A citation index is a kind of bibliographic index , an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier documents. A form of citation index is first found in 12th-century Hebrew religious literature. Legal citation indexes are found in the 18th century and were made popular by citators such as Shepard's Citations (1873). In 1961, Eugene Garfield 's Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) introduced the first citation index for papers published in academic journals , first the Science Citation Index (SCI), and later the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). American Chemical Society converted its printed Chemical Abstract Service (established in 1907) into internet-accessible SciFinder in 2008. The first automated citation indexing was done by CiteSeer in 1997 and was patented. Other sources for such data include Google Scholar , Microsoft Academic , Elsevier's Scopus , and the National Institutes of Health 's iCite .
41-527: The Emerging Sources Citation Index ( ESCI ) is a citation index produced since 2015 by Thomson Reuters and now by Clarivate . According to the publisher, the index includes "peer-reviewed publications of regional importance and in emerging scientific fields". The ESCI is accessible through the Web of Science , together with other Clarivate indexes. As of June 2021, all journals indexed in ESCI are also included in
82-458: A criticism was voiced pointing toward certain deficiencies of the journal impact factor calculation process, based on Thomson Reuters Web of Science, such as: journal citation distributions usually are highly skewed towards established journals; journal impact factor properties are field-specific and can be easily manipulated by editors, or even by changing the editorial policies; this makes the entire process essentially non-transparent. Regarding
123-457: A former president of Shepard's Citations , suggested in 1920 that citation indexes could serve as a tool for tracking science and engineering literature. After learning that Eugene Garfield held a similar opinion, Adair corresponded with Garfield in 1953. The correspondence prompted Garfield to examine Shepard's Citations index as a model that could be extended to the sciences. Two years later Garfield published "Citation indexes for science" in
164-596: A reflection of "deeper historical and structural power that had positioned former colonial masters as the centers of knowledge production, while relegating former colonies to peripheral roles" (Chan 2018 ). Many North American and European journals demonstrate conscious and unconscious bias against researchers from other parts of the world. Many of these journals call themselves "international" but represent interests, authors, and even references only in their own languages. Therefore, researchers in non-European or North American countries commonly get rejected because their research
205-454: Is a foreign language. 95% of WoS journals are English consider the use of English language a hegemonic and unreflective linguistic practice. The consequences include that non-native speakers spend part of their budget on translation and correction and invest a significant amount of time and effort on subsequent corrections, making publishing in English a burden. A far-reaching consequence of
246-471: Is determined by an evaluation and selection process based on the following criteria: impact, influence, timeliness, peer review , and geographic representation. Web of Science employs various search and analysis capabilities. First, citation indexing is employed, which is enhanced by the capability to search for results across disciplines. The influence, impact, history, and methodology of an idea can be followed from its first instance, notice, or referral to
287-533: Is found provides a list of new citations with which to continue the search. The simplicity of citation indexing is one of its main strengths. Web of Science "is a unifying research tool which enables the user to acquire, analyze, and disseminate database information in a timely manner". This is accomplished because of the creation of a common vocabulary, called ontology , for varied search terms and varied data. Moreover, search terms generate related information across categories. Acceptable content for Web of Science
328-606: Is larger and geographically broader than WoS, it still only covers a fraction of journal publishing outside North America and Europe. For example, it reports a coverage of over 2,000 journals in Asia ("230% more than the nearest competitor"), which may seem impressive until you consider that in Indonesia alone there are more than 7,000 journals listed on the government's Garuda portal (of which more than 1,300 are currently listed on DOAJ); whilst at least 2,500 Japanese journals listed on
369-433: Is made on the basis of impact evaluations and comprise academic journals , spanning multiple academic disciplines . The coverage includes: the sciences , social sciences , the arts , and humanities, and goes across disciplines. However, Web of Science does not index all journals. There is a significant and positive correlation between the impact factor and CiteScore . However, an analysis by Elsevier , who created
410-511: Is said to be "not internationally significant" or only of "local interest" (the wrong "local"). This reflects the current concept of "international" as limited to a Euro/Anglophone-centric way of knowledge production. In other words, "the ongoing internationalisation has not meant academic interaction and exchange of knowledge, but the dominance of the leading Anglophone journals in which international debates occurs and gains recognition". Clarivate Analytics have made some positive steps to broaden
451-537: Is with discipline- and region-specific preprint repositories such as AfricArXiv and InarXiv . Open access advocates recommend to remain critical of those "global" research databases that have been built in Europe or Northern America and be wary of those who celebrate these products act as a representation of the global sum of human scholarly knowledge. Finally, let us also be aware of the geopolitical impact that such systematic discrimination has on knowledge production, and
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#1732765617324492-551: The Journal Citation Reports . While these journals still did not receive an impact factor until the next year, they did contribute citations to the calculation of other journals' impact factors. In July 2022, Clarivate announced that journals in the ESCI obtain an impact factor effective from JCR Year 2022 first released in June 2023. To be included in the ESCI, journals must be: Jeffrey Beall argued that among
533-519: The SCImago Journal Rank . Furthermore, as of September 2014, the total file count of the Web of Science was over 90 million records, which included over 800 million cited references, covering 5.3 thousand social science publications in 55 disciplines. Titles of foreign-language publications are translated into English and so cannot be found by searches in the original language. In 2018,
574-883: The ISI produced the first version of the Science Citation Index , published as a book in 1963. General-purpose, subscription-based academic citation indexes include: Each of these offer an index of citations between publications and a mechanism to establish which documents cite which other documents. They are not open-access and differ widely in cost: Web of Science and Scopus are available by subscription (generally to libraries). In addition, CiteSeer and Google Scholar are freely available online. Several open-access, subject-specific citation indexing services also exist, such as: Clarivate Analytics ' Web of Science (WoS) and Elsevier's Scopus databases are synonymous with data on international research, and considered as
615-644: The J-Stage platform. Similarly, Scopus claims to have about 700 journals listed from Latin America, in comparison with SciELO's 1,285 active journal count; but that is just the tip of the iceberg judging by the 1,300+ DOAJ-listed journals in Brazil alone. Furthermore, the editorial boards of the journals contained in Wos and Scopus databases are integrated by researchers from western Europe and North America. For example, in
656-515: The THE rankings ). But while these databases are generally agreed to contain rigorously-assessed, high quality research, they do not represent the sum of current global research knowledge. It is often mentioned in popular science articles that the research output of countries in South America, Asia, and Africa are disappointingly low. Sub-Saharan Africa is cited as an example for having "13.5% of
697-470: The Web of Science hosts a number of regional citation indices: The seven citation indices listed above contain references which have been cited by other articles. One may use them to undertake cited reference search, that is, locating articles that cite an earlier, or current publication. One may search citation databases by topic, by author, by source title, and by location. Two chemistry databases, Index Chemicus and Current Chemical Reactions allow for
738-742: The Web of Science started embedding partial information about the open access status of works, using Unpaywall data. While marketed as a global point of reference, Scopus and WoS have been characterised as «structurally biased against research produced in non-Western countries, non-English language research, and research from the arts, humanities, and social sciences». After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine , on March 11, 2022, Clarivate – which owns Web of Science – announced that it would cease all commercial activity in Russia and immediately close an office there. