The coverage of Microsoft Academic: analyzing the publication output of a university

Abstract

This is the first detailed study on the coverage of Microsoft Academic (MA). Based on the complete and verified publication list of a university, the coverage of MA was assessed and compared with two benchmark databases, Scopus and Web of Science (WoS), on the level of individual publications. Citation counts were analyzed, and issues related to data retrieval and data quality were examined. A Perl script was written to retrieve metadata from MA based on publication titles. The script is freely available on GitHub. We find that MA covers journal articles, working papers, and conference items to a substantial extent and indexes more document types than the benchmark databases (e.g., working papers, dissertations). MA clearly surpasses Scopus and WoS in covering book-related document types and conference items but falls slightly behind Scopus in journal articles. The coverage of MA is favorable for evaluative bibliometrics in most research fields, including economics/business, computer/information sciences, and mathematics. However, MA shows biases similar to Scopus and WoS with regard to the coverage of the humanities, non-English publications, and open-access publications. Rank correlations of citation counts are high between MA and the benchmark databases. We find that the publication year is correct for 89.5% of all publications and the number of authors is correct for 95.1% of the journal articles. Given the fast and ongoing development of MA, we conclude that MA is on the verge of becoming a bibliometric superpower. However, comprehensive studies on the quality of MA metadata are still lacking.

Peer Review and Citation Data in Predicting University Rankings, a Large-Scale Analysis

“…It would have therefore taken almost two months to gather the required data which was not practical as this was more than 10 times slower than using MAG. Additionally, studies by [11] and [12] have recently confirmed how comprehensive the MAG citation data are. We could not utilise Google Scholar as it does not offer an API and prohibits 'scraping' of data.…”

Microsoft Academic is one year old: the Phoenix is ready to leave the nest

“…Just over half a year ago, we expanded this analysis (Harzing & Alakangas, 2017) and showed that this general conclusion was also valid for a sample of 145 academics across five disciplines. The only other study to date on MA coverage (Hug & Brändle, 2017), based on title searches for the 2008-2015 publications of an entire university, found Scopus coverage for journal articles to be marginally better than MA coverage, with both data sources outperforming the WoS. MA, however, showed the highest proportion of unique coverage for journal articles.…”

Which academic search systems are suitable for systematic reviews or meta‐analyses? Evaluating retrieval qualities of Google Scholar, PubMed, and 26 other resources

“…Reviewers should thus consider their specific review topic when deciding which search systems might prove suitable for a systematic search. To assist with selection, there is considerable research on the coverage of search systems, [17][18][19] especially with regard to search systems such as Google Scholar which have built up an aura of secrecy around the size of their databases. [20][21][22] T A B L E 1 Quality requirements of systematic searches derived from evidence synthesis guidelines…”