Dimensions: re-discovering the ecosystem of scientific information

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of Dimensions, a free bibliographic database, analyzing its features, coverage, and citation metrics, and comparing it to Scopus and Google Scholar to assess its suitability for bibliometric studies.

Contribution

It offers a detailed description of Dimensions' characteristics, coverage, and its potential as an alternative to Scopus and Google Scholar for bibliometric analysis.

Findings

Dimensions has better coverage than Scopus but less than Google Scholar.

Citation counts in Dimensions are slightly lower than Scopus but highly correlated.

Dimensions is a viable free alternative for citation analysis and bibliometric research.

Abstract

The overarching aim of this work is to provide a detailed description of the free version of Dimensions (new bibliographic database produced by Digital Science and launched in January 2018). To do this, the work is divided into two differentiated blocks. First, its characteristics, operation and features are described, focusing on its main strengths and weaknesses. Secondly, an analysis of its coverage is carried out (comparing it Scopus and Google Scholar) in order to determine whether the bibliometric indicators offered by Dimensions have an order of magnitude significant enough to be used. To this end, an analysis is carried out at three levels: journals (sample of 20 publications in 'Library & Information Science'), documents (276 articles published by the Journal of informetrics between 2013 and 2015) and authors (28 people awarded with the Derek de Solla Price prize). Preliminary results indicate that Dimensions has coverage of the recent literature superior to Scopus although inferior to Google Scholar. With regard to the number of citations received, Dimensions offers slightly lower figures than Scopus. Despite this, the number of citations in Dimensions exhibits a strong correlation with Scopus and somewhat less (although still significant) with Google Scholar. For this reason, it is concluded that Dimensions is an alternative for carrying out citation studies, being able to rival Scopus (greater coverage and free of charge) and with Google Scholar (greater functionalities for the treatment and data export).