Research Databases and Geriatrics and Gerontology Journals: The Comparison of Databases and Their Covered Journals

Objectives The database and the journals indexed under them are the most important information resources for students and experts in various disciplines, including geriatrics. Given the multiplicity of databases and high subscription fees of the journals, increased awareness regarding those databases covering the majority of journals related to the topic of geriatrics is a necessity for the libraries, experts, and students in this field.
Methods & Materials Quantitative content analysis and applied research were used in this study. The statistical population consisted of 177 active scientific electronic journals that were extracted by searching the keyword 'Geriatric's through the Ulrichs web. The SPSS 19 software and Excel were used for data analysis. Descriptive- statistics and traditional overlap percentage of 14 databases and indexing services were also studied.
Results The results showed that the PubMed database covering 109 journals (61.58%) had the largest coverage of journals in the field of Geriatrics and Gerontology. Among the noted journal publishers, Elsevier was at the top rank with 15 Geriatrics and Gerontology journals (8.5%) indexed on PubMed. The largest providers of full-text articles was EBSCO host covering 104 journals (58.75%). The place holder for the highest rate of journals covered under database overlapped with the two databases namely Current Contents and the Web of Science with both of them covering 82.09% of the journals.
Conclusion The findings of the research indicated that the search engines and suppliers of information for users such as libraries could compare the high rates of overlapping with each other in order to subscribe the databases and reduce costs.