Purpose – The increasing complexity of scholarly communication has highlighted the importance of understanding citation networks and research visibility across major academic databases. This study investigates citation relationships and research visibility within Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and ResearchGate using a network-based analytical framework. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopts a qualitative network-based research approach through an extensive review of bibliometric literature, citation network studies, scholarly database documentation, and research evaluation frameworks. Citation connectivity, network density, indexing coverage, research visibility, and knowledge dissemination characteristics are comparatively analyzed across four leading scholarly databases. Findings – The findings indicate that Scopus and Web of Science maintain highly structured citation networks with reliable bibliometric relationships, while Google Scholar demonstrates broader citation connectivity due to extensive document coverage. ResearchGate complements traditional databases by strengthening scholarly networking, publication dissemination, and researcher visibility. The integrated network perspective provides a comprehensive understanding of citation influence and scholarly communication. Practical implications – The findings support researchers, librarians, publishers, universities, and policymakers in selecting appropriate scholarly databases for literature discovery, citation analysis, collaboration analysis, and research impact assessment. The proposed framework also assists institutions in understanding knowledge diffusion across interconnected scholarly platforms. Originality/value – This study presents a network-oriented framework for evaluating scholarly databases by integrating citation relationships, research visibility, and knowledge dissemination within a unified analytical perspective, thereby extending conventional bibliometric evaluation.
DSc et al. (Fri,) studied this question.