Abstract
Bibliometric analyses of zoologists’ work inform management decisions increasingly, so it is pertinent to examine biases that may shape research directions, research funding, individual careers, or departments’ futures. As an example, we examined whether Scopus searches retrieve the true corpus of research documents from eight Australian natural history museums (ANHMs). We complemented standard Scopus searches with Scopus’ secondary documents, retrieving data on documents unlisted in Scopus but cited by documents in Scopus. Four lines of evidence indicate that much museum research is invisible in Scopus searches: (i) when assessing documents listed in annual reports, six museums had under half their listings in Scopus; (ii) five of eight researchers with up to 40 years’ employment in ANHMs had more records in secondary documents than in Scopus, with all authors improving their h-index when secondary documents were combined with Scopus documents; (iii) eight of the 11 journals published by ANHMs were unlisted in Scopus while others had incomplete listings; and (iv) searches for ANHM research documents in the newly available OpenAlex catalogue retrieved approximately 17% more records. Prudence is needed in interpreting bibliometric evaluations, not just in museums, but for all zoologists.