When merging the Wos and Scopus dataframes, which Total Citations (TC) value is selected?

[nakiamo]

Hello. First of all, thanks a lot for this helpful package.

My question is about when merging WoS and Scopus databases, which TC (total citation) information is selected in the merged data if an article is in both WoS and Scopus data.

If I merge in this order (WoS first):

combined_wos_scopus <- mergeDbSources(wos_data, scopus_data, remove.duplicated = T)

and when I order the articles in a descending order based on their TC, this is the result:

Auhor(s)	TC
NORBERG PA, 2007, J CONSUM AFF	764
PHELPS J, 2000, J PUBLIC POLICY MARK	554
ACQUISTI A, 2016, J ECON LIT	409
TUCKER CE, 2014, J MARKETING RES	395
GOLDFARB A, 2011, MARKET SCI	383
AGUIRRE E, 2015, J RETAILING	332
GOLDFARB A, 2011, MANAGE SCI	329
SHEEHAN KB, 1999, J INTERACT MARK	305
SHEEHAN KB, 2000, J PUBLIC POLICY MARK	296
BAEK TH, 2012, J ADVERTISING	275

If I merge in this order (Scopus first):

combined_wos_scopus_alternative <- mergeDbSources(scopus_data, wos_data, remove.duplicated = T)

this is the result:

Auhor(s)	TC
NORBERG PA, 2007, J CONSUM AFF	764
PHELPS J, 2000, J PUBLIC POLICY MARK	554
TUCKER CE, 2014, J MARK RES	509
GOLDFARB A, 2011, MARK SCI	469
ACQUISTI A, 2016, J ECON LIT	409
BAEK T, 2012, J ADVERT	353
AGUIRRE E, 2015, J RETAILING	332
GOLDFARB A, 2011, MANAGE SCI	329
SHEEHAN KB, 1999, J INTERACT MARK	305
SHEEHAN KB, 2000, J PUBLIC POLICY MARK	296

So, depending on which database you put first while using mergeDbSources function the results change. It prioritize the first database's TC results while merging.

This is not unexpected or wrong but the analysis results (e.g. analysis result of most cited articles) change based on which TC information is used.

Apart from these two options, another method would be to manually choose the highest CT value, if an article is indexed in both indexes.

I think the researcher can choose one of these tree alternatives (prioritize WoS, prioritize Scopus, prioritize the highest TC value ) if an article is indexed in both WoS and Scopus. and I'm not sure which one of these alternatives is ideal.

I thought it would be nice if we could have the option to choose the merging method (deciding which TC value to choose) in mergeDbSources function.

I'm new to this package and I may have overlooked something that's already there, and I'm sorry if that's the case.