Database of the Month: Web of Science

Web of Science (WoS) is a cited reference index, which is one of the best tools for discovering and retrieving accurate citation information from as far back as 1956. WoS allows researchers to trace particular research forward in time or backward in time to see how published scholarship grows and helps researchers focus on a wide array of published scholarship. WoS is published on Thomson Reuters’ Web of Knowledge research platform.  Bentley subscribes to three WoS citation indexes:

• Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) -- 1956-present
• Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) -- 1975-present
• Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) -- 1977-present

WoS lets users search for topics, authors and publications, as well as, eleven other indexes.  Users can search for and limit data based in times span (within a date range, from a date, or before a particular date).  Lemmatization allows users to find alternative forms of the search term, for example, tooth and teeth.   Results can be limited by publication date, relevance, times cited, source, author, and publication.  The Web of Knowledge platform provides a number of useful tools that work with WoS including the Journal Citation Reports (JCR).  The learn more about JCR please see Database of the Month for June 2011.

Citation Mapping:

WoS citation mapping tool tracks an article’s cited and citing references through two generations, allowing researchers to visually discover an article’s wider relationships.

• Go forward and backward in time to track citing and cited references
• Color code, re-configure and organize your citation maps to discover trends in citation activity
• Completely interactive!
• Access via any Web of Science full record

To learn more about citation mapping please visit the citation mapping tutorial from WoS.

Registering with WoS and Remote Access:

Users can click on the “Sign In” link at the top of any WoS webpage to register become a registered user.  To register one should be on-campus with a Bentley University I.P. address.  Once registered, users will be able to access WoS from off-campus.  Registering with WoS will also allow users to set up search alerts, save custom searches and search histories, and select a starting application that enables them to start their session in a specific database rather than on the All Databases (default) page.

Connect to this Database:

Users will find each of the WoS databases (Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts and Humanities Citation Index and Science Citation Index) listed under their individual names on our Databases A-Z page as well as on any applicable databases by subject pages.  The databases can be searched individually or cross-searched in any combination.

Database of the Month provides a very brief introduction to an important research database, highlighting key features of the database that you should know about. If you would like more information about this database (or any of the library’s databases) please contact the Reference Desk.  If you would like a demonstration of this database for a class, please contact our Coordinator of User Education, Elizabeth Galoozis.