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Cited by 101scientometrics and bibliometrics researchPsychology Research and BibliometricsWeb visibility and informetrics

Accuracy and completeness of publication and citation records in the Web of Science, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar: A case study for the computation of h indices in Psychology

García‐Pérez, Miguel A.·2010·Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
DOI 10.1002/asi.21372
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Abstract

Hirsch's h index is becoming the standard measure of an individual's research accomplishments. The aggregation of individuals' measures is also the basis for global measures at institutional or national levels. To investigate whether the h index can be reliably computed through alternative sources of citation records, the Web of Science (WoS), PsycINFO and Google Scholar (GS) were used to collect citation records for known publications of four Spanish psychologists. Compared with WoS, PsycINFO included a larger percentage of publication records, whereas GS outperformed WoS and PsycINFO in this respect. Compared with WoS, PsycINFO retrieved a larger number of citations in unique areas of psychology, but it retrieved a smaller number of citations in areas that are close to statistics or the neurosciences, whereas GS retrieved the largest numbers of citations in all cases. Incorrect citations were scarce in Wos (0.3%), more prevalent in PsycINFO (1.1%), and overwhelming in GS (16.5%). All platforms retrieved unique citations, the largest set coming from GS. WoS and PsycINFO cover distinct areas of psychology unevenly, thus applying different penalties on the h index of researches working in different fields. Obtaining fair and accurate h indices required the union of citations retrieved by all three platforms.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1002/asi.21372

Cites

99 of 99 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Studies have shown that reference and citation errors are often neglected in different specialty journals.

    “Studies have shown that reference and citation errors are often neglected in different specialty journals”

    From How accurate are cited references in Iranian peer-reviewed journals? (2016) · cites this paper as García-Pérez, 2010

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 100 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

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Related

Authors
García‐Pérez, M. A.
Venue
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2010-09-15
Volume
61
Issue
10
Pages
2070-2085
ISSN
  • 1532-2882 (ISSN-L)
  • 1532-2890
DOI
10.1002/asi.21372
OpenAlex
W4250137533
Cited by
101
References
100
Citations by year
2026: 4 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 6
FWCI
6.00
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor (vor)
Locations
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Psychology Research and Bibliometrics
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Web visibility and informetrics
Keywords
h-index, citation analysis, citation indexes, Web of Science, PsycINFO, Google Scholar, citation accuracy, publication records, research evaluation, psychology, bibliographic databases

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

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