ARTÍCULO
Web of Science as a data source for research
on scientific and scholarly activity
Caroline Birkle, David A. Pendlebury
, Joshua Schnell
, and Jonathan Adams
Institute for Scientific Information, Web of Science Group, 160 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8EZ, Reino Unido
un acceso abierto
diario
Palabras clave: authoritative content, bibliometría, Eugene Garfield, ISI, premier source, selective
bibliography, Web of Science
Citación: Birkle, C., Pendlebury, D. A.,
Schnell, J., & Adams, j. (2020). Web of
Science as a data source for research
on scientific and scholarly activity.
Estudios de ciencias cuantitativas, 1(1),
363–376. https://doi.org/10.1162/
qss_a_00018
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00018
Recibió: 21 Junio 2019
Aceptado: 26 Octubre 2019
Autor correspondiente:
Jonathan Adams
Jonathan.Adams@Clarivate.com
Handling Editors:
Ludo Waltman and Vincent Larivière
Derechos de autor: © 2020 Caroline Birkle,
David A. Pendlebury, Joshua Schnell,
and Jonathan Adams. Published under
a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Internacional (CC POR 4.0) licencia.
La prensa del MIT
ABSTRACTO
Web of Science (WoS) is the world’s oldest, most widely used and authoritative database of research
publications and citations. Based on the Science Citation Index, founded by Eugene Garfield in 1964,
it has expanded its selective, balanced, and complete coverage of the world’s leading research to
cover around 34,000 journals today. A wide range of use cases are supported by WoS from daily
search and discovery by researchers worldwide through to the supply of analytical data sets and the
provision of specialized access to raw data for bibliometric partners. A long- and well-established
network of such partners enables the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) to continue to work
closely with bibliometric groups around the world to the benefit of both the community and the
services that the company provides to researchers and analysts.
1. WEB OF SCIENCE
The Web of Science ( WoS) Core Collection database is a selective citation index of scientific
and scholarly publishing covering journals, proceedings, books, and data compilations. Es
the oldest citation index for the sciences, having been introduced commercially by the ISI in
1964, initially as an information retrieval tool called the Science Citation Index (SCI) (garfield,
1964). The first SCI covered some 700 journals, expanded to 1,573 within two years, y era
produced in printed form as a series of volumes presenting bibliographic and citation data in a
very small font size. With the rapid growth of the research enterprise in the 1960s, annual
volumes of the SCI increased in size and journal coverage. Por 1970, alrededor 2,200 journals
were indexed, along with four million cited references from these sources.
During these years, a range of innovations and products was introduced by ISI, cual
citation-indexing pioneer Eugene Garfield (1925–2017) had founded in 1960 (Cawkell &
garfield, 2001; Lawlor, 2014; Lazerow, 1974). The company also produced the Social
Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) (1973), las artes & Índice de citas de humanidades (A&HCI) (1978),
and other indexes covering the chemical (Current Chemical Reactions, Index Chemicus) y
proceedings (Conference Proceedings Citation Index) literatures. A citation index for books
was launched in 2011 (Adams & Testa, 2012). As technology advanced from the 1960s through
the 1990s, other formats and media for distributing and analyzing SCI data—from magnetic
tapes, to floppy disks, to CD-ROMs, to standard file formats distributed via the World Wide
Web—profoundly changed information access and accelerated bibliometric research based
on publication and citation data.
Selectivity in coverage has long characterized the SCI, SSCI, y un&HCI, which were com-
bined and launched on the World Wide Web as WoS in 1997. With the earliest versions of the
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Web of Science
SCI, journal selection was constrained by cost considerations, including computation and
printing. Computing power increased and digital dissemination reduced expenses, but se-
lectivity remained a hallmark of coverage because Garfield had decided early on to focus on
internationally influential journals. His decision was informed by Bradford’s Law of Scattering
(Bradford, 1934) as well as his own research on SCI data that revealed Garfield’s Law of
Concentration (garfield, 1971, 1972). Garfield’s Law of Concentration generalized Bradford’s
insights concerning specific fields to all fields of science and demonstrated the existence of a
multidisciplinary core set of journals, then as few as 1,000. More recently, the globalization of
research has highlighted the relevance of local and regional journals for science that addresses
societal needs. The WoS group has deepened its journal coverage, principally through the in-
troduction of the Emerging Sources Citation Index (2015) (Huang et al., 2017; Somoza-
Fernandez et al., 2018), to give a more complete coverage of the most influential research while
maintaining the balance across subjects and regions that underpins informed search and good
analytics.
