  The overarching aim of this work is to provide a detailed description of the
free version of Dimensions (new bibliographic database produced by Digital
Science and launched in January 2018). To do this, the work is divided into two
differentiated blocks. First, its characteristics, operation and features are
described, focusing on its main strengths and weaknesses. Secondly, an analysis
of its coverage is carried out (comparing it Scopus and Google Scholar) in
order to determine whether the bibliometric indicators offered by Dimensions
have an order of magnitude significant enough to be used. To this end, an
analysis is carried out at three levels: journals (sample of 20 publications in
'Library & Information Science'), documents (276 articles published by the
Journal of informetrics between 2013 and 2015) and authors (28 people awarded
with the Derek de Solla Price prize). Preliminary results indicate that
Dimensions has coverage of the recent literature superior to Scopus although
inferior to Google Scholar. With regard to the number of citations received,
Dimensions offers slightly lower figures than Scopus. Despite this, the number
of citations in Dimensions exhibits a strong correlation with Scopus and
somewhat less (although still significant) with Google Scholar. For this
reason, it is concluded that Dimensions is an alternative for carrying out
citation studies, being able to rival Scopus (greater coverage and free of
charge) and with Google Scholar (greater functionalities for the treatment and
data export).
