In the era of scientific discoveries, researches are being conducted at regular intervals and stacked in records. Hunting for a specific scientific study out of all the gathered information would be a tedious process. Hence, the idea of having an index of bibliography or citations got transpired. This witnessed the genesis of Web of Science (WoS), a citation indexing service, which is subscription based. It is available online and aids in accessing several databases at one go while referencing to the cross-disciplinary research of both academic and scientific disciplines. It connects with the regional citation indexes, patent data, specialized subject indexes, and an index of research data sets of around 33,000 journals. This database allows a researcher to look into the studies done in the past and help them in analyzing the research and finding out research gaps that could be filled in with future discoveries.
Web of Science databases
WoS uses the total seven databases listed below having coverage of journals since 1900 onwards.
- Conference Proceedings Citation Index: Around 160,000 science conference titles
- Science Citation Index: Covering around 8,500 journals of approximately 150 disciplines
- Social Sciences Citation Index: Approximately 3,000 social science journal titles
- Arts & Humanities Citation Index: Approximately 1,700 journal titles
- Index Chemicus: Nearly 2.6 million compounds
- Current Chemical Reactions index: More than one million journals
- Book Citation Index: Approximately 60,000 selected books
What’s New?
Web of Science comprises of a unique Structure Search function that enables a user to draw and modify chemical structures. The records of compounds and reactions can be searched by creating chemical structures with the help of Accelrys JDraw applet, by copying and pasting chemical structures created by the applet. The designed or existing chemical structures can also be modified by clicking on the atom and bond to display their property options available in contextual menus and submenus.
WoS aims at uncovering new research connections leading to future research progress. WoS has created a meaningful linkage between the past and present research, through citation connection and metadata. This is believed to pave the way for many new future discoveries in the field of science and social sciences.