The coverage of WoS has thus expanded vastly since the inception of the underpinning
sistemas, growing to about 34,000 journals today. This is not directly comparable to the orig-
inal data set because there have been many mergers, content changes, and deletions as well as
extensive additions in most fields. The WoS platform now extends the content of the Core
Collection through hosting citation databases of other providers, such as the BIOSIS Citation
Index, the Chinese Science Citation Database, the Russian Science Citation Index, y el
SciELO Citation Index (for Latin America and Iberia), as well as specialized databases, incluir-
ing Medline, Inspec, KCI—Korean Journal Database—and the Derwent Innovations Index,
covering the patent literature. The scope and bibliometric characteristics of the WoS Core
Collection and WoS platform are summarized in Table 1.
Visser, van Eck, and Waltman have recently compared different sources of bibliographic
and citation data, including WoS (Visser et al., 2019) and—for those who wish to consult
it—their analysis provides further information to guide good practice and research use.
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2. WOS DATA ENABLED THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENTOMETRICS
WoS is not just a catalogue of academic publications. It is a selective, structured, and balanced
database with complete citation linkages and enhanced metadata that supports a wide range
of information purposes. An early example of the use of SCI data for research is Derek J.
de Solla Price’s study “Networks of Scientific Papers” (Precio, 1965). Price showed how a net-
work of cited references in papers (citas) could be used to describe the structure and dynamics
of a research topic, since then often called a research front. Sociologists Stephen and Jonathan
Cole’s work “Scientific Output and Recognition” (Col & Col, 1967) is one of the first times that
citations were used systematically as a measure of scientific quality or impact (Col, 2000). Este
study of physicists sought to show variations in recognition in terms of institutional affiliation, pro-
ductivity, quality (citations as the indicator), honors, edad, and other variables. Citations were found
to be highly correlated with peer judgment of “quality.” Early research on scientific activity using
SCI data typically required many hours of manual labor involving repeated access to different
cross-referenced, heavy volumes. En efecto, as one of us can attest (D.A.P.), an early form of
research evaluation of individuals made use of a ruler to measure column inches of citations!
WoS was not designed for scientometric analysis. Garfield created the SCI and its sister
citation indexes for information retrieval. Use of the data for other purposes, such as research
performance evaluation, including rankings, mapping topics and monitoring trends, and inves-
tigating aspects of the history and sociology of science and scholarly activity, was of secondary
Estudios de ciencias cuantitativas
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5
Mesa 1. Key Characteristics of data sources built on web of science
Summary
Databases covered
Web of Science
Core Collection
Citation indexes representing the connections
between scholarly research articles found in
globally significant journals, books, y
proceedings in the sciences, Ciencias Sociales
Y arte & humanidades.
The WoS Core Collection is the standard data
set underpinning the journal impact metrics
found in the Journal Citation Reports and the
institutional performance metrics found in InCites.
(cid:129) Science Citation Index
(cid:129) Social Sciences Citation Index
(cid:129) Arts & Índice de citas de humanidades
(cid:129) Conference Proceedings Citation Index
(cid:129) Book Citation Index
(cid:129) Emerging Sources Citation Index
Web of Science
Platform
A platform providing access to multidisciplinary
and regional citation indexes, specialist subject
indexes, a patent family index, and an index to
scientific data sets.
WoS provides a common search language,
navigation environment, and data structure,
allowing researchers to search broadly across
disparate resources and use citation connections
to navigate to relevant research results.
Citation Indexes include the WoS Core Collection
plus the following:
(cid:129) BIOSIS Citation Index
(cid:129) Chinese Science Citation Database
(cid:129) Russian Science Citation Index
(cid:129) SciELO Citation Index
(cid:129) Data Citation Index
Subject and regionally specialized indexes:
(cid:129) Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS Previews
(cid:129) CABI: CAB Abstracts and Global Health
(cid:129) FSTA—the food science resource
(cid:129) Inspec
(cid:129) KCI—Korean Journal Database
(cid:129) Medline
(cid:129) Zoological Record
Other resources:
(cid:129) Current Contents Connect
(cid:129) Derwent Innovations Index (patents)
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Mesa 1. (continued )
Number of journals
> 20,900 journals plus books and conference
> 34,200 journals plus books, proceedings,
proceedings
patents, and data sets
Web of Science
Core Collection
Web of Science
Platform
Coverage
(cid:129) Encima 75 million records
(cid:129) Más que 101,000 books
(cid:129) Encima 8 million conference papers
Time period covered
Ciencias: 1900–present
Social Sciences: 1900–present
Arts & Humanities: 1975–present
Actas: 1990–present
Books: 2005–present
Emerging Source Citation Index: 2005–present
(cid:129) 155 million records ( journals, books,
and proceedings)
(cid:129) 39.3 million patent families (> 70 million patents)
(cid:129) 7.3 million data sets
Journal literature: 1800–present
Patentes: 1963–present
Full cited reference indexing for all WoS Core
Collection content
Citation indexing for SciELO, Russian Science
Citation Index, Chinese Science Citation Index, y
BIOSIS Citation Index
All content includes times cited for citations from
WoS Core Collection and platform Citation Sources
Author indexing
All authors from all publications are indexed.
