Bibliometrics of "Information Retrieval" - A Tale of Three Databases

Coverage is an important criterion when evaluating information systems. This exploratory study investigates this issue by submitting the same query to different databases relevant to the query topic. Information was retrieved f from three databases: ACM Digital Library, WOS (with the Proceedings Citation Index) and Scopus. The search phrase was “information retrieval”, publication years were between 2013 and 2016. The location of the search phrase was limited to title and abstract (and also keywords for WOS) and the subject area was limited to computer science or information science in WOS, computer science or social science in Scopus. From the ACM Digital Library data were retrieved from the more comprehensive ACM Guide to Computer Literature that includes also non-ACM data and also covers the major journals in information science. Altogether 9050 items were retrieved, out of which 5591 (62%) items were retrieved by a single database only, and only 1059 (12%) items were located in all three databases. There are great variations in the citation counts as well.