Evidence Synthesis Team, NIHR ARC South West Peninsula, University of Exeter Medical School, Exeter, UK.
Exeter HS&DR Evidence Synthesis Centre, University of Exeter Medical School, Exeter, UK.
Res Synth Methods. 2020 May;11(3):379-386. doi: 10.1002/jrsm.1400. Epub 2020 Mar 4.
Forwards citation searching is a valuable method for finding relevant studies in reviews where concepts are not clearly defined. Scopus and Web of Science can both be used for forwards citation searching but there is little evidence comparing the resources for this purpose.
104 source records relevant to a scoping review of implementation and dissemination strategies in dementia care were checked for inclusion on Web of Science and Scopus. The number of citing references was recorded. Where citing references appeared unique to one of the resources, they were checked for inclusion on the other resource to assess the performance of citation links.
1397 citing references were returned by Scopus and 1010 were returned by Web of Science. For the unique citing references returned by Web of Science (n = 52), 36 were subsequently found to be on Scopus but had failed to be picked up as citing a source record. Of the unique citing references returned by Scopus (n = 355), 83 were found to be on Web of Science but had failed to be picked up as citing a source record. 26 additional relevant records were identified for the review by forwards citation searching. All were found on Scopus; six would have been missed by searching Web of Science alone.
Citation searching using Scopus alone would have found all additional relevant studies for the review. Both Scopus and Web of Science failed to return all citing references from the source records, even where they were present on the database, indicating poor links between citations.
在概念不明确的综述中，向前引文搜索是一种寻找相关研究的有效方法。Scopus 和 Web of Science 均可用于向前引文搜索，但很少有证据比较这两种资源的效果。
对 104 篇与痴呆症护理实施和传播策略的范围综述相关的源记录进行检查，以确定其是否在 Web of Science 和 Scopus 上收录。记录引用参考文献的数量。如果引用参考文献仅出现在其中一个资源中，则检查其在另一个资源中的收录情况，以评估引文链接的性能。
Scopus 返回了 1397 条引用参考文献，Web of Science 返回了 1010 条。对于 Web of Science 返回的唯一引用参考文献（n = 52），其中 36 条随后在 Scopus 上找到，但未能作为引用源记录被收录。对于 Scopus 返回的唯一引用参考文献（n = 355），其中 83 条在 Web of Science 上找到，但未能作为引用源记录被收录。通过向前引文搜索，为该综述确定了 26 条额外的相关记录。所有这些记录都在 Scopus 上找到；如果仅搜索 Web of Science，则会遗漏其中 6 条记录。
仅使用 Scopus 进行引文搜索就可以找到该综述的所有其他相关研究。Scopus 和 Web of Science 都未能返回源记录的所有引用参考文献，即使它们存在于数据库中，这表明引文之间的链接不佳。
