European Science Editing 46: e51987, doi: 10.3897/ese.2020.e51987
Web of Science and Scopus are not global databases of knowledge
expand article infoJonathan P. Tennant
‡ Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education, Leicester, United Kingdom
† Deceased author
Open Access
Abstract
Both Web of Science and Scopus are critical components of the current research ecosystem, providing the basis for university and global rankings as well as for bibliometric research. However, both platforms are structurally biased against research produced in non-Western countries, non-English language research, and research from the arts, humanities, and social sciences. This viewpoint emphasizes the damage that these systematic inequities inflict upon global knowledge production systems and the need for research funders to unite to form a more globally representative, non-profit, community-controlled infrastructure for the global pool of research knowledge.
Keywords
Scholarly Publishing, Databases, Bibliometrics, Research Assessment, Epistemic hegemony