Journal of Natural Fibers

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Bibliometric Analysis of Publishing Trends in Fiber

Crops in Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of
Science

Tomaž Bartol & Maria Mackiewicz-Talarczyk

To cite this article: Tomaž Bartol & Maria Mackiewicz-Talarczyk (2015) Bibliometric Analysis
of Publishing Trends in Fiber Crops in Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science, Journal of
Natural Fibers, 12:6, 531-541, DOI: 10.1080/15440478.2014.972000

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15440478.2014.972000

Published online: 13 Oct 2015.

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 Journal of Natural Fibers, 12:531–541, 2015
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1544-0478 print/1544-046X online
DOI: 10.1080/15440478.2014.972000

Bibliometric Analysis of Publishing Trends in Fiber Crops

in Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 06:55 20 October 2015

Tomaž Bartol1 and Maria Mackiewicz-Talarczyk2

1
Biotechnical Faculty, Agronomy Department, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2
Institute of Natural Fibres and Medicinal Plants, Scientific Information and International
Cooperation of INF&MP, Poznan, Poland

The aim was to evaluate natural fibers (fiber crops or fiber plants) in Scopus, Web of Science (WOS), and
Google Scholar with regard to growth trends and leading countries by authors/coauthors of documents.
Basic functionalities of information systems were assessed. Search syntax was based on article titles,
abstracts, and keywords (topics). The three information systems can only be consistently compared on
the basis of article titles. Different ranks of individual fiber crops can be observed among the systems.
The cumulative data for the entire period show different characteristics than the more recent trends.
Specific crops show more intensive growth in the recent period. Retrieval with topics in Scopus and
WOS also shows differences, probably on account of indexing method (KeyWords Plus in WOS and
thesauri descriptors in Scopus). Several countries are ranked much higher in WOS than Scopus, and
vice versa, indicating differences in coverage of journals. The principal contributing countries are China,
India, and USA. China returns similar total counts as USA in 1994–2013 but is producing twice as many
records in the most recent period. Interpretation of results depends on the query (selection of search
terms, fields, and search syntax) and database or information system under analysis.

Keywords: fiber crops, bibliometrics, scientometrics, informetrics, mapping of science, publications

Address correspondence to Tomaž Bartol, University of Ljubljana, Biotechnical Faculty, Agronomy Department,
Jamnikarjeva 101, Ljubljana, SI 1000, Slovenia. E-mail: Tomaz.Bartol@bf.uni-lj.si, www.informatika.bf.uni-lj.si
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/wjnf.

