Comparative analysis of Dimensions and Scopus bibliographic data sources: an approach to university research productivity

This paper shows a significant comparison of two primary bibliographic data sources at the document level of Scopus and Dimensions. The emphasis is on the differences in their document coverage by institution level of aggregation. The main objective is to assess whether Dimensions offers at the institutional level good new possibilities for bibliometric analysis as at the global level. The results of a comparative study of the citation count profiles of articles published by faculty members of Prince of Songkla University (PSU) in Dimensions and Scopus from the year the databases first included PSU-authored papers (1970 and 1978, respectively) through the end of June 2020. Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis of 19,846 articles indexed in Dimensions and 13,577 indexed in Scopus. The main finding was that the number of citations received by Dimensions was highly correlated with citation counts in Scopus. Spearman’s correlation between citation counts in Dimensions and Scopus was a high and mighty relationship. The findings mainly affect Dimensions’ possibilities as instruments for carrying out bibliometric analysis of university members’ research productivity. University researchers can use Dimensions to retrieve information, and the design policies can be used to evaluate research using scientific databases