Usually provides cleaner and smaller number of irrelevant results than Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic
Good data source for “any of the words” keyword searches and journal searches by ISSN
Search speed fast to medium
Typically reports fewer citations than Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic, because it includes fewer journals in some fields and has very limited coverage of books, book chapters and conference papers
The use of NOT or AND in keyword searches results is ignored; Crossref reverts to OR searches
Author search is problematic as it is very difficult to disambiguate authors
Year of publication is sometimes - but not always - year of online-first, not year of print publication
Usually provides the largest number of publications and citations
Search speed medium for single search with limited number of results
Usually provides a larger number of irrelevant results than other data sources
Author disambiguation more difficult than GSP, MA and WoS
Because of necessary search rate limitation, speed slows down considerably when doing multiple searches in quick succession or running searches with many results
Year of publication is sometimes - but not always - year of online first, not year of print publication
Usually provides a smaller number of irrelevant results than GS
Search speed very fast for searches with less than 200 results, but fast even for repeated searches and searches with many results
Usually provides cleaner results than GSP as not all user curate their GSP
Seems to provide best automated author disambiguation
More restrictive search syntax
The use of NOT in keyword searches results in an error message
Because MA favours semantic over lexical searches, it results in an error message if you include stop words such as "the", "a", "from", but also common academic words such as study and method.
Year of publication is usually year of online first, not year of print publication
Typically reports fewer citations than Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic, because it includes fewer journals in some fields and has a limited coverage of books, book chapters and conference papers
Provides cleaner and smaller number of irrelevant results than Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic
Search speed very fast for nearly any kind of searches
Allows wildcards (e.g. global*) for easier searches
Very good data source for keyword searches and journal searches by ISSN
Requires (non-free) subscription
Typically reports fewer citations than all other sources because it includes fewer journals in many fields (esp. Social Sciences and Humanities) and has a very limited coverage of books, book chapters and conference papers.
Typically is last data source to include recent publications as it doesn’t include “in press” papers.
Anne-Wil Harzing is Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London and visiting professor of International Management at Tilburg University. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.
Anne-Wil Harzing is Professor of International Management at Middlesex University, London and visiting professor of International Management at Tilburg University. She is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, a select group of distinguished AIB members who are recognized for their outstanding contributions to the scholarly development of the field of international business. In addition to her academic duties, she also maintains the Journal Quality List and is the driving force behind the popular Publish or Perish software program.
