A Comparison of Coverage and Subject Areas in Compendex, Inspec, and the Web of Science Core Collection for use as an Engineering Database

Bibliographic databases are vital tools for researchers and scholars.For those in the engineering disciplines, three databases, Compendex, Inspec, and Web of Science, are among the most important.These three databases offer journals covering a wide range of STEM, and specifically engineering topics.Because each database is a paid subscription service, and because they each focus more on some subject areas than others, this work aimed to interrogate the overlap and differences in journal coverage and subject areas so that users may be informed on which database would be most beneficial for them.This analysis includes examining how many journals appear in multiple databases vs. how many journals are unique to a single database and what keywords are most prevalent in each database.Additionally, the diversity of subjects present in each database was determined.Analysis was performed using specialized macros developed in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) for Excel.These macros unified journals and keyword formatting so that the coverage lists from each database could be accurately compared.