531
 532 T. BARTOL AND M. MACKIEWICZ-TALARCZYK

INTRODUCTION

Aspects related to bibliometrics and library and information science and coverage in different
information systems and databases have been tested on many search models in life sciences, for
example different crops such as medicinal plants but never comprehensively on the case of natu-
ral fibers (fiber crops or fiber plants). Natural fibers with their long history of serving mankind are
very important in a wide range of applications and they coexist and compete in twenty-first century
with man-made fibers, especially as far as diversification of applications, sustainability, quality, and
economy of production are concerned. Natural fibers have natural antibacterial properties, block
UV radiation, conduct heat, can be properly dyed, resist mildew, and can be easily made flame
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retardant. Genetic modification of natural fibrous raw materials improves their productivity and per-
formance. Major players among natural fibers are cotton, jute, flax, and industrial hemp, which are
applied in largest scale for the production of most advanced and added-value industrial applications,
for example, in aerospace, automotive industry, for agro-fine chemicals, for building materials, in
medicine, cosmetics, etc. (Biagiotti et al. 2004; Kicinska-Jakubowska et al. 2012; Kozlowski et al.
2010; Kozlowski et al. 2012).
The aim of this study is to characterize the coverage of principal fiber crops in three major
information systems Scopus, WOS, and Google Scholar with the view of determining selected char-
acteristics in growth trends with regard to particular crops, as well as identifying leading countries
and their contribution to this field. On this basis, we also wish to assess basic retrieval functionalities
of information systems under study. The study employs elementary methods of bibliometrics, and
closely related informetrics or scientometrics, which are based on quantitative analysis and map-
ping of research in scholarly literature. The emphasis is given on the content analysis (lexical) and
selection of search terms that provide optimal precision and recall for the purposes of assessment of
trends.
As no specific article has yet focused specifically on fiber crops as main subject of research, we
provide a rudimentary overview of such articles that have employed similar materials and methods,
and have investigated related subjects and topics in the field of life sciences. Different search mod-
els, information systems, and databases have been tested. Specific studies only used one database,
for example Scopus: The subject of textile was employed as an area of research in relation to the
scientific output of countries (Packiyaraj et al. 2013; Gopalakrishnan and Ashok-Kumar 2013).
Cotton was tackled in a scientometric study by Bajwa and Yaldram (2013), which more specif-
ically assessed biotechnology research in Pakistan. Medicinal plants in Scopus were investigated
with regard to Indian scientific publishing (Kalisdha et al. 2013). WOS database has been employed
more frequently as is it has been in use longer than Scopus. Research papers of top ranked coun-
tries were investigated in the area of smart clothing (Choi et al. 2011). Growth trends in research
of the top productive countries were investigated on the model of bamboo (Wang and Ho 2012).
Sago research in India was studied by Balasubramani and Murugan (2011). Herbal medicine and
medicinal plants were assessed with regard to different search syntaxes on the model of WOS, CAB
Abstracts and Medline (PubMed) (Bartol 2012). Indian contribution in polymer sciences in relation
to other countries was assessed by Naqvi (2014). A rice-related research put special emphasis on
Japan (Morooka et al. 2014). Biochemistry and molecular biology in China was also evaluated (He
et al. 2005). Research areas in Chinese sciences and collaboration with other countries were investi-
gated by WOS-related Essential Science Indicators (ESI, Thomson Reuters) (Fu et al. 2011). WOS
(Web of Knowledge) was also used in investigation of research in the USA and Europe with regard
to the subject of addiction, including Cannabis (Bramness et al. 2013). Country analysis in the fields
of genetics and breeding was conducted by Garg et al. (2011). Both Scopus and WOS were used
in the national evaluation of research performance (Bartol et al. 2014). These databases were also
employed for the purposes of investigating ethnobiology research in Latin America (Albuquerque
et al 2014). On instances, Scopus, WOS, as well as Google Scholar were compared. An early study
of the three systems put special emphasis on the retrieval with authors and document titles (Yang and
 FIBER CROPS IN GOOGLE SCHOLAR, SCOPUS, WEB OF SCIENCE 533

Meho 2006). Several other search functionalities were investigated by Li et al. (2010). In a more tar-
geted research, the three systems were used to investigate the coverage of environmental sciences,
with special emphasis on South Africa (Adriaanse and Rensleigh 2011; Adriaanse and Rensleigh
2013) and the journals in the field of medicine (Kulkarni et al. 2009), and more specifically in
oncology and physics (Bakkalbasi et al. 2006).

MATERIAL AND METHODS

We used the two principal citation databases Scopus (Elsevier) and Web of Science (Thomson
Downloaded by [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] at 06:55 20 October 2015

Reuters) (henceforward referred to as WOS) as well as Google Scholar (henceforward referred to as

GS). Science Citation Index (SCI), a predecessor of WOS, has been around for five decades. In 1997,
it became active in a Web environment in a form of several different products. In the WOS group,
we used Science Citation Index Expanded (8,500 journal titles), Social Sciences Citation Index
(3000 journal titles), and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1700 journal titles) (Anon. 2014b).
Scopus which was launched in 2004 includes some 22,000 journal titles (mostly peer-reviewed jour-
nals), 30,000 books, and 5.5 million conference papers, as well as Articles-in-Press (Anon. 2014a).
Google Scholar was also launched in 2004. In contrast to the other two databases, it does not provide
more revealing information on the ways its data are harvested and compiled. In GS, we included all
documents while excluding citations and patents.

