The museum of errors/horrors in Scopus

摘要

Recent studies have shown that the Scopus bibliometric database is probably less accurate than one thinks. As a further evidence of this fact, this paper presents a structured collection of several weird typologies of database errors, which can therefore be classified as horrors. Some of them concern the incorrect indexing of so-called Online-First paper, duplicate publications, and the missing/incorrect indexing of references. A crucial point is that most of these errors could probably be avoided by adopting some basic data checking systems.Although this paper does not provide a quantitative and systematic analysis (which will be provided in a future publication), it can be easily understood that these errors can have serious consequences such as: (i) making it difficult or even impossible to retrieve some documents, and (ii) distorting bibliometric indicators/metrics relating to journals, individual scientists or research institutions.Our attention is focused on the Scopus database, although preliminary data show that the Web of Science database is far from being free from these errors. The tone of the paper is deliberately provocative, in order to emphasize the seriousness of these errors.