Scopus Indexing Delays of Articles Published in Major Pharmacy Practice Journals

Background: Authors of bibliometric studies often wait for an arbitrarily prolonged period to allow for complete indexing of documents in the Scopus database after the end of the period to be studied (period-of-interest), thus negatively affecting recency (interval between publication date the date of the latest data reported) in bibliometric studies. Objective: The goal of this study is to determine the indexing delays in Scopus following online publication, to provide evidence-based recommendations for when data collection in Scopus should start after the end of the period-of-interest. Methods: Scopus indexing dates were prospectively collected for documents published in 2022 in 7 major pharmacy practice journals (aim 1). A time-to-event analysis was done on all documents published online from August to October 2022 (aim 2). Indexing delays and Kaplan-Meier curves of indexing delays were also compared between Scopus and PubMed using Wilcoxon signed-rank and Log-Rank tests, respectively. Results: All 7 journals (843 documents) and 4 journals (212 documents) were included in aims 1 and 2, respectively. Indexing delay was significantly longer in Scopus versus PubMed (median = 36 vs. 3 days). The Kaplan-Meier curves were also significantly different; with median survival time of indexing in Scopus and PubMed being 4 and 2 weeks, respectively. Notably, 91% of the subset studied have been indexed in Scopus (versus 97% in PubMed) by 10 weeks after online publication. Conclusion: Scopus indexing delays do not support the arbitrarily prolonged wait for bibliometric data to accumulate. A 10-week wait time provides a reasonable balance between the recency and completeness of published data. This evidence-based recommendation would improve recency without sacrificing data completeness in bibliometric studies.