Selection of Search Terms

We selected fiber crops (plants) according to Denton and Daniels (2002) which classify natural fibers
into plant, animal, and mineral fibers. In our further analysis, we included all plant fibers except-
ing wood fibers which are derived from many different plants so it would not be possible to run
our searches on the same principles as are presented in the continuation of this section. In order to
facilitate the comparison, we first selected search terms as well as search fields. Based on the exam-
ples in pilot searches, we determined that the use of Latin scientific names was not necessary. Latin
names even produced search-noise. Natural fibers are usually linked to a product where the English
name for a crop is used very consistently. For example, among the almost 12,000 cotton-related
records retrieved in Scopus, along with the search terms for fibers, there were only 21 records in the
period 1994–2013 that contained Gossypium and no cotton. Also, if the syntax “Linum AND NOT
flax” was used then most records were related to dietary aspects of linseed (flaxseed) unrelated to
bast fibers. We combined the name of a crop with the term fibre (British variant) or fiber (US vari-
ant). WOS as well as Scopus employ automated stemmer (lemmatization) whereby both British and
American spelling variants get retrieved using either term. This also applies to plural and singular
form. Therefore, searches based on fibre also retrieve fibres, fiber and fibers, and vice versa. Right-
hand truncation (fibre∗ OR fiber∗ ) is not necessary. In fact, truncation retrieves also other terms such
fiberglass, fiberoptic, etc. which are not related to natural fibers and skew search results. GS does
not provide stemming utility so in this information system we had to employ Boolean search syntax
based on all four variants: (fibre OR fibres OR fiber OR fibers).

Search Syntax
WOS and Scopus enable retrieval of search terms also in abstracts and keywords, which is not
possible in GS. Thus, to provide a basis for a uniform comparison, we assessed all three information
systems with regard to the terms in article titles. We employed the following search syntax (provided
for the example of flax):
 534 T. BARTOL AND M. MACKIEWICZ-TALARCZYK

GS: allintitle: flax (fibre OR fibres OR fiber OR fibers)

Scopus: TITLE(flax and fibre)
WOS: TI = (flax and fibre)

In GS, the name of the search field for the document title (allintitle) should not be capitalized and
should be entered in small letters. On the other hand, it is mandatory to capitalize the operator OR.
Capitalization plays no role in the other two information systems Scopus and WOS.
In the second part of the study, we assessed principal countries whence the coauthors contributed
relevant articles. This information is not systematically included in GS so the analysis was conducted
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on Scopus and WOS. The searches employed the Boolean union of all crops. For the purposes of
a uniform comparison, we only compared country records as retrievable with title terms. We also
assessed characteristics and possible differences among Scopus and WOS in the retrieval of records
with all content fields (abstracts and keywords):

Scopus: TITLE(flax) and TITLE-ABS-KEY(fibre) Scopus: TITLE-ABS-KEY(flax and fibre)

WOS: TI = flax and TS = fibre WOS: TS = (flax and fibre)

WOS only enables retrieval in either an article title or all subject fields or topics (TS = title +
abstracts + keywords). Scopus supports retrieval in separate fields: independently in an abstract
and in keywords. It also supports compound retrieval in all subject fields (TITLE-ABS-KEY).
Such a comparison of the two databases is not uniform. WOS employs author keywords as well
as KeyWords Plus which are a special WOS utility and which are obtained on the basis of arti-
cle titles in the references of an article. Scopus employs thesauri-based descriptors from different
information systems (for example PubMed/Medline/MeSH) wherefrom data are also harvested.

RESULTS

Fiber Crops and Fibers in Article Titles in GS, Scopus, and Web of Science
We identified all records where both the name of the crop as well as the term fibre (all spelling
variants and numbers) occur in article titles, in order to provide uniform comparison (Table 1).
Records are ranked by hits in GS. Cotton shows by far the greatest number of records given the
importance of this crop in textile research. There are no records for Totora, Paja Toquilla, Moriche,
Chiquichiqui, Cabuya, and African Palm.
In further detailed analysis, we included crops which exhibit at least 100 hits in WOS (Figure 1).
Crops are ranked by WOS. Differences in ranks can be observed. Ranks for cotton and flax are the
same. Sisal takes up the third place in WOS where the numbers for sisal, jute, and hemp are almost
identical. In Scopus, rank three is reserved for hemp followed by bamboo which is ranked third in
GS. Bamboo thus frequently appears in local journals which are not indexed in WOS. The results
show cumulative data for the entire period and are not indicative of more recent trends. Thus, we
also present data for each respective crop in time series (Figures 2 and 3).
Figure 2 presents trends for cotton, flax, bamboo, hemp, and jute. Figure 3 presents trends for
sisal, kenaf, coir (coconut fibre), and ramie. Both figures are organized on the same scale for uniform
comparison. Cotton with the highest number of hits is presented separately in the embedded picture
in Figure 2. It is interesting to note that flax, hemp, and jute all present very similar numbers in
2013 in WOS. These numbers are also similar in Scopus although higher. Differences were greater
 FIBER CROPS IN GOOGLE SCHOLAR, SCOPUS, WEB OF SCIENCE 535

TABLE 1
Fiber crops in Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science between 1994 and 2013, retrieved with the query
[name-of-the-crop AND [fibre/s OR fiber/s)] in article titles

Fiber crop Google scholar Scopus WOS Fiber crop Google scholar Scopus WOS

Cotton 3090 1872 1302 Poplar 83 45 29

Flax 1030 761 494 Curaua 50 71 41
Bamboo 778 467 215 Luffa 48 32 26
Hemp 644 493 318 Nettle 26 21 13
Jute 638 463 335 Isora 16 11 7
Sisal 599 440 343 Calotropis 9 9 6
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Kenaf 479 359 236 Opuntia 7 7 9

Coir 312 207 138 Spanish broom 5 6 6
Ramie 249 188 113 Chambira 4 3 2
Pineapple 147 112 79 Yucca 0 0 1
Kapok 92 56 38

WOS

Scopus

Google Scholar

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500

FIGURE 1 Fiber crops in Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science between 1994 and 2013, retrieved with the
query [(name-of-the-crop AND (fibre/s OR fiber/s)] in article titles.

in previous years. For example, there was an important peak in hemp-related publishing in 2008 in
WOS which cannot be noticed in Scopus. Short time ago, there was important increase in bamboo
articles in all information systems, which has now subsided. Jute exhibits the most intensive growth
in recent years in GS.
Figure 3 which presents crops with lower frequencies exhibits an intensive surge of records in
2009 for almost all crops and all information systems, excepting ramie in WOS. The increase is
especially evident in GS where jute, kenaf, and coir exhibit the most intensive growth.

Fiber Crops and Fibers in Article Titles, Abstracts, and Keywords

The analysis assessed only Scopus and WOS. Retrieval was based on title terms as well as terms in
bibliographic fields such as abstracts and keywords (descriptors). This analysis is not possible in GS.
 536 T. BARTOL AND M. MACKIEWICZ-TALARCZYK

120

Flax WOS
100
Flax Scopus
Flax GS
Bamboo WOS
80
Bamboo Scopus
Bamboo GS
Hemp WOS
60
Hemp Scopus
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Hemp GS
Jute WOS
40
Jute Scopus
Jute GS

20

FIGURE 2 Yearly growth of records for flax, bamboo, hemp, and jute in Web of Science (WOS), Scopus, and Google
Scholar (GS) between 1994–2013, retrieved with [(name-of-the-crop AND (fibre/s OR fiber/s)] in article titles.

120

Sisal WOS
100 Sisal Scopus
Sisal GS
Kenaf WOS
80 Kenaf Scopus
Kenaf GS
Coir WOS
60 Coir Scopus
Coir GS
Ramie WOS
40 Ramie Scopus
Ramie GS

20

FIGURE 3 Yearly growth of records for sisal, kenaf, coir, and ramie in Web of Science (WOS), Scopus, and Google
Scholar (GS) between 1994 and 2013, retrieved with [(name-of-the-crop AND (fibre/s OR fiber/s)] in article titles.

