GS, WoS or Scopus - what's the difference?

Have you ever wondered why Google Scholar (GS) scores are so inflated compared to other citation databases like Web of Science (WoS) or Scopus? I've always noticed that Scopus has better coverage that WoS, and that GS is bigger than both (and a lot messier with lots of weird duplicates and poorly entered stuff), but is there anything more to it than that? 

Well it seems that there are some people who have already thought about this, and come up with a good idea of exactly what's different. Martín-Martín et al (2018) have done a great job of analysing all this stuff from some 2.5 million citations. What they found inspired me to write this blog post, in which I've chopped out the Life-Sciences stuff to show you. But I encourage you to go read the article for yourself (there's a link at the bottom, and here).

I have been known to take the odd peak at my Google Scholar profile over the year, and see how it's coming along. I rarely check on WoS or Scopus, 'cos it's a bit of a faff getting signed in and doing the search. Plus it looks so much smaller when one is habituated to seeing those double digits in GS! However, I've always been a bit uneasy about citing my GS citation rate, H-index or i10 (among others that they give) as I've never really known what all that extra represents. Something grey and unseemly? Well, it turns out that it's all good stuff, and perhaps GS is the better one to cite as it's a more inclusive index: more inclusive of different document types and different languages.

• Top left:  the entire dataset of ~2.5 million citations shows that nearly half are in all 3 databases, but that more than a third are in GS only.
• Top right: shows life sciences alone (~0.5 million citations) and over half (~57%) shared by all 3, and less than a third in GS only. 
• Middle: shows the kinds of items that you are getting in GS vs all 3 databases. GS gives you lots of theses, book chapters, conference papers, and other unpublished stuff like preprints
• Bottom: Shows the different linguistic contributions. Almost all English in the overlapping 3 databases, while GS encompases a lot of Chinese, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, etc. (sorry not to list them all, but you can see what they are above). 

This is actually really interesting, and allows you to interpret your GS results as a more inclusive citation index. While WoS and Scopus aren't exclusively English or journal publications, they are mostly. But that extra third that GS gives you allows you to show the extra scope that your work is getting outside that English journal mainstream. Is your GS score more than a third higher than your WoS or Scopus score? If yes, then your work is having a greater impact elsewhere in the world, and there's nothing wrong with that.

The excerpts from the two tables above show how well GS correlates with both WoS and Scopus in our area (Biological Sciences). It also tells you by how much the GS score is likely to be inflated - 1.90 for GS/WoS and 1.45 for GS/Scopus. Again, if you deviate from this with a higher score, you can give yourself a pat on the back for having work that's reaching more people in more parts of the world. 

So, just for this blog, I've looked at all three databases for my citations today to see how my score compares: 1.72 for GS/WoS & 1.62 for GS/Scopus. Hmm... I wonder what it means when you get one higher and one lower? Any ideas anyone?

Martín-Martín, A., Orduna-Malea, E., Thelwall, M. and López-Cózar, E.D., 2018. Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus: A systematic comparison of citations in 252 subject categories. Journal of Informetrics, 12(4), pp.1160-1177.

Talk for the Universidade de São Paulo - USP

While doing some work with Carla, Adriana and Fernando at USP I presented my talk on Anfíbios invasores: Uma visão da África austral sobre oportunidades e insights.

Some of you will remember the visit by Carla and Adriana to the MeaseyLab earlier in 2019 (if not, see here, here and here). Carla and Adriana went back to USP and analysed all of their results collected in South Africa. I spent the week writing up one of the papers with Carla and Yuri - who analysed all of the videos. It was great fun to work with them, and I hope that we'll have another blog about the paper that comes out soon!

Measey, J. Anfíbios invasores: uma visão da África austral sobre oportunidades e insights. Universidade de São Paulo - USP, São Paulo, Brazil

Species on the Move in Kruger

Regular readers of this blog will know all about Mohlamatsane (aka Mac) and his work on modelling the distribution of three South African amphibians. You can read more about Mac's work in a blog post I wrote about his thesis defence (here). This week Mac presented his work to the "Species on the Move" held this year in Kruger National Park. 

Mac's talk used his physiological and performance experiments on three South African anurans to fit a species distribution model and project this into future climate scenarios. He was really pleased to spend some time talking to Wilfred Thuiller who was also at the conference.

Congratulations Dr Mac! It's great to see with mixing with the stars.

Back in UNICAMP to attend the 9th Brazilian Congress of Herpetology

It's great to be back in Brazil, and a real honour to be asked to present at the 9th Brazilian Congress of Herpetology. 

The meeting has been fantastic, with more than 900 participants, Brazilian herpetology is in an amazingly good condition. I've met up with lots of Brazilian friends, old and new, including nearly everyone that I met last year when I visited Brazil in May (see blog post and here). Especially good to spend more time with Prof Marcio Borges-Martins, who kindly translated my presentation into Portuguese (although I didn't torture the audience, and stuck to English).

Measey, J. Anfíbios invasores: uma visão da África austral sobre oportunidades e insights. 9th Brazilian Congress of Herpetology Campinas, Brazil

The Guttural Toad crew starts work on Île de La Réunion

 

We've seen recently how Mauritius was taken by storm when the MeaseyLab #Mascarenetoadteam visited (see blog entry here). Now they have moved to another island infested with the same toads for nearly 100 years. Their sampling was concentrated in two areas: the natural island forests and urban areas.

In the forest they saw toads climbing trees, and lots of different colour morphs, including the melanistic form (above). This tree climbing behaviour was specifically tested with a standardised climbing performance test which will be repeated in Cape Town and native Durban frogs. Will they all be able to climb?

Meanwhile, Carla was carefully swabbing forest toads to contrast with the urban cousins.

Meanwhile down town toads were getting dirty, and finding them wasn't always a pleasant experience. Can you spot the unlikely toad below? Note the champaign bottle - surely not the trash of our MeaseyLab #Mascarenetoadteam? 

 The MeaseyLab #Mascarenetoadteam found some time to relax among the larva fields at high altitude on Reunion. Pictured here with guest star Sohan Sauroy-Toucouère.