood (see, e.g., Hallett, Chandler, & Krettenauer, 2002 Hallett, D., Chandler, M. J. and Krettenauer, T. 2002. Disentangling the course of epistemic development: Parsing knowledge by epistemic content. New Ideas in Psychology, 20(2-3): 285–307. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Kuhn, Cheney, & Weinstock, 2000 Kuhn, D. 2000. Metacognitive development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9(5): 178–181. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Wainryb, Shaw, Langley, Cottam, & Lewis, 2004 Wainryb, C., Shaw, L. A., Langley, M., Cottam, K. and Lewis, R. 2004. Children's thinking about diversity of belief in the early school years: Judgments of relativism, tolerance, and disagreeing persons. Child Development, 75(3): 687–703. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Initial research in this field was conducted largely within a neo-Piagetian paradigm. Epistemic development was characterized as a progression through discrete stages or levels of epistemological understanding, each following the other in invariant sequence and constituting a comprehensive transformation of the individual's conception of knowledge (see, e.g., Chandler, 1975 Chandler, M. J. 1975. Relativism and the problem of epistemological loneliness. Human Development, 18(3): 171–180. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Kitchener & King, 1981 Kitchener, K. S. and King, P. M. 1981. Reflective judgment: Concepts of justification and their relationship to age and education. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 2: 89–116. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Perry, 1970 Perry, W. G. 1970. Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years: A scheme Troy, MO: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. [Google Scholar]). Researchers differed somewhat in their nomenclatures and in their criteria for distinguishing levels of epistemological sophistication, but they concurred broadly in positing at least two major shifts in epistemological understanding (for recent reviews, see Hofer & Pintrich, 1997 Hofer, B. K. and Pintrich, P. R. 1997. The development of epistemological theories: Beliefs about knowledge and knowing and their relation to learning. Review of Educational Research, 67(1): 88–140. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2002 Hammer, D. and Elby, A. 2002. "On the form of a personal epistemology.". In Personal epistemology: The psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing Edited by: Hofer, B. K. and Pintrich, P. R. 169–190. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. [Google Scholar]). Initially, the individual subscribes to an objectivist conception of knowledge, in which every question is believed to have a single, correct answer that is knowable with absolute certainty. Subsequently, in a radical shift, objectivism is abandoned in favor of subjectivism, and the individual equates all knowledge claims with matters of personal taste or preference. Finally, a balance is achieved in which objective and subjective aspects of knowing are coordinated. At this "evaluativist" stage (cf. Kuhn, 1991 Kuhn, D. 1991. The skills of argument Cambridge, , England: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), the individual sees knowledge as something that is constructed tentatively by evaluating the evidence for and against competing beliefs and points of view. There was some debate about the precise relations of these stages to Piaget's stages of intellectual development (see, e.g., Boyes & Chandler, 1992 Boyes, M. C. and Chandler, M. 1992. Cognitive development, epistemic doubt, and identity formation in adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 21(3): 277–304. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). However, they were viewed by most researchers as a kind of "post-formal operations" taking up the formal operational attainments of hypothetical thinking and perspective-taking and applying them wholesale to knowledge claims as such, in a form of meta-metacognition (see, e.g., Kitchener, 1983 Kitchener, K. S. 1983. Cognition, metacognition and epistemic cognition: A three-level model of cognitive processing. Human Development, 26: 222–232. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Kuhn, 2000 Kuhn, D. 2000. Metacognitive development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9(5): 178–181. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Moshman, 2003 Moshman, D. 2003. Intellectual freedom for intellectual development. Liberal Education, 89(3): 30–38. [Google Scholar]). Empirical support for this model of epistemic development came from several parallel research programs. Overall, these studies provided substantial evidence of development in the hypothesized direction (Hallett et al., 2002 Hallett, D., Chandler, M. J. and Krettenauer, T. 2002. Disentangling the course of epistemic development: Parsing knowledge by epistemic content. New Ideas in Psychology, 20(2-3): 285–307. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Hofer & Pintrich, 1997 Hofer, B. K. and Pintrich, P. R. 1997. The development of epistemological theories: Beliefs about knowledge and knowing and their relation to learning. Review of Educational Research, 67(1): 88–140. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; King & Kitchener, 1994 King, P. M. and Kitchener, K. S. 1994. Developing reflective judgment San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. [Google Scholar]). However, the ages at which the key shifts in epistemological understanding were observed varied enormously from program to program. As Hallett et al. (2002) Hallett, D., Chandler, M. J. and Krettenauer, T. 2002. Disentangling the course of epistemic development: Parsing knowledge by epistemic content. New Ideas in Psychology, 20(2-3): 285–307. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] noted regarding the emergence of subjectivism, "one could read selectively from the literature and, with good reason, conclude that such abilities put in their appearance at either 4 or 6 or 8 or 12 or 16 or 20, or in receipt of a Ph.D." (p. 289). These vast discrepancies have led researchers to reexamine some of the assump-tions underlying their models and measures of epistemic development. In particular, researchers have begun to question the comprehensiveness of shifts in epistemological understanding and to attend more closely to the variety of contexts within which epistemic beliefs are held, employed, and articulated (cf.Elby&Ham-mer, 2001 Elby, A. and Hammer, D. 2001. On the substance of a sophisticated epistemology. Science Education, 85(5): 554–567. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Hammer&Elby, 2002 Hammer, D. and Elby, A. 2002. "On the form of a personal epistemology.". In Personal epistemology: The psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing Edited by: Hofer, B. K. and Pintrich, P. R. 169–190. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. [Google Scholar], 2003 Hammer, D. and Elby, A. 2003. Tapping epistemological resources for learning physics. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 12(1): 53–90. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). This attention to context has taken several forms. One line of research has sought to show that epistemic development is a some-what domain-dependent process that occurs with respect to some kinds of knowledge claim before others. For example, it has been proposed that subjectivism emerges in relation to aesthetic claims before it emerges in relation to claims about the physical world (e.g., Hallett et al., 2002 Hallett, D., Chandler, M. J. and Krettenauer, T. 2002. Disentangling the course of epistemic development: Parsing knowledge by epistemic content. New Ideas in Psychology, 20(2-3): 285–307. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Kuhn et al., 2000 Kuhn, D. 2000. Metacognitive development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9(5): 178–181. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Wainryb et al., 2004 Wainryb, C., Shaw, L. A., Langley, M., Cottam, K. and Lewis, R. 2004. Children's thinking about diversity of belief in the early school years: Judgments of relativism, tolerance, and disagreeing persons. Child Development, 75(3): 687–703. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Another line of research has sought to show that epistemological beliefs are multi di-mensional rather than unitary. For example, it has been proposed that people's beliefs about the complexity of knowledge develop more or less independently of their beliefs about its certainty (e.g., Schommer, 1990 Schommer, M. 1990. Effects of beliefs about the nature of knowledge on comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(3): 498–504. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 1993 Schommer, M. 1993. Comparisons of beliefs about the nature of knowledge and learning amongst post-secondary students. Research in Higher Education, 34(3): 355–370. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Although the accumulated empirical evidence is as yet suggestive rather than conclusive (see Elby&Hammer, 2001 Elby, A. and Hammer, D. 2001. On the substance of a sophisticated epistemology. Science Education, 85(5): 554–567. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Hallett et al., 2002 Hallett, D., Chandler, M. J. and Krettenauer, T. 2002. Disentangling the course of epistemic development: Parsing knowledge by epistemic content. New Ideas in Psychology, 20(2-3): 285–307. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], pp. 303–304; Kuhn et al., 2000 Kuhn, D. 2000. Metacognitive development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9(5): 178–181. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], pp. 321–322), both research programs hold out the possibility of disentangling the course of epistemic de-velopment by identifying elements of epistemological understanding that emerge at different points in the lifespan(cf.Hallett et al.,2002 Hallett, D., Chandler, M. J. and Krettenauer, T. 2002. Disentangling the course of epistemic development: Parsing knowledge by epistemic content. New Ideas in Psychology, 20(2-3): 285–307. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 290; Wainryb et al. 2004 Wainryb, C., Shaw, L. A., Langley, M., Cottam, K. and Lewis, R. 2004. Children's thinking about diversity of belief in the early school years: Judgments of relativism, tolerance, and disagreeing persons. Child Development, 75(3): 687–703. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). However, "domains" and "dimensions" are not the only contexts within which epistemic beliefs are situated. Just as people's epistemic beliefs may be affected by the particular content of the knowledge claims being evaluated, so too may they be affected by the particular procedures of knowledge evaluation practiced in, and sanctioned by, the communities in which they participate (cf. Hammer & Elby, 2003 Hammer, D. and Elby, A. 2003. Tapping epistemological resources for learning physics. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 12(1): 53–90. