Direct comparison
Scopus vs Web of Science vs OpenAlex
Compare Scopus, Web of Science, and OpenAlex on coverage, cost, citation metrics, and which research-administration tasks each database is actually built for.
Side-by-side comparison
| Dimension | Scopus | Web of Science | OpenAlex |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner / operator | Elsevier, part of RELX | Clarivate (public company, NYSE: CLVT). Web of Science sits in Clarivate's Academia & Government segment, unaffected by Clarivate's 2026 divestiture of its separate Life Sciences & Healthcare business | OurResearch (formerly Impactstory), a nonprofit |
| Access model & cost | Institutional subscription required; no free public search interface | Institutional subscription required for the Core Collection. The free Web of Science Master Journal List lets anyone check whether a journal is currently indexed, but not the full database | Free. Data released under CC0. Free API access (a small free daily usage credit via a free API key) and a free quarterly bulk-data snapshot download |
| Reported scale (2026, provider-stated figures) | 21,000+ peer-reviewed journal titles from 7,000+ publishers; provider reports 100M+ indexed content items | 22,000+ journals indexed cover-to-cover in the Core Collection (provider reports 99M+ records there, 271M+ across the full platform) | Provider reports hundreds of millions of works, linked to authors, institutions, sources, topics, publishers, and funders as separate entity types |
| Historical depth / indexing philosophy | Elsevier states cited-reference coverage back to 1970s content dating to 1788; broader title list, commonly cited as including more social-science, humanities, and non-English-language titles than Web of Science | Longest-running citation index of the three u2014 the Science Citation Index traces to 1964, built on Eugene Garfield's original citation-indexing model; more selective inclusion criteria for its core indexes | No curated inclusion committee in the traditional sense u2014 aggregates from Crossref, PubMed, institutional repositories, and other open sources, which is why its raw record count is largest |
| Document types indexed | Journal articles, conference papers, ~217,000 book titles, trade publications, and roughly 2M preprints from major preprint servers | Six component indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Emerging Sources Citation Index, Conference Proceedings Citation Index, Book Citation Index | Works, authors, sources (journals/repositories/conferences), institutions, topics, publishers, and funders as seven linked entity types, plus preprints and datasets where the underlying source records them |
| Journal-/output-level citation metric | CiteScore u2014 Elsevier's own metric, with percentile and quartile (Q1-Q4) rankings per subject category | Journal Impact Factor (JIF), published annually in Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports, with its own Q1-Q4 quartile ranking | 2-year mean citedness u2014 an openly computed, JIF-style metric per source, plus a per-source h-index and i10-index. It approximates the concept of JIF/CiteScore but is not the same trademarked, editorially curated figure |
| Metric eligibility | CiteScore is calculated for any actively-indexed Scopus source | Only journals indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded or Social Sciences Citation Index receive a JIF u2014 Emerging Sources Citation Index inclusion does not, on its own, make a journal JIF-eligible | 2-year mean citedness is computed for any source in the database, including ones excluded from Scopus/Web of Science's curated indexes |
| Author / institution identifiers | Scopus Author ID and Scopus Affiliation ID u2014 Elsevier-assigned, proprietary to the platform | ResearcherID (Clarivate's own researcher-profile identifier) | OpenAlex IDs cross-walk directly to open, non-proprietary identifiers: ORCID iD for people and ROR for organisations |
| Typical CRIS / institutional analytics pairing | Commonly feeds Elsevier's SciVal benchmarking product and Pure CRIS | Commonly feeds Clarivate's InCites benchmarking platform | Its free, no-license API makes it a common backend for open-source and in-house CRIS dashboards, and for reporting built around DORA/CoARA-style responsible-assessment principles that deliberately avoid a single paywalled metric |
| Typical research-administration use | Journal-quality checks, SciVal-based institutional benchmarking, systematic-review searching (often alongside Web of Science, since methodologists commonly recommend searching more than one database) | Verifying current journal indexing status via the Master Journal List, JIF-based quartile figures for promotion/tenure dossiers, InCites benchmarking | Free large-scale or bulk bibliometric analysis, building open dashboards without a subscription budget, and reporting contexts where an open, reproducible metric is preferred to a proprietary one |
Common questions
FAQ
Do I need a Scopus or Web of Science subscription just to check whether a journal has an Impact Factor or CiteScore?+
Not always. The free Web of Science Master Journal List will tell you whether a journal is currently indexed in a component that's JIF-eligible, and Elsevier and some library guides publish CiteScore figures for individual journals without a full Scopus login. But browsing either database itself, or getting the full Journal Citation Reports / Scopus source list, requires an institutional subscription.
Can OpenAlex replace Scopus or Web of Science for a tenure or promotion dossier?+
Not for a dossier that specifically requires the trademarked Journal Impact Factor or CiteScore figure u2014 OpenAlex's 2-year mean citedness is a different, open metric, not a substitute for those named numbers. Where a committee accepts citation counts more generally, or is aligned with DORA/CoARA principles that de-emphasise journal-level metrics altogether, OpenAlex's free data is increasingly used.
Why do citation counts for the same article differ across the three databases?+
Each database indexes a different set of source documents and, in Scopus's and Web of Science's case, applies its own curated inclusion criteria for what counts as a citing publication. OpenAlex aggregates more broadly from open sources like Crossref, so it typically returns a higher raw citation count than either subscription database for the same article.
Which one should a research office use for CRIS or institutional reporting?+
It depends on what's already licensed and what the report is for. Institutions with an existing Scopus or Web of Science subscription commonly pair it with SciVal or InCites for benchmarking. Institutions building an in-house dashboard, or reporting under responsible-assessment commitments, more often reach for OpenAlex's free API precisely because it removes the licensing constraint.
