Why are my citations lower in Elements than in Google Scholar?
Answer
Google Scholar is considered one of the most comprehensive source of data for scholarly outputs, though their data is often incomplete. Google Scholar is better at identifying scholarly outputs from non-journal sources, in more non-English languages, and from the Global South than commercial databases. In a 2019 analysis of Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science (Martin-Martin et al.), the authors found that "Most citations found only by GS were from non-journal sources (48%-65%), including theses, books, conference papers, and unpublished materials. Many were non-English (19%- 38%), and they tended to be much less cited than citing sources that were also in Scopus or WoS."