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Few studies have directly examined cross-cultural variation in epistemological beliefs. And those that have done so have tended to focus on comparisons between U.S. and East Asian college students (e.g., Chan & Elliott, 2002 Chan, K. and Elliott, R. G. 2002. Exploratory study of Hong Kong teacher education students' epistemological beliefs: Cultural perspectives and implications on beliefs research. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 27(3): 392–414. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2004 Chan, K. and Elliott, R. G. 2004. Epistemological beliefs across cultures: Critique and analysis of beliefs structure studies. Educational Psychology, 24(2): 123–142. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001 Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I. and Norenzayan, A. 2001. Culture and systems of thought: Holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological Review, 108(2): 291–310. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Zhang, 1999 Zhang, L. F. 1999. A comparison of U. S. and Chinese university students' cognitive development: The cross-cultural applicability of Perry's theory. Journal of Psychology, 133(4): 425–439. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Nonetheless, the findings of such studies are highly suggestive. Especially striking is Zhang's finding that Chinese students' epistemological beliefs shifted over the college years in exactly the opposite direction to those of their U.S. counterparts. Specifically, rather than moving from objectivist to subjectivist conceptions of knowledge, similar to their peers at U.S. universities, Chinese students appeared to shift from more subjectivist conceptions of knowledge to more objectivist ones. Such findings raise intriguing questions about the relations between culture and epistemic development, and about the relations between learning and epistemic development more generally. For a field of inquiry dominated by educational psychologists, remarkably little is known about these relations. As Hofer and Pintrich(1997) Hofer, B. K. and Pintrich, P. R. 1997. The development of epistemological theories: Beliefs about knowledge and knowing and their relation to learning. Review of Educational Research, 67(1): 88–140. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] noted, "there is little empirical evidence for precisely what fosters epistemological development or how epistemological beliefs are altered" (p. 123). Research has shown that schooling makes a difference(e.g. Bell&Linn, 2002 Bell, P. and Linn, M. C. 2002. "Beliefs about science: How does instruction contribute?". In Personal epistemology: The psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing Edited by: Hofer, B. K. and Pintrich, P. R. 321–346. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. [Google Scholar]; King&Kitchener, 1994 King, P. M. and Kitchener, K. S. 1994. Developing reflective judgment San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. [Google Scholar]), but it has yielded little insight into how or why it makes a difference. Moreover, researchers have tended to equivocate between viewing epistemological beliefs as causes and effects of learning—as age-dependent constraints on instruction on one hand andasoutcomesof instructionon the other hand (cf. Kuhn, 1991 Kuhn, D. 1991. The skills of argument Cambridge, , England: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2003 Kuhn, D. 2003. Understanding and valuing knowing as developmental goals. Liberal Education, 89(3): 16–22. [Google Scholar]; Schommer, 1990 Schommer, M. 1990. Effects of beliefs about the nature of knowledge on comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(3): 498–504. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 1993 Schommer, M. 1993. Comparisons of beliefs about the nature of knowledge and learning amongst post-secondary students. Research in Higher Education, 34(3): 355–370. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Cross-cultural studies of age trends in epistemological belief are one way to investigate systematically the relations between age, learning, and epistemic development. If the nature and timing of age-related shifts in epistemological belief vary cross-culturally, then this is presumably because participants in different cultures learn, through participation in practices particular to their respective communities, to treat knowledge claims in different ways. To the extent that researchers can pinpoint such practices and measure their impact on individuals' epistemological beliefs, we can begin to characterize more precisely the relations between learning and epistemic development. However, in designing such studies, researchers must take great care to distinguish between reportage and editorial. "Development" is a value-laden term. Theoretical models of psychological development do more than describe a sequence; they attach values to different points along the sequence. Specifically, they define some psychological states or capacities as more mature, adequate, or sophisticated than others. When developmental studies are restricted to homogeneous cultural settings, within which there is little serious disagreement among experts about the relative adequacy of different psychological states or capacities, the risk of bias in diagnosing participants' levels of development is relatively slight. However, as the cultural heterogeneity of the sample increases, so too does the risk that the model on the basis of which participants' development is diagnosed is ethnocentrically biased against a portion of the sample. For example, beliefs that are defined as immature by the developmental model might be considered mature within one of the cultures from which the sample is drawn, or vice versa. These dangers exist to some extent in all cross-cultural studies of psychological development (see Cole & Scribner, 1974 Cole, M. and Scribner, S. 1974. Culture and thought: A psychological introduction New York: Wiley. [Google Scholar]; Greenfield & Bruner, 1966 Greenfield, P. M. and Bruner, J. S. 1966. Culture and cognitive growth. International Journal of Psychology, 1: 89–107. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Shweder, Mahapatra, & Miller, 1990 Shweder, R. A., Mahapatra, M. and Miller, J. G. 1990. "Culture and moral development.". In Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development Edited by: Stigler, J. W. 130–204. New York: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). However, in cross-cultural studies of epistemic development the danger is even more clear and present. This is because there are at least four levels at which epistemological judgments can be made, and as one ascends from the first level to the fourth, the value assumptions implicit in these judgments become less visible to the naked eye but never quite disappear. At the first, most basic level, there arejudgments about the epistemic status of par-ticular claims, such as whether a given assertion (e.g., "Eating people is wrong") is known or merely believed (e.g., "John doesn't know that eating people is wrong; he merely believes that eating people is wrong"). At one level of abstraction up from such judgments, there are judgments about the epistemic status of general classes of claim, such as judgments about whether knowledge is possible about, say, matters of aesthetics or morality (e.g., "There are no such things as moral truths or moral knowledge; morality is a question of commitment—not of what is or is not the case"). At yet another level of abstraction up from such judgments, there are further judgments about the criteria by which epistemic states are distinguished one from another, such as judgments about what differentiates knowledge from belief or opin-ion (e.g., "Knowledge is justified true belief;if a belief is true but not justified, or jus-tified but not true, then it isn't known"). And beyond this third level, there is a fourth level of judgments about the relative adequacy of particular criteria for distinguishing between epistemic states, such as judgments about whether the subjectivist equation of knowledge with opinion is less adequate than the evaluativist's insistence that knowledge differs from opinion in being supported by evidence (e.g., "Subjectivism is inferior to evaluativism because it fails to account for our belief that some claims are better supported than others"). According to this analysis, authors of contemporary models of epistemic development are themselves exercising a form of epistemological judgment in articulating their models. Specifically, they are operating at the fourth level (outlined previously), expressing their own beliefs about the relative adequacy of particular epistemological orientations. This is all well and good as long as the beliefs in question are compatible with the epistemological beliefs, values, and practices of the communities to which the model is applied. However, in cross-cultural studies of epistemic development, such compatibility cannot be assumed in advance of the investigation itself. Accordingly, if one wishes to avoid ethnocentrism, one cannot conduct a cross-cultural study of epistemic development without suspending, at least temporarily, one's hierarchical assumptions about the relative adequacy of particular epistemological orientations. This is not to say that researchers are not entitled to opinions of their own about the relative adequacy of particular epistemological beliefs or that all talk of epistemic development is inherently ethnocentric. It is merely to point out that because standards of epistemological maturity may themselves vary across cultures, assumptions about the relative adequacy of particular epistemological beliefs must not be built into the design of cross-cultural studies. This study, therefore, departs from previous studies of epistemic development by dropping the assumption that some epistemological beliefs are inherently more adequate than others. By dropping this assumption, I do not affirm the contrary assumption that all epistemological beliefs are equally adequate. Rather, I adopt a form of methodological agnosticism to reduce the scope for ethnocentric bias in the study'sdesign. In the Discussion section, I return to the question of hierarchy and review the assumptions of contemporary models of epistemic development in light of my findings. This study investigates the relations between age, learning, and epistemic devel-opment by comparing the epistemological beliefs of pupil sat Religious schools and General schools in Israel about two controversies: one religious and the other nonre-ligious. Specifically, this study asks three questions. First, how do beliefs about the nature of religious claims vary with age and school? Second, to what extent are these age and school differences attributable to underlying group differences in religious commitment and general epistemological sophistication? Third, how are variations in epistemological belief across ages, schools, and controversies related to educational practices at Religious and General schools, respectively?