The results were thus established on the so-called topic terms that comprise both the document title,
abstract, and keywords fields as explained in the methods section. The results in Figure 4 present
three sets of data for each respective database: both the name of the crop as well as fibre occur
anywhere in the topic fields [1]; the name of the crop occurs in the article title and the term fibre
 FIBER CROPS IN GOOGLE SCHOLAR, SCOPUS, WEB OF SCIENCE 537

2500
Topics [1] Scopus
Topics [1] WOS
Title and Topics [2] Scopus
2000 Title and Topics [2] WOS
Title [3] Scopus
Title [3] WOS

1500
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1000

500

FIGURE 4 Occurrence of terms in article titles and article topics in Scopus and Web of Science.

occurs in topics fields (title, abstract, or keywords) [2]; and both the name of the crop as well as fibre
occur in the title [3]. As in Figure 2, cotton is again presented separately because of much higher
counts.
It is interesting to note the differences in topics retrieval. On average, twice as many articles
are retrievable in Scopus with cotton, hemp, and bamboo. On the other hand, in WOS more docu-
ments are retrievable with sisal. This can perhaps be attributed to the occurrences of these terms in
keywords fields. As explained in the materials section, Scopus and WOS employ different principles
in assigning the keywords. Both systems make use of author keywords. In addition, WOS employs
the terms in the references of an article (KeyWords Plus), whereas Scopus includes descriptors from
several thesauri. High frequency of hits may signify that such terms more frequently feature as
descriptors in a thesaurus.

Fiber Crops in Different Countries

Preceding part of the analysis has shown that we can only employ article titles for the comparison
on the same principles. The analysis of an author’s country (address or affiliation) was thus also
conducted on this basis. Again, GS does not provide this utility so this is only possible in Scopus and
WOS. Both databases consistently include the country of an author provided that this information
was published in an article and harvested by a database. Namely, the inclusion of affiliation data
is not always standardized across publications and publishers. Both databases include data on all
authors (and respective countries) of an article. Therefore, if all authors are from the same country
then such a document is counted once. If authors from two different countries coauthor an article
then such an article is counted twice, etc. Figure 5 shows all countries wherein the respective authors
published more than 40 records in WOS. Searches were conducted with the Boolean union of all
crops. Records are ranked by WOS. It is possible to note important differences in ranking. China
yields the highest number of records in Scopus but is ranked second in WOS, behind the USA. India
comes third both in WOS and Scopus. Countries such as Brazil, Japan, and Malaysia are also ranked
much higher in Scopus than in WOS.
 538 T. BARTOL AND M. MACKIEWICZ-TALARCZYK

Pakistan
Sweden
Belgium
Netherlands
Russia
New Zealand
Poland
Spain WOS
South Korea
Scopus
Bangladesh
Turkey
Italy
Canada
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Australia
Malaysia
Germany
France
Japan
Brazil
United Kingdom
India
China
USA
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000

FIGURE 5 Fiber crops by principal countries in Scopus and Web of Science between 1994 and 2013, retrieved with
(name-of-the-crop AND (fibre/s OR fiber/s)] in article titles (more than 40 records in WOS).

200

180
China SCOPUS
160
China WOS

140 USA Scopus

120 USA WOS

100 India Scopus

India WOS
80

60

40

20

FIGURE 6 Fiber crops by the three leading countries in Scopus and Web of Science between 1994 and 2013,
retrieved with [name-of-the-crop AND (fibre/s OR fiber/s)] in article titles.

The concluding part of the analysis examined the publishing trends throughout the period.
We have put emphasis on China, India, and the USA which yielded by far the highest number
of total hits between 1994 and 2013 (Figure 6), certainly also on the account of the size of the
scientific communities. In general, USA and India show fairly similar trends with India slowly
 FIBER CROPS IN GOOGLE SCHOLAR, SCOPUS, WEB OF SCIENCE 539

