Web of Science

What is Web of Science?

Produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Web of Science is a suite of citation databases including Science Citation Index Expanded (1945-Present), Social Sciences Citation Index (1956-Present), and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975- Present).  It also contains a database of conference proceedings and abstracts from 1990 to the present.  It contains citation and abstract information on articles in over 10,000 journals in the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. All the indexes can be searched at the same time. Web of Science is part of Web of Knowledge, a collection of databases from ISI that also includes Journal Citation Reports.

Why Use Web of Science?

• Web of Science is a multidisciplinary database, so it may retrieve literature that may not be available in more specialized databases such as MEDLINE
• Web of Science has Cited Reference Searching which allows users to retrieve the cited references of a chosen article or articles. You can find out how often a particular work or author has been cited in the literature
• Web of Science allows easy access to data on the author h-index, an index of author impact
• The database includes Journal Citation Reports, which enable browsing of journal impact factors by title or by discipline

Disadvantages of Web of Science

Web of Science does not have a controlled vocabulary. What this means is that you will need to plan your searches more precisely, e.g. think of synonyms or different ways of expressing the same search concepts.

Accessing Web of Science

Web of Science can be accessed from the Popular Resources link in the main menu or by clicking the Web of Knowledge icon in the Popular Resources section on the home page. Once in the Web of Knowledge portal, make sure that the tab "Web of Science" is selected.

Types of Searches

In Web of Science, you can perform the following types of searches:

• Search: topic, author, journal name, etc.
• Cited Reference Search: articles that cite an author or work
• Advanced Search: use field tags to construct complex searches

On this screen

• Choose a timespan to search (default is All Years)
• Uncheck citation databases you do not wish to include in your search (default is All Citation databases)

Search: Topic, Author, and Journal Searching

On this screen

• Topic: Enter search terms in the box. Use synonyms, connectors such as AND, wildcard characters such as ?, *, or $ for truncation and letter substitution, and parentheses to nest search terms (see Web of Science Help for further details)
• Author: Enter the author’s last name followed by a first initial and * to substitute for any middle initial
• Publication Name: Enter the journal name.

The following related tutorial is available on the Web of Science website (turn up the volume of your speakers):

• Search tips for Web of Science (7 mins.)

Viewing Results and Marking Records

On this screen

• Refine results by subject, document type, or other criteria
• Sort records by date, times cited, relevance, first author, or journal name
• Mark records for printing, saving, emailing, or exporting to reference management software such as EndNote
• Click a title link to view its full record including abstract and keywords

On this screen

• Access the full-text using the FindIt@NU button
• Add to marked list for future printing or exporting to EndNote or other bibliographic management software
• View a list of articles that have cited this paper
• Create a citation alert to be notified when this paper is cited in the future
• View related records based on shared bibliographic references
• View the bibliography of this paper

The following related tutorials are available on the Web of Science website (turn up your speaker volume):

• Managing Search Results (6 mins.)
• Refine and Analyze Search Results (7 mins.)

Printing, Saving, Exporting, and E-mailing Records

 On this screen

• From the Results screen, choose the Marked List icon to access this screen
• Select the fields you would like to include in your output (Author, Title, and Source are included by default)
• Select an option for output: Format for Print, Save to File, Export to Reference Software, or E-mail

The following related tutorial is available on the Web of Science website (turn up your speaker volume):

• Managing Search Results (6 mins.)

Citation Reports

Citation Reports can only be found in Web of Science.  You will not see these options if you search "All Databases" at Web of Knowledge.

The Citation Report provides aggregate citation statistics for a set of search results. These statistics include:

• The total number of times all items have been cited
• The average number of times an item has been cited
• The number of times an item has been cited each year
• The average number of times an item has been cited in a year

This is most useful when searching for publications by a specific author.

To access a Citation Report for a set of results, click the Create Citation Report link that appears below the Sort by box on the Results page.

 On this screen

• View graphs of published items per year and numbers of citations per year for your search terms
• View a sum of citations with and without self-citations.  In Web of Science "self-citations" are citations within the same journal (eg. Nature).  They are not author self-citations
• View average citations per item and remove items that are extreme outliers by clicking checkboxes next to their titles

What is the H-index?

The h-index is the statistic that currently may be the best measure of impact factor for single articles or for an author's body of work.  It was developed and proposed by J.E. Hirsch in 2005.

The h-index is calculated from your list of publication results ranked in descending order by the Times Cited. The value of h is equal to the number of papers (N) in your results list that have N or more citations.  The h-index helps correct for the disproportionate weight of highly-cited papers or papers that have not yet been cited.

The h-index factor is based on your selected time span in your search. Items that do not appear on the Results pages will not be factored into the calculation. If your search covers 10 years, then the h-index value is based on this period even though a particular author may have published articles more than 10 years ago.  The calculation only includes items in Web of Science - books and articles in journals that are not covered by Web of Science are not included.

