Ranking top economics and finance journals using Microsoft academic search versus Google scholar: How does the new publish or perish option compare?

Abstract

Recently, Harzing's Publish or Perish software was updated to include Microsoft Academic Search as a second citation database search option for computing various citation‐based metrics. This article explores the new search option by scoring 50 top economics and finance journals and comparing them with the results obtained using the original Google Scholar‐based search option. The new database delivers significantly smaller scores for all metrics, but the rank correlations across the two databases for the h‐index, g‐index, AWCR, and e‐index are significantly correlated, especially when the time frame is restricted to more recent years. Comparisons are also made to the Article Influence score from eigenfactor.org and to the RePEc h‐index, both of which adjust for journal‐level self‐citations.