Is Microsoft Academic a viable citation source for ranking marketing journals?
Aslib Journal of Information Management
ISSN: 2050-3806
Article publication date: 30 July 2019
Issue publication date: 18 September 2019
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess the viability of the scholarly search engine Microsoft Academic (MA) as a citation source for evaluating/ranking marketing journals.
Design/methodology/approach
This study performs a comparison between MA and Google Scholar (GS) in terms of journal coverage, h-index values and journal rankings.
Findings
Findings indicate that: MA (vs GS) covers 96.80 percent (vs 97.87 percent) of the assessed 94 marketing-focused journals; the MA-based h-index exhibits values that are 35.45 percent lower than the GS-based h-index; and that the MA-based ranking and the GS-based ranking are highly consistent. Based on these findings, MA seems to constitute a rather viable citation source for assessing a marketing journal’s impact.
Research limitations/implications
This study focuses on one discipline, that is, marketing.
Originality/value
This study identifies some issues that would need to be fixed by the MA’s development team. It recommends some further enhancements with respect to journal title entry, publication year allocation and field classification. It also provides two up-to-date rankings for more than 90 marketing-focused journals based on actual cites (October 2018) of articles published between 2013 and 2017.
Keywords
Citation
Moussa, S. (2019), "Is Microsoft Academic a viable citation source for ranking marketing journals?", Aslib Journal of Information Management, Vol. 71 No. 5, pp. 569-582. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-03-2019-0070
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited