Why do the researcher metrics look different to those in Scopus?

The metrics given for a researcher or author in SciVal may look different to those found in Scopus for several reasons:

The year range you are looking at in SciVal is not the same as in Scopus

In the Explore and Coompare, we offer both 3 to 10 year time windows, along with flexible year ranges back to 1996. You will see differences in metrics such as the scholarly output and citation counts if your researcher has published articles outside of these windows.

There is a small time lag between Scopus and SciVal

SciVal receives a weekly update of new data from Scopus and due to processing times this means SciVal is typically 4 to 12 days behind Scopus. If the year range above does not affect the researcher (as they have only published papers in that year range), the metrics may be different because recently added papers in Scopus have not yet filtered into SciVal.

Click ‘Data source’ to see the latest update date.

Author profile corrections

When defining a researcher in SciVal you sometimes need to combine multiple Scopus author profiles to give the most accurate researcher profile. Once this is done you can immediately analyze the combined profile in SciVal. At the same time these profile corrections are sent to Scopus and can take around 3-4 weeks before they are visible in Scopus. During this time period, you may notice metric differences between the SciVal and Scopus author profiles.

The reverse is also true – a user makes a correction to an author profile in Scopus, which takes 1-2 weeks to be visible in SciVal.

How are Researcher metrics generated in SciVal?

SciVal researcher metrics are automatically generated based upon the researcher's Scopus Author Profile. Learn more about Scopus Author Profiles