PurposeThis study aims to provide a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of sports sponsorship research over the last 3 decades (1993–2024). By mapping the intellectual landscape of this field, the study seeks to identify key trends, prominent themes and the most influential authors and journals. Furthermore, the research addresses the ongoing challenge of evaluating the effectiveness of sponsorship investments, particularly in the digital age. The goal is to highlight emerging research areas.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs a bibliometric analysis using the SPAR-4-SLR protocol to systematically review the literature on sports sponsorship from 1993 to 2024. Data were sourced from the Web of Science (WoS) database, filtering results for articles written in English and excluding non-academic publications. A combination of bibliometric techniques – co-citation, co-word and co-authorship network analysis – was applied to examine intellectual structures and trends in the field. The Bibliometrix software was used for data analysis, providing a comprehensive evaluation of research productivity, collaboration patterns and emerging themes.FindingsThe bibliometric analysis reveals a significant increase in global sports sponsorship research, with a 12.69% annual growth rate from 1993 to 2024. Key themes such as corporate social responsibility (CSR), consumer behaviour and government regulation emerged as central topics. The study also highlights growing research interest in digital sponsorships, particularly within the eSports industry. Additionally, co-authorship analysis demonstrates increasing international collaboration, with 30.2% of publications involving multiple countries. The findings provide a clearer understanding of the intellectual landscape of sports sponsorship and suggest emerging research opportunities, particularly in digital marketing and advanced data analytics.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis relies solely on the WoS database, which may have excluded relevant publications indexed in other databases such as Scopus or Google Scholar. Although WoS provides high-quality data, future research should integrate multiple databases to achieve a more comprehensive coverage of the field. Additionally, this study focuses primarily on articles published in English, potentially overlooking significant contributions from non-English sources.Originality/valueThis study provides a unique contribution by conducting the first comprehensive bibliometric analysis of sports sponsorship research over a 30-year period (1993–2024). By applying the SPAR-4-SLR protocol, it identifies emerging research areas such as the integration of big data and the role of psychophysiological methods in measuring sponsorship effectiveness. The research also highlights the increasing importance of digital sponsorship in industries like eSports. This work offers new insights into global collaboration patterns and reveals underexplored topics like the balance between global and local sponsorship strategies, thus providing valuable directions for future research and practical applications.

The goal of this study is to analyse the scientific productivity of Montenegrin researchers in the field of sports sciences, as well as the trend of publishing in Montenegrin sports sciences journals. The research covers studies with a focus on the sports sciences issues published in the period from 2002 to 2019. Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science (the electronic databases) were searched for articles available until September 22, 2021. Results were summarized according to the instructions of PRISMA guidelines and present the number of citations, h-index, i10-index and the number of articles by the authors. The study results shows that researchers from the field of sports sciences publish multiple publications in 2021 compared to 2002. In Google scholar database citation rate is highest, and span from 596 and 14959. On the other side, the same researchers were cited quite less in Scopus and Web of Science databases. When we talk about Montenegrin journals, three are registered in the Google Scholar Database. The Sport Mont journal is the most cited one with the highest h-index (44); the Montenegrin Journal of Sports Science and Medicine is the best ranked Montenegrin journal according to the bibliometric data from the Scopus and Web of Science databases; the Journal of Anthropology of Sport and Physical Education have constant progress in the last years. It was indicated the highest impact was recognized in the last four years, according to citations of available articles published by Montenegrin authors. Also, the number of published articles in the last four year is significant, and progress can be expected in the future.

Impact Factors and Other Measures of a Journal's Influence

Integrated reporting is a relatively new category that has been actively studied over the last decade. The study ofpublishing activity on integrated reporting allows to form general trends in the thematic focus of existing publications,in particular, in their chronological presentation. The article reviews the scientific literature on integrated reportingbased on the analysis of the most cited publications from the Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar databases.Analysis of the bibliometric landscape of publications on integrated reporting involves the study of publishingactivity in terms of the most cited authors and publications on selected topics, determining the chronological specificsof publications on selected topics by keywords.For this purpose, publications were sorted by Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar databases by keywords“integrated reporting” with their use in publications in article titles, abstracts, and keywords. Through the in-builtbibliographic analysis tools of the Scopus and Web of Science databases, as well as the Publish or Perish software (forthe Google Scholar database), these publications were imported for further bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer.Systematization of thematic orientation of publications on integrated reporting by keywords, in particular theirchronological analysis is implemented by clustering using VOSviewer software by building a bibliometric map of thepublication based on Scopus and Web of Science databases.The results of the analysis show that integrated reporting is a relatively new scientific category that has beenactively studied for the last ten years. The chronological representation of the bibliometric landscape of publications inrecent years shows that the most relevant are studies in the field of integrated reporting, related to the study of itsquality; connection with the Sustainable Development Goals; formation of the value of the firm, etc.

