Evaluation of the citation matching algorithms of CWTS and iFQ in comparison to the Web of science

The results of bibliometric studies provided by bibliometric research groups, for example, the C entre for S cience and T echnology Studies ( CWTS ) and the I nstitute for R esearch I nformation and Q uality A ssurance (i FQ ), are often used in the process of research assessment. Their databases use W eb of Science ( WoS ) citation data, which they match according to their own matching algorithms—in the case of CWTS for standard usage in their studies and in the case of i FQ on an experimental basis. Because the problem of nonmatched citations in the WoS persists due to inaccuracies in the references or inaccuracies introduced in the data extraction process, it is important to ascertain how well these inaccuracies are rectified in these citation matching algorithms. This article evaluates the algorithms of CWTS and i FQ in comparison to the WoS in a quantitative and a qualitative analysis. The analysis builds upon the method and the manually verified corpus of a previous study. The algorithm of CWTS performs best, closely followed by that of i FQ . The WoS algorithm still performs quite well ( F 1 score: 96.41%), but shows deficits in matching references containing inaccuracies. An additional problem is posed by incorrectly provided cited reference information in source articles by the WoS .