There have been a couple of recent updates in Web of Science that are worth knowing about.
1. New Usage Counts option in the Web of Science Platform
- The Web of Science – All Databases Platform has a new Usage Counts measure; this gives an indication of interest in each article.
- Usage counts are click throughs from a publication record to full-text or an export of the record to bibliographic management tools like RefWorks or EndNote.
- Traditional Times Cited counts lag behind the publication of new articles and some disciplines simply don’t receive many citations; so the Usage Counts can give an immediate way to compare records in a result set and discover which articles have generated the most interest amongst all Web of Science users.
- There are two Counts: Usage in the last 180 days and Usage since 2013.
- You can see the Usage Counts (next to the traditional Times Cited counts) in the summary results listings and in the full record display.
- In the summary results listings, you can sort your results by Usage Counts (in the same way as you can sort by Times Cited).
- Usage counts are updated daily.
See the short video about Usage Counts at: https://youtu.be/rpLNqBRQLwc.
2. New Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) added to the Web of Science Core Collection
- In the Web of Science Core Collection there is now a new ‘Emerging Sources Citation Index’ (ESCI) from 2015 onwards.
- ESCI is automatically included in a Web of Science Core Collection search, unless this Index is specifically de-selected by the user on the search screen (under More Settings).
- ESCI covers journals currently under evaluation for inclusion in the traditional Citation Indexes: Science Citation Index , Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index.
- The journals in ESCI don’t yet meet the strict criteria for being included in the traditional Indexes, but their addition to the Core Collection allows deeper coverage of content of regional importance and newly emerging journals. The ESCI selection criteria are described in the Release Notes.
- Currently 1,100 journal titles are indexed in ESCI and this will grow to 5,000 titles over the next 2 years.
- The citing articles in Web of Science include citing articles from ESCI – making recent research more discoverable.
- The journals in ESCI will not receive an Impact Factor from Journal Citation Reports.
See the short video about ESCI at: https://youtu.be/pWoQnFVoIXA.
Clare Allan
Subject Librarian