WoS Core Collection: All authors are indexed for
Authors linked to affiliations from 2008–forward.
all publications.
Other resources: Author indexing varies by resource.
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Institution indexing
All author affiliations are indexed.
Author affiliation indexing varies by collection.
Institution’s variants and parent/child
relationships are mapped and connected to
a preferred institutional name through a
manually curated process that is increasingly
global in coverage.
Updating frequency
Daily (Monday through Friday).
Each collection is updated on its own schedule,
ranging from daily to monthly.
Citation analysis
Citation counts, and author h-index calculations.
Citation counts, and author h-index calculations.
“Hot” and “Highly Cited” articles (papers in
top percentiles according to year, field and
document types) are available from Essential
Science Indicators integration.
Journal Impact Factors and Journal Performance
Quartiles are available via Journal Citation
Reports integration ( JCR Quartiles available
without subscription to JCR).
“Hot” and “Highly Cited” articles (papers in top
percentiles according to year, field and document
types) are available from Essential Science Indicators
integración.
Controlled vocabulary
No.
Keyword fields include Author Keywords, y
“Keywords Plus,” which are extracted from the titles
of Cited Articles.
Controlled indexing is provided for institution affiliations
(parent/child mapping).
Controlled vocabulary searching is provided
for Medline, Inspec, FSTA, BIOSIS, Zoological
Record.
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Web of Science
interest and importance. Had the database been designed for any of these secondary uses,
many data elements would have been collected, indexed, and structured differently.
Como consecuencia, research analysis using WoS data necessarily makes use of some features that
were designed for information retrieval rather than quantitative analysis.
An example of an “information retrieval” feature is the WoS Subject Categories. These are
254 journal-based categories, each of which represents a specific field or subfield, como
biotechnology & applied microbiology, family studies, medical laboratory technology, o
quantum science & tecnología. This categorical scheme was created and developed to enable
information retrieval where a search may be executed or filtered by subject category, and for
this reason a journal may be and often is assigned to more than one subject category. Para
quantitative analysis, sin embargo, it would be necessary to adjust counts to avoid duplication
of data if collating initially by subject category. Además, contemporary analytic models
may focus on topics that draw on parts of multiple categories.
Sin embargo, it may be claimed that without the SCI, the development of scientometrics
would certainly have been hampered. Para 40 años, almost all advances in our understanding
of the global science system and its evaluation and management were based upon these data
sources. As Jonathan Cole has noted, “The creation of the SCI represents a good case study of
how technological innovations very frequently create the necessary conditions for significant
advance in scientific fields” (Col, 2000). Important early applications of our data include the
adoption of publication and citation indicators for the first Science Indicators produced by the
US National Science Foundation (Junta Nacional de Ciencias, 1973); their development for this
purpose by Francis Narin and his further research on the citation linkage between the patent
and scholarly literature (Narin, 1976); the pioneering work of Tibor Braun, András Schubert,
and Wolfgang Glänzel of the Information Science & Scientometrics Research Group (ISSRU)
of the Hungarian Academy of Science (Budapest), especially on absolute and relative indica-
tors of national research performance (Braun et al., 1985); similar fundamental research on
measuring and evaluating the comparative performance of universities and groups of re-
searchers by Anthony van Raan, Henk Moed, and others at Leiden University (Moed et al.,
1985); the development of science mapping through cocitation clustering introduced by
Henry Small of ISI and Belver Griffith of Drexel University (Griffith et al., 1974; Pequeño,
1973; Small and Griffith, 1974); and investigations of what the ISI data could reveal concern-
ing the sociology of science, pursued by researchers at Columbia University, including Harriet
Zuckerman, Stephen Cole, and Jonathan Cole, under the direction of Robert Merton (Col,
2000; Zuckerman, 2018). With the introduction of the journal Scientometrics in 1978, con
Braun as founding editor in chief, SCI data and the field itself became inextricably entwined.
