Discrepancies among Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed Coverage of Funding Information in Medical Journal Articles
Open accessAbstract
Objective: The overall aim of the present study was to compare the coverage of existing research funding information for articles indexed in Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed databases.Methods: The numbers of articles with funding information published in 2015 were identified in the three selected databases and compared using bibliometric analysis of a sample of twenty-eight prestigious medical journals.Results: Frequency analysis of the number of articles with funding information showed statistically significant differences between Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed databases. The largest proportion of articles with funding information was found in Web of Science (29.0%), followed by PubMed (14.6%) and Scopus (7.7%).Conclusion: The results show that coverage of funding information differs significantly among Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed databases in a sample of the same medical journals. Moreover, we found that, currently, funding data in PubMed is more difficult to obtain and analyze compared with that in the other two databases. This article has been approved for the Medical Library Association’s Independent Reading Program.
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In a sample of the same medical journals, Scopus retrieved the lowest share of funded articles (7.7%), while WoS retrieved 29.0%.
“Although Scopus indexed the highest number of articles in investigated journals, it retrieved the lowest share of FAs (only 7.7%), while, in WoS, the share of FAs was 29.0% [80].”
From Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World (2021) · cites this paper as [80]
WoS performs much better than Scopus in both coverage and accuracy of funding information.
“the most recent comparative studies between WoS and Scopus have shown that WoS performs much better than Scopus in both coverage and accuracy of FI [79,80].”
From Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World (2021) · cites this paper as [80]
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- [3]Zhao D Characteristics and impact of grant-funded research: a case study of the library Scientometrics 2010 8 84 2 293 306 10.1007/s11192-010-0191-y · DOI
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Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World
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- Authors
- Kokol, P., & Blažun Vošner, H.
- Affiliations
- University of Maribor (SI)
- ORCID
- Kokol, Peter
- Venue
- Journal of the Medical Library Association
- Published
- 2018-01-12
- Volume
- 106
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 81-86
- ISSN
- 1536-5050 (ISSN-L)
- 1558-9439
- PMC
- PMC5764597
- OpenAlex
- W2784045614
- Cited by
- 115
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 8.01
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of the Medical Library Association JMLA (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- University of Maribor digital library (University of Maribor) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. National Library of Medicine
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Library Science and Information
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Library Science and Information Systems
- Keywords
- research funding information, bibliographic database coverage, Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, medical journal articles, bibliometric analysis, medical journals
- MeSH terms
- Abstracting and Indexing, Humans, Periodicals as Topic, Bibliometrics, Databases, Factual, Information Storage and Retrieval
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