Guides · 6 min read
Web of Science vs Scopus vs DOAJ: What Each One Actually Tells You
“Is it indexed?” is one of the first questions researchers ask about a journal — but indexed wherematters. Web of Science, Scopus and DOAJ are the three names you'll see most, and they do genuinely different jobs. Here's what each actually tells you.
Web of Science (Clarivate)
Web of Science ↗ is the oldest of the three and the most selective — it applies strict editorial criteria and skews toward established, high-citation journals. It is the source of the Journal Impact Factor(via the Journal Citation Reports) and the Eigenfactor. Its Core Collection is split into indexes such as SCIE (science), SSCI (social sciences), AHCI (arts & humanities) and ESCI. Being in Web of Science is a strong signal, but its narrower coverage means many legitimate journals — especially newer or regional ones — aren't in it.
Scopus (Elsevier)
Scopus ↗ is broader, indexing well over 25,000 journals across the sciences, social sciences, humanities and medicine. It is the data behind several metrics — CiteScore, SJR(the quartiles from SCImago) and SNIP. Because it's larger, Scopus coverage is common for journals that aren't yet in Web of Science, which is why many institutions accept either.
DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
DOAJ ↗ is a different kind of list. It is not a citation index and produces no impact metrics; it is a curated, community-run whitelist of vetted open-access journals, independent of the publishing industry. It does not accept paywalled journals, and its Sealmarks titles meeting the highest open-access best practices. DOAJ's coverage of open-access journals from Africa and the Global South is notably stronger than the commercial indexes'. For checking whether an open-access journal is legitimate, DOAJ membership is one of the most useful single signals.
At a glance
- Want a citation metric / Impact Factor? → Web of Science (JIF), Scopus (CiteScore, SJR).
- Want broad coverage / SJR quartiles? → Scopus.
- Vetting an open-access journal? → DOAJ (plus COPE/OASPA).
- Owner: Clarivate (WoS) and Elsevier (Scopus) are commercial; DOAJ is independent and non-commercial.
These lists overlap but none is a superset of the others. The strongest journals usually appear in more than one — so “indexed in Scopus and Web of Science andDOAJ” is a much better sign than any single one alone.
PubScope brings the public signals together for tens of thousands of journals: Web of Science / Scopus / DOAJ indexing, SJR quartile, APC, a 0–100 Trust Score and predatory-risk flags — each linking out so you can confirm it at the source.