Other databases and more recently developed tools that draw on publication and citation
data from the WoS Core Collection were explicitly designed for quantitative analysis and re-
search evaluation. These include National Science Indicators (1992), US and UK University
Indicators (1995), Essential Science Indicators (2001), and InCites (2010). Typical users of
these products have been university research offices, agencias gubernamentales, and research fund-
ing organizations. WoS data continue to be used to search and explore publications on a re-
search topic (such as environmental sex determination: Adams et al., 1987) and compare
research activity profiles (Por ejemplo, that of a country or an institution; see Adams, 2018).
3. ACCESSING WOS DATA TODAY
The WoS group is one of the main business divisions of Clarivate Analytics, a company cre-
ated from the IP & Science division of Thomson Reuters. The ISI is now a research group
Estudios de ciencias cuantitativas
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Web of Science
Cifra 1. A wide range of use cases apply to WoS data
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within the WoS group. It works closely with the company product and data teams as well as
carrying out its own research, much of which draws on innovative ideas from bibliometric
partners outside the company.
Because we work closely with scientometricians in universities, research funding agencies,
and government departments, we know that researchers conducting advanced scientometric
studies for new knowledge about science and scholarly communication and dynamics or for
policymaking often require a specific set of data in a format that can be analyzed, summa-
rized, and visualized in a different environment. Sometimes the amount of data required can
be downloaded from the WoS platform under an appropriate license. En otros casos, el
amount of data needed may exceed what can reasonably be collected from WoS-related
products. In these instances, arrangements for licensed use of custom data may be made.
WoS data are made available to institutions and associated researchers via platforms, APIs,
and custom data set delivery (Cifra 1). We have long-established relationships with sciento-
metric research groups in universities around the world, enabling us to draw on their knowl-
borde, advice, and innovative capacity and affording us extensive independent testing and
feedback on our data systems and quality controls. Since the earliest days of ISI, we have rec-
ognized the benefit of these partnerships and have enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate with
many partners.
Irrespective of the delivery mechanism, many uses of WoS data are linked to existing insti-
tutional subscriptions, in which case data-use entitlement is linked to the product subscriptions.
Our institutional and partner pricing reflects volumes of data and frequency of delivery required,
alongside a spectrum of use cases from casual to large-scale and commercial data requirements
in support of a substantive contract for a third party, such as a national research funding agency.
3.1. Use Cases
The list of possible use cases for WoS data highlighted below is illustrative, not exhaustive. En
práctica, we invest time to understand each request so that we can come up with a solution
Estudios de ciencias cuantitativas
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Web of Science
that properly supports our partners and other customers. Each use case may be subject to fees,
terms, and conditions that Clarivate deems necessary and appropriate for such use, but when-
ever possible, the fees associated with academic use are limited to any additional costs
incurred.
Basic usage
At the level of individual academic researchers, basic
usage is about primary rights to view, usar, and copy
(download and/or print) information from WoS for
individual use and then to distribute and redistribute
pequeño (“insubstantial” in the legal parlance) portions of
the derived summary information in a nonsystematic
(p.ej., not a product or service) manner. Creating a
reference list for a journal article is an obvious use,
but studies may have a more applied purpose as well.
Descubrimiento
Discovery is another fundamental, core function, cual
Analytics
entails the ability to query WoS data for research purposes
in support of the research process, with appropriate
referencing and accreditation. It is what tens of thousands
of researchers have done on WoS every day for decades.
Basic usage automatically steps up to an applied level for
any WoS subscriber by giving the user the ability to
download and analyze WoS data for internal use within
the subscribing institution and/or internal business
operaciones. That means a user can benchmark a research
group against others without needing additional permissions,
thereby demonstrating to a university where it should be
investing.
Integration (APIs only)
Here additional permissions may be required. This allows
WoS data and/or analytics to be integrated into an
organization’s own application (either internally developed
or third party) for its internal use, and it is therefore subject
to certain restrictions. If a client does not own or control
the application, the third-party provider of the application
would require a license or approval from the WoS group.
Public use
Prior agreement is required where the user is planning to
make WoS data publicly available, by disseminating data
and analysis in reports for an internal website or public-
facing site owned, maintained, and controlled by a
subscriber (usually the researcher’s employer). Este
would then also allow for the publication of some summary
results of analysis of WoS data for noncommercial use.
Commercialization
Commercial licenses are a higher level use case requiring
formal agreement, and these usually involve clear licensing
of specific data sets, an agreed specification for the way the
data will be used, and a time-limited allowance on data use.
This provides the ability to produce commercial analysis and
reports or incorporate data into a client’s application for
delivery to a third party. Sin embargo, although this may seem
onerous, it often brings with it additional support for, como
an example, the supply of specific data records and metadata
in a user-specified format.
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Web of Science
The formal terms and conditions of use of WoS data are available on request from the WoS
group at the contact email for this article.