catching up with the USA and even overtaking it more recently in Scopus. Both India and USA
were much more active than China until 2005. In the initial period, there were almost no documents
by the researchers from China. Thenceforth, China has taken off quite notably overtaking both India
and USA. USA has produced the highest numbers of documents in WOS in the total period but
it was overtaken by China in Scopus in 2007 and in WOS in 2009. In the most recent period, the
researchers from China have coauthored more than twice as many records, in both information
systems.
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DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Research areas in agriculture, biomedicine (most notably medicinal plants), and related life sci-
ences have frequently been used as a research material in information science and bibliometrics.
Natural fibers (fiber plants or crops) have never been investigated more systematically. The aim of
this study was to give a perspective to this field of research and to investigate possible emerging
trends. The study focused on the principal crops and countries which have contributed knowledge
in this field. Most similar studies report on differences in search functionalities and inclusion of
documents. WOS is still the most restrictive although it has recently incorporated many journals in
languages other than English. Scopus usually covers the same journals as WOS but it also collects
journals not included in WOS. Google Scholar is the least regulated and includes many different
types of documents which are not covered by either WOS of Scopus. GS thus returns much higher
counts. WOS returns half the results of GS (based on document titles). Usually, these differences
are also reflected in citations (Kulkarni et al. 2009). However, although many researchers believe
that GS cannot be a substitute for WOS and Scopus (Adriaanse and Rensleigh 2011), it can at the
very least be considered as a supplement (Harzing and van der Wal 2009) and can also serve as a
freely available tool for researchers who are not able to access WOS or Scopus (Bakkalbasi et al.
2006, Levine-Clark and Gil 2008). We also reiterate this position with regard to fiber crops. Valuable
research information on these crops is also published in documents that are not captured by citation
databases, such as Scopus and WOS. Relevant documents of different kinds are collected by numer-
ous research institutions, for example, US Flax Institute or Vologda Flax Fair (Russia). Depending
on the structure of such documents, these may even not be detected by Google Scholar. Therefore,
this paper is only based on information that has been extracted from the three information systems
under study. Research in fibre crops is especially dynamic in the countries where research and edu-
cational institutions can frequently not afford subscription to costly citation databases. In this case,
Google Scholar may well serve as a very relevant information resource. It offers access to virtually
all authoritative global journals, at least to bibliographic information in those journals. In addition,
and as importantly, it provides international visibility of such research which is not documented by
less-flexible subscription databases.
Document titles as the most reliable indicator for the comparison have also been employed by
other authors (Yang and Meho 2006). The use of keywords can very much improve the retrieval
in an information system (Bartol 2012); however, it can skew comparison of different information
systems. The methodology based on titles produced fairly good search precision and recall. The
differences between GS on the one hand and citation databases Scopus and WOS on the other hand
are also crop specific, for example, being the highest in bamboo. If we wish to assess more current
trends it is important to pay attention to the more recent years. All crops with the exception of cotton
produced just a few documents in the initial period but most of them exhibit an intensive surge in the
last 5 years although important differences can be noticed. Trends may thus indicate an increased
interest in a certain crop. In general, growth is more pronounced in GS and Scopus than in WOS
thus indicating stronger presence in local and national publications. In WOS, the strongest relative
 540 T. BARTOL AND M. MACKIEWICZ-TALARCZYK

growth is evidenced in kenaf . Among all crops and in all three information systems, more recent
drop can only be noticed in bamboo and sisal. Relatively, cotton shows the most regular growth in
all three systems although this growth is much slower than in other crops. In twenty years, cotton-
related articles have merely tripled whereas they have gone up four times in flax, twelve times in
hemp and even many times more in specific minor crops.
Second part of the analysis was conducted in Scopus and WOS, similarly to other authors who
also included GS only in a part of research, and proceeded further only with Scopus and WOS
because of systemic limitations in GS (Li et al. 2010). Trends are much more indicative than cumu-
lative results. Chinese coauthors are ranked the highest in Scopus and US coauthors are ranked the
highest in WOS. However, in the last 2 years Chinese researchers have produced twice as many
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documents both in Scopus and WOS. A sharp increase in Chinese contributions can be noticed only
after 2006. The country ranks in Scopus and WOS are different to certain extent. Several countries
are ranked much higher in WOS than Scopus, and vice versa. Perhaps, the ranking in WOS is still
more relevant because it involves more “international” and more “restrictive” criteria, although this
inclusion might involve a bias against “national journals” that was reported by authors. However,
many researchers in the field of bibliometrics do not have access to both systems (subscriptions are
quite costly) so many articles present the results based only on one database or selected sets. Such
results are not unconditional and must always be considered in the context of a query (syntax) and
database or information system under analysis.

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