Bibliometric Analysis of Publishing Trends in Fiber Crops in Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science

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.