Do We Know What We Publish? Comparing Self-Reported Publication Data to Scopus and Web of Science

Abstract Research productivity is a basic quantitative measure for universities, but obtaining a comprehensive view of a university’s output is difficult. Databases like Web of Science and Scopus can provide a list of publications associated with an institution, but they are limited in the formats and disciplines they cover. An institution can rely on its researchers to provide information on their own publications, which may avoid format and discipline limitations, but the data is often too messy or incomplete for research assessments. This study compares research productivity data obtained through Web of Science and Scopus to self-provided data from researchers at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). The study seeks to determine if certain disciplines are advantaged or disadvantaged by their representation in each dataset and to determine how complete researcher’s self-provided data is. It was determined that basing UCCS’s research assessment on researcher provided data led to more comprehensive results.