There are three main sources of bibliometric data: Web of Science,
Scopus, and Google Scholar.  Each has certain advantages and limitations
which may influence which source or combination of sources you decide
to use in your bibliometric search.  In another section of this toolkit (http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/kb/52/bibliometrics-example),
sample bibliometrics are done using all three sources, which is a good
practice, particularly in the case of resources with relatively small
numbers of results.  Since each source has certain areas in which it is
more effective at finding results than the others, combining all of them
raises you ability to find the kinds of uses to which your online
resource is being put.

Sources of Bibliometric Data

Scopus (http://www.scopus.com/): Access is limited to subscribers and is often done through your university library web site.


Scopus is a relative newcomer to the scholarly search field, founded
in 2004, but offers a great deal of flexibility for the bibliometric
user.  First, searches can be done on fields including the abstracts and
keywords, but also on the references.  This makes it particularly
useful for the purpose of finding citations to digitised resources
compared to the Web of Knowledge, which does not search the text of the
citations.  It also allows for relatively easy downloading of your
searches, although there are some limits on very large results sets with
over 2000 items.


Also, in Scopus has expanded humanities coverage in recent years,
which makes this resource more valuable for finding citations to digital
humanities materials.


Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com): Free access.


Google Scholar is the easiest of the three main sources of
bibliographic data to perform simple searches in, as the interface is
nearly identical to the main Google search engine.  Compared with Scopus
and Web of Knowledge, however, you have far less control over your
searches as Google Scholar does not include the ability to do fine
grained boolean searching, and often returns far more false positives
than the other services.  However, Google Scholar also has the most
coverage of informal scholarly communication (such as presentations and
conference papers), so may be able to find results the other tools have
not.


ISI Web of Knowledge (http://www.isiknowledge.com/): Access is limited to subscribers and is often done through your university library web site.


The Web of Knowledge (WoK) is the grandfather of search sites that
use citation-based searching techniques.  Founded by Eugene Garfield,
one of the originators of many bibliometric techniques, WoK allows a
variety of search options and the ability to follow citations from
article to article.  The databases included in the Web of Science
portion of the WoK site cover the sciences, social sciences and
humanities, and have recently expanded to include conference proceedings
in addition to journal articles.


A major limitation of using WoK to find citations to digital
resources, however, is that the fields you are able to search are
somewhat limited: they do not include the full text of the article, and
they do not include the text of the references.

 

Tools to Work with Bibliometric Data

One of the best sources of tools (and documentation on how to use them) is Loet Leydesdorff's page at http://www.leydesdorff.net/software.htm.
The tools here are geared towards bibliometrics scholars, but many are
relatively simple to use. These tools are generally written to work with
Web of Knowledge data, although some also work with Scopus data.


Another tool that is useful in particular circumstances is Harzing's Publish or Perish (http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm),
which as the name suggests, was originally designed to help scholars
determine their own h-index. New features have been added, however,
which allow searching for words and phrases. This tool draws on Google
Scholar data.