Web of Science

Web of Science (WoS) (opens in new tab; click ‘Full text availability’/’Kokotekstin saatavuus’ to access the database), a classic database originating to the 1960s, is a pioneer of bibliometrics. WoS compiles the most widely used citation indexing databases:

  • the Science Citation Index (SCI)
  • the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI)
  • the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI).

WoS is available to subscribers and it covers journals from all disciplines. However, it does not include national publications, books or non-scholarly material. Thus, the coverage of WoS varies widely between the disciplines. The most comprehensive coverage of publications is given in the natural and medical sciences, but account for only a small fraction of publications in the humanities and social sciences, where publishing is oriented towards national publications and books. In engineering, where conference proceedings dominate, coverage by WoS is moderate.

WoS provides the possibility to search for publications, citations and h-indexes. Search results can also be analysed in the same way as within the Scopus database. The use of Web of Science is significantly hindered by the fact that the author and institution names have not been standardised. For example, a Finnish author with the letters ä or ö in their family name may be found in the database with more than ten different spelling variations.

See instructions how to find h-index in Web of Science (see: h-Index -> Web of Science).

Decorative image. Screen capture of Web of Science database. Link to the database.

Further information:

Clarivate analytics. 2017. Web of Science Core Collection: The Citation Report & The h-index.

Finnish national guide to publication metrics: Data sources: Web of Science.

Web of Science Training. 2017. Video (2:59): Journal Citation Reports: Immediacy Index.

Web of Science Training. 2017. Video (5:21): Web of Science – Citation Sources.

Web of Science Training. 2017. Video (3:48): Web of Science – Usage Counts.

(3/2023 JN)