title: Quantifying the consistency of scientific databases.
abstract: Science is a social process with far-reaching impact on our modern society. In recent years, for the first time we are able to scientifically study the science itself. This is enabled by massive amounts of data on scientific publications that is increasingly becoming available. The data is contained in several databases such as Web of Science or PubMed, maintained by various public and private entities. Unfortunately, these databases are not always consistent, which considerably hinders this study. Relying on the powerful framework of complex networks, we conduct a systematic analysis of the consistency among six major scientific databases. We found that identifying a single "best" database is far from easy. Nevertheless, our results indicate appreciable differences in mutual consistency of different databases, which we interpret as recipes for future bibliometric studies.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Lovro
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Šubelj
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Marko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bajec
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Information Studies in Novo mesto, Novo mesto, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Biljana Mileva
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Boshkoska
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Information Studies in Novo mesto, Novo mesto, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Andrej
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kastrin
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Faculty of Information Studies in Novo mesto, Novo mesto, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Zoran
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Levnajić
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D012586:Science