Introduction. For a long time, The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI, now Thomson Scientific, Philadelphia, US) citation databases, available online through the Web of Science (WoS), had an unique position among bibliographic databases. The emergence of new citation databases, such as Scopus and Google Scholar (GS), call in question the dominance of WoS and the accuracy of bibliometric and citation studies exclusively based on WoS data. The aim of this study was to determine whether there were significant differences in the received citation counts for Serbian Dental Journal (SDJ) found in WoS and Scopus databases, or whether GS results differed significantly from those obtained by WoS and Scopus, and whether GS could be an adequate qualitative alternative for commercial databases in the impact assessment of this journal. Material and Methods. The data regarding SDJ citation was collected in September 2010 by searching WoS, Scopus and GS databases. For further analysis, all relevant data of both, cited and citing articles, were imported into Microsoft Access? database. Results. One hundred and fifty-eight cited papers from SDJ and 249 received citations were found in the three analyzed databases. 74% of cited articles were found in GS, 46% in Scopus and 44% in WoS. The greatest number of citations (189) was derived from GS, while only 15% of the citations, were found in all three databases. There was a significant difference in the percentage of unique citations found in the databases. 58% originated from GS, while Scopus and WoS gave 6% and 4% unique citations, respectively. The highest percentage of databases overlap was found between WoS and Scopus (70%), while the overlap between Scopus and GS was 18% only. In case of WoS and GS the overlap was 17%. Most of the SDJ citations came from original scientific articles. Conclusion. WoS, Scopus and GS produce quantitatively and qualitatively different citation counts for SDJ articles. None of the examined databases can provide a comprehensive picture and it is necessary to take into account all three available sources.

Introduction: Depression is known as a mental disability. In recent years, interest in spirituality as a factor in decreasing depression symptoms has increased. The current study evaluated scientific articles on spirituality and depression indexed in the Scopus, PubMed, and Web of Science (WoS) databases. Methods: This bibliometric review collected all articles on the subject of spirituality and depression published through 2016 from the Scopus, PubMed, and WoS databases. The citation counting period was until 13 September 2017. Data on the yearly trend, top-cited articles, most frequently cited journals, article type, multi-author collaboration, and international collaboration was collected from both articles from Iran and other countries. Results: A total of 516 documents published by the end of 2016 were retrieved from the Scopus, PubMed, and WoS databases. The type of article most published was original article (355 (68.8%) articles). The findings showed that the number of documents increased from 1 document in 1932 to 55 documents in 2016. Authors from the USA have produced approximately 60% of the documents published on this matter in the three searched databases, while Iran ranks second with 5.8% (32 documents) of the scientific articles published by the end of 2016. In these 516 articles, multi-author collaboration and international collaboration accounted for 80.7% and 10.6% of articles, respectively. The average number of citations per paper was 19.8 (H-index=47) and 14.6 (H-index=42) in the Scopus and WoS databases, respectively. These rates for Iranian articles were 2.9 (H-index=6) and 0.9 (H-index=3), respectively. Only 4 Iranian papers had been cited between 7 to 15 times; all other Iranian articles had been cited fewer than 4 times. Conclusions: Iran has a low number of articles on spirituality and depression in the international indexes. As a religious and ideological country, Iran needs to increase its efforts to extend its spiritual and religious ideas on the international level. Establishing effective research networks that include other universities or countries and encouraging researchers and journals to focus on hot topics and international indexes are two approaches to managing future research in Iran.

We investigate the coverage of Microsoft Academic (MA) just over a year after its re-launch. First, we provide a detailed comparison for the first author’s record across the four major data sources: Google Scholar (GS), MA, Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) and show that for the most important academic publications, journal articles and books, GS and MA display very similar publication and citation coverage, leaving both Scopus and WoS far behind, especially in terms of citation counts. A second, large scale, comparison for 145 academics across the five main disciplinary areas confirms that citation coverage for GS and MA is quite similar for four of the five disciplines. MA citation coverage in the Humanities is still substantially lower than GS coverage, reflecting MA’s lower coverage of non-journal publications. However, we shouldn’t forget that MA coverage for the Humanities still dwarfs coverage for this discipline in Scopus and WoS. It would be desirable for other researchers to verify our findings with different samples before drawing a definitive conclusion about MA coverage. However, based on our current findings we suggest that, only one year after its re-launch, MA is rapidly become the data source of choice; it appears to be combining the comprehensive coverage across disciplines, displayed by GS, with the more structured approach to data presentation, typical of Scopus and WoS. The Phoenix seems to be ready to leave the nest, all set to start its life into an adulthood of research evaluation.

Letter to the editor. Healthcare workers on the edge of sanity due to COVID-19: Rapid review of the results of systematic reviews and meta-analyzes