Filter bubbles in interdisciplinary research: a case study on climate and society

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to compare the content of Web of Science (WoS) and Google Scholar (GS) by searching the interdisciplinary field of climate and ancient societies. The authors aim at analyzing the retrieved documents by open availability, received citations, co-authors and type of publication. Design/methodology/approach The authors searched the services by a defined set of keyword. Data were retrieved and analyzed using a variety of bibliometric tools such as Publish or Perish, Sci2Tool and Gephi. In order to determine the proportion of open full texts based on the WoS result, the authors relocated the records in GS, using an off-campus internet connection. Findings The authors found that the top 1,000 downloadable and analyzable GS items matched poorly with the items retrieved by WoS. Based on this approach (subject searching), the services appeared complementary rather than similar. Even though the first search results differ considerably by service, almost each single WoS title could be located in GS. Based on GS’s full text recognition, the authors found 74 percent of WoS items openly available and the citation median of these was twice as high as for documents behind paywalls. Research limitations/implications Even though the study is a case study, the authors believe that findings are transferable to other interdisciplinary fields. The share of freely available documents, however, may depend on the investigated field and its culture toward open publishing. Practical implications Discovering the literature of interdisciplinary fields puts scholars in a challenging situation and requires a better understanding of the existing infrastructures. The authors hope that the paper contributes to that and can advise the research and library communities. Originality/value In light of an overwhelming and exponentially growing amount of literature, the bibliometric approach is new in a library context.