Full-Length Paper

STEM Abstracting and Indexing (A&I) Tool Overlap Analysis in 2020: An Open Science Informed Approach Amid Pandemic Budgets

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Abstract

Objectives: Compare journal coverage of abstract and indexing tools commonly used within academic science and engineering research.

Methods: Title lists of Compendex, Inspec, Reaxys, SciFinder, and Web of Science were provided by their respective publishers. These lists were imported into Excel and the overlap of the ISSN/EISSNs and journal titles was determined using the VLOOKUP command, which determines if the value in one cell can be found in a column of other cells.

Results: There is substantial overlap between the Web of Science’s Science Citation Index Expanded and the Emerging Sources Citation Index, the largest database with 17,014 titles, and Compendex (63.6%), Inspec (71.0%), Reaxys (67.0%), and SciFinder (75.8%). SciFinder also overlaps heavily with Reaxys (75.9%). Web of Science and Compendex combined contain 77.6% of the titles within Inspec.

Conclusion: Flat or decreasing library budgets combined with increasing journal prices result in an unsustainable system that will require a calculated allocation of resources at many institutions. The overlap of commonly indexed journals among abstracting and indexing tools could serve as one way to determine how these resources should be allocated.

Keywords: abstracting, indexing, database comparison, overlap, open science, resource management, library budgets

How to Cite:

Borycz, J. & Carroll, A. J. & Eskridge, H. N., (2021) “STEM Abstracting and Indexing (A&I) Tool Overlap Analysis in 2020: An Open Science Informed Approach Amid Pandemic Budgets”, Journal of eScience Librarianship 10(2): 2. doi: https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.2021.1192

Rights: © 2021 Borycz, Carroll & Eskridge. This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.