Methods employed in the Web of Science and Scopus databases to effect changes in the ranking of the journals

摘要

Databases of Web of Science and Scopus show significant variations in the number of articles published by some journals. The number of articles published in a given journal may not be reflected as such in terms of numbers in both the databases. Such variations are often found in those journals that publish articles such as editorials, news, letter, etc. in addition to the research articles and reviews. In certain journals, the databases selectively categorize some of the articles as citable articles which the journals themselves specify as editorial, news, policy forum and book review. These variations lead to inappropriate evaluation of journals. This article highlights the occurrence of such discrepancies and variations in the databases and calls for accuracy and efficiency in compilation of the data.