3.2. Data Delivery, Volumen, and Frequency
Data may be required as “current” at a point in time, or for a historical period, or data may
need to be regularly updated to a custom cycle. Because citation counts accumulate over
tiempo, and because publication lists grow with new publications, the census date for each data
download is significant. Refreshed data sets will have both more records and revised versions
of historical records.
Whether delivered in custom data sets or via APIs, WoS offers a suite of updating services,
each associated with the delivery tools. Our custom data sets can be updated and re-extracted as
frequently as every two weeks, if necessary, or simply annually. Decisions about the preferred
cycle will depend on the requirements of the associated research activities and outputs. Nuestro
APIs are available in basic, intermediate, and advanced formats, allowing a variety of call speeds
and data volumes, again relative to customer requirements and technical competencies.
3.3. Data for Scientometric Research
Basic access for search and discovery is the standard use case for WoS, and this use is per-
mitted for all product formats and delivery mechanisms.
Researchers may face the challenge that standard products and tools do not fulfill the needs
of their research project. In such cases we encourage our scientometric partners to contact
their designated WoS institutional account manager. Depending on the subscriptions of an
institución, we will endeavor to ensure that individual research groups receive adequate
and timely access to data that further their academic objectives. We review requests, a menudo
with advice and comments from the ISI team, and will respond to the immediate request while
engaging with collections managers to ensure ongoing, long-term, and sustainable access to
research resources.
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WoS is committed to supporting high-quality, innovative research uses of our data. In ad-
dition to the search-and-discovery use case, we permit academic analysis and interrogation of
the data for research purposes, subject to the implicit agreement that the analyses are for either
internal or noncommercial research purposes. We also permit data extracts to create training
data sets for use in the development and training of client software applications using math-
ematical and statistical algorithms that automatically identify patterns in data. All potential
uses remain subject to applicable Clarivate terms and conditions, and we expect reasonable
and appropriate credit for the output and content in relevant tables and figures in published
material.
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3.4. Applying for Access to Data
As noted, we encourage scientometric researchers to contact their institutional research data
management office in the first instance (usually their institutional library), that typically holds
responsibility for WoS subscriptions. They will then be put in contact with their account man-
ager, who has a technical understanding of individual customer holdings.
The key to make this process simple is to be clear about the required data use and research
objectives. Usually, we ask scientometric partners to provide a brief (p.ej., <500 words) sum-
mary outlining the problem they wish to solve. We think that ability provide a succinct
summary including these elements is reasonable test of seriousness researcher’s
Quantitative Science Studies
371
Web Science
purpose and preparedness. It avoids
spending time effort on trivial, unplanned, spec-
ulative analysis. The summary should specify data required address (i.e.,
why are preferred for purpose?), an explanation how progress will be
reported, outline likely outcomes in terms academic research potential policy
applications, description deliverables. If specific extract or download
is required, then charges normally apply cover company costs value. Reductions
and waivers can only be considered where proposed use evident academic
significance.
Despite requirements, many cases, does not actually lead any major
charges. asking questions proposal funder already have
covered, it seems check request properly planned, because
a pipeline poorly structured requests obstructs delivery genuine researchers.
Each reviewed by ISI ensure continuing appropriate of
our products. Confirmation decision made both requestor their
institution.
At this stage, exploratory projects often given go-ahead with no further re-
quirements. project substantive then, subject agreement, we usually ask our biblio-
metric partners do following:
(cid:129) Periodically share summaries ISI, at mutually agreed intervals, nature the
work, analyses used project, achieved.
(cid:129) Alert us suspected issues, questions, discrepancies arising from use.
(cid:129) At end report methodology, use, findings
and other observations analytics arose course work, in-
cluding short publishable section describing work key achievements suit-
able general readership.
(cid:129) Provide proper attribution WoS data, tables figures, accordance
with guidelines shared outset as provided to
time.
(cid:129) Share publications prior submission journal (we appreciate op-
portunity correct misunderstandings about before appear print).
Researchers may see requirements challenging even bureaucratic. the
reporting process rather differently. basis dialogue between staff re-
searchers. every day, help unexpected
challenges format background. also value alerts unexpected problems.
We delighted learn what researchers doing happy offer advice feed-
back problems results emerge.
4. WHO IS USING WOS DATA?
We very proud activity scientometric commu-
nity have, earliest days company, informed content provision our
data. Although group its predecessor organizations, have relied
on in-house expertise, such former Chief Scientist Henry Small cur-
rent (e.g., Adams, 2018; Adams et al., 2007; Small, 1973), external researchers
have been source improvements extensions databases and
analytic systems, which extremely fortunate grateful.
Quantitative Studies
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