To Find the h-index

• Conduct a search for an author name
  • Note:  Commonly-named authors will be difficult to separate in the results, unless you add key words or add the institution name to the Address field to search.  Even then, you may not retrieve correct or complete results for a specific author.
    • Examples: 
      
      • if an author has moved from one institution to another during his or her career 
      • if an author has a non-unique name in a particular field  (eg. there are two Northwestern University researchers named J.R. Weertman and they publish in the same field of expertise)
• Use the Distinct Author Sets to help disambiguate author search results.

• Click the checkboxes next to author name variations to include in your results, then click the button at the upper left of the page

• Now click the Create Citation Report link at the upper right of the results page

• You will now see a list of all the articles for the author within the time period searched, ranked by number of citations per paper.

In the example above, in a search for R. Kim at Northwestern, 139 items were returned in the results.  Some of these articles are highly cited with citations totaling over 800 each, but others are cited 0 times.  The author's h-index is 28, because he has 28 articles that have been cited 28 times or more.

If you go to the page of the results that displays articles cited around 28 times, you will see a green line separating the articles above and below the h-index for this author.

Cited Reference Searching

The Web of Science database indexes not only a particular article's citation information, but also records the article's bibliography. A document indexed within the citation database enables its historical origin (the cited references) to be examined and also to easily follow links through to its current position in the research literature (times cited). Cited reference searching allows you to find out who is citing your research, to track the research activities of known authors, and to follow the history of a topic from its genesis in the research literature to the present day.

On this screen

• Enter information about the publication you wish to find
• Click Search

On this screen

• You will be given a list of articles that match your search criteria
• Check the box beside the article or articles for which you would like to retrieve cited references
• Click Finish Search
• This search will retrieve articles that have cited the article(s) you specify

The following related tutorial is available on the Web of Science website (turn up the volume of your speakers):

• Cited Reference Searching (7 mins.)

Journal Citation Reports

One of the databases available in the Web of Knowledge suite of databases is Journal Citation Reports (JCR).  With JCR, you can search for impact factors for journals.

Access JCR by clicking the Journal Citation Reports logo in the Popular Resources section on the Galter website or from the Popular Resources left side menu on the Galter homepage.  If you are already in Web of Science, just click the Other Databases tab near the top of the page and choose Journal Citation Reports.

• Choose the Sciences or Social Sciences edition.  Reports are delayed by approximately 18 months.
• Search by subject, publisher or region, or search for a specific journal

• Select your subject, or choose more than one subject.  You can now choose to investigate all the journals in a category, or to sort by journal title.
• Click Submit

What are Impact Factors and Immediacy Indexes?

•  Impact factor for a journal indicates how often a journal’s articles are cited
• Aggregate impact factor indicates how often a subject category’s journals are cited
• Immediacy index for a journal indicates how quickly that title’s articles appear as citations by other authors
• Aggregate immediacy index indicates how quickly a subject’s articles are cited by others in the field.

On this screen

• Re-sort by impact factor, immediacy index, number of cites
• Select journals by clicking checkboxes
• Click on the title of a journal to see that journal’s data

Customization with Citation Alerts and My ResearcherID

For authors who wish to track the citation activity of their work, Web of Science has some valuable features.  In order to utilize these tools, you must first register at Web of Science by clicking the Sign In link near the top of any Web of Science page, then log in or register with Web of Science.

Once you have signed in, you can create citation alerts, save searches and manage your ResearcherID.

Creating Citation Alerts

To create a citation alert for papers you have authored:

• Search for the paper(s) from the main search page
• On the item record page for a particular manuscript, click the Create Citation Alert link near the bottom of the blue Cited by box on the  right side of the page

•  You will be automatically notified each time the article is cited

My ResearcherID

Web of Science has a feature called "My ResearcherID" which allows authors to attribute authorship of papers to themselves.  This feature can be useful for author disambiguation.

To create your ResearcherID:

• Make sure you are logged in to your Web of Science account
• Click on My ResearcherID text link on the top of the Web of Science page 
• You will be asked to read and agree to the terms of use
• You can add and manage manuscripts by using the My Publications area on the left of the page
• View your citation statistics by clicking the Citation Metrics link

• Using your ResearcherID is a more accurate way of determining your h-index using Web of Science data

Other Features

• Related Records displays a list of articles whose cited reference lists include at least one of the sources cited by the original article
• Results Analysis allows you to analyze your results and view rankings by author, institution, journal name, and other factors
• Open Saved Search allows you to re-run saved searches from previous Web of Science sessions.
• Help is always available on each screen in Web of Science 

If the Help pages do not answer your question or you would like to consult with us on search strategies or the use of Web of Science, please contact us by email or call (312) 503-8109

Related Videos and Tutorials

The following related tutorials are available on the Web of Science website (turn up the volume of your speakers):

• Search tips for Web of Science (7 mins.)
• Managing Search Results (6 mins.)
• Refine and Analyze Search Results (7 mins.)
• Cited Reference Searching (7 mins.)
• Impact Factor (7 mins.)
• Immediacy Index (5 mins.)