Academic publishing involves making some strategic decisions and in the case of the researcher, it is most important to learn the major differences between the two titan indexing services-SCOPUS and ISI (Web of Science). These do not just happen to be databases but formidable gatekeepers which determine prestige, research visibility and, finally, career advancement. It is the difference between getting published and having your work turned down in frustration unless you understand the underlying variations of these two.
This Guide brought to you by Fast Publication is made up of the fundamentals of the differences between SCOPUS and the ISI Web of Science to make sure that every researcher makes their decision as to which publishing arena they appear in with a feeling of confidence and gain.
The Foundational Difference: Prestige Versus Expansion
The fundamental distinction between the two systems is their origin, philosophy and the criterion used to select them. The discovery of this historical rift explains why they operate so differently nowadays.
The original gold standard is the ISI Web of science (WoS) Core collection which is currently operated by Clarivate Analytics with its roots that can be traced back to the 1960s. Its ideology lies in strict selectivity. The standards of ISI are widely recognised as being quite strict and have assessed journals on their citation history, editorial quality and international diversity in a rigorous and multi-point system. This leads to less, but more edited collections. In requiring that the publication be in a journal indexed by ISI, an institution or a granting agency is placing a premium on a track record of historical impact and academic rigidity, particularly in the traditional sciences.
However, SCOPUS, which began its operations only in 2004 (much later) by Elsevier, had a premeditated purpose of being both comprehensive and inclusive. On the one hand, it has high quality standards but its philosophy is to give a wider, easier to use, and more internationally representative picture of research. SCOPUS is designed to follow all the relevant publications of scholarly work; hence, it has led to the creation of a database that is almost as large as the WoS Core Collection.
Coverage: Breadth vs. Depth
The most practical difference when deciding where to submit is the coverage since it determines your possible audience and field applicability.
ISI Web of Science has a historical tendency of paying excessive attention to the realms of traditional, central, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine (STEM). Although it encompasses the Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities, it has strength in these long-established disciplines. Moreover, it has its history of biases in coverage towards English language based journals and publications which are mainly published by North American publishers and Western European publishers. To a scholar of an extremely specialized and classically scientific discipline, WoS offers the most comprehensive historical situational citation, with data that can be dated back to the early 1900s.
SCOPUS shines in its breadth. It has many more titles in the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities as well as in the emergent and interdisciplinary disciplines than ISI. Most importantly, the inclusion of regional journals and non-Western publications is far greater in SCOPUS, thus making it a significant resource to those scholars interested in the international environment or niche context. In addition to conventional journals, SCOPUS is also far more prolific in the range of documents indexed such as a large number of conference papers, trade magazines and book chapters.
The Metrics Battle CiteScore Versus JIF
Another important distinction that has a direct impact on an academic profile of a researcher is the manner in which each platform analyses the impact of a journal.
ISI is characterized by the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). The JIF is computed using citations within a year to the articles published in the two years before. Although the JIF has been criticized due to its narrow window, it is the only metric that has a significant impact on global academia. It is the most commonly used measure when it comes to ranking of universities, promotion of faculty and grant funding.
The main indicator in the SCOPUS is the CiteScore. In order to provide a more stable and comprehensive measure, CiteScore is computed with the four year citation window (citations in a year to articles in the three years before). Two additional effective, context-specific measures, the SJR (SCImago Journal Rank), which puts more prestigious journals citing a publication higher in ranking, and SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper), which puts citation counts in different disciplines on a fair level, are also available on SCOPUS.
To the point, the JIF (ISI) has the most institutionalized weight, but the entire set of metrics provided by SCOPUS can provide a more balanced, less hostile and less changeable idea of the real impact of a journal, particularly when it comes to the wide and dynamic range of subjects.
The Usability and Timeliness Factor
Lastly, significant differences exist in terms of functionality in user experience.
SCOPUS has a more modern and user-friendly interface and better visualization options, and citation and author analysis become easy and fast. Its information is updated on a daily basis such that its citation and journal metrics are very updated. Moreover, the Author Identifier of SCOPUS is famous due to its advanced algorithm that is able to uniquely identify authors with similar names when they are similar enough, which is a significant advantage to the researcher in the high volume disciplines.
The Web of Science provides both powerful and granular custom search options, but it gets updated on a weekly basis and uses a more conventional interface that is not as easy to use as the other two products.
Fast Publication Recommendation
In the case of a researcher working with Fast Publication, the decision is not a winner or loser decision, but rather a strategic decision.
Assuming that your career trajectory requires the utmost traditional prestige and acknowledgement in a well-established field and that your institution requires it, then it would be the right way to go to be published in ISI Web of Science (WoS) indexed journals In this case your study is inter-disciplinary, has a large audience across the world or within the humanities/social sciences, SCOPUS has a more comprehensive list of the applicable journals and can get indexed quickly with quality criteria that will support it.
The end goal should be to get a journal that is indexed in both. This is the best of both worlds: the ISI prestige and the breadth of SCOPUS, with its modern metrics will be sure to satisfy the needs of the research in virtually every academic capacity in the world.
With knowledge of these strategic differences, you can turn the key decision on publication into a successful move to your career rather than a leap of faith.
