Citation analysis of Iranian Journal of Nuclear Medicine: Comparison of SCOPUS and Google Scholar

Introduction: Citation tracking is a bibliometrics method to analyze the scientific impact of journal articles which can be done through Scopus (SC), Google Scholar (GS), or ISI web of knowledge (WOS). In the current study, we analyzed the citations to 2006-2012 articles of Iranian Journal of Nuclear Medicine (IJNM) in the SC and GS. Methods: We retrieved the relevant data from SC and GS official websites. The search was done on 10/2012. Total number of citations, their overlap and unique citations of SC and GS were evaluated in detail. Results: SC and GS covered 100% and 99% of articles and identified 53 and 62 citations to IJNM articles respectively with the overlap of 44 citations. Original articles were the main types of cited articles followed by review articles. Conclusion: Despite considerable overlap between GS and SC, they provide important unique citations to IJNM articles. Due to differences between citation analysis information in each database, authors should consider all the indexing databases when evaluating the scientific impact of the individual journal. Editors should consider original and review articles to increase long term visibility and hopefully impact factor of IJNM in the future.