GALILEO@UGA Subject Guides: Web of Science: Home

Main Library & McBay Science Library

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Hours
Main Library	7:30am – 2:00am
Circulation Desk	7:30am – 2:00am
Digital Humanities Lab	7:30am – 2:00am
Interlibrary Loan Office	8:00am – 5:00pm
Reference Desk	9:00am – 10:00pm

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What Is Web of Science?

Web of Science (Web of Knowledge) This link opens in a new window
Web of Science provides access to the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Book Citation Index, and Conference Proceedings Citation Index. These databases may be searched separately, in any combination, or all at once.
These databases are unique in that the user can search to find which articles have cited a certain author or article. This technique of doing research, called pearl growing, allows researchers to find articles that are related to an earlier work. Often this technique turns up articles which are not found through traditional subject and keyword searches.

The Web of Science Core Collection includes citation indexes that cover research in journals, books, and proceedings in the sciences, social sciences and art & humanities.

The major article citation indexes are:

Science Citation Index Expanded
Social Sciences Citation Index
Arts & Humanities Citation Index

Journal inclusion in these indexes is quite selective. Clarivate Analytics (the publisher of Web of Science) uses citation analysis, among other criteria, to assess journal importance and impact to choose which journals to include in these indexes.

The Emerging Sources Citation Index is less selective. Journals indexed here must be peer reviewed, follow ethical publishing practices, meet Clarivate's technical requirements, have English records, and be recommended or requested by a scholarly audience of Web of Science users.

There are also conference proceeding and book citation indexes for the sciences and social sciences.

Searching

If you don't specify a field, WoS will search all fields. If you choose Topic, WoS will search title, abstract, keyword plus, and author keywords. You can change the field searched using the drop down menu by the search box.

You can also add additional search rows to create Boolean searches using multiple concepts.

Filtering Results

Some of the most useful filters are publication years, Web of Science Categories (disciplines), and document type. Web of Science categories describe the discipline or disciplines covered by the journal, not the specific article. Document type describes the type of article. Article means original research, and review means a literature review or survey of existing research. Note: There are many limiters to explore, but if the set of results are too small, they may not be applicable, and so not be available.

Try out a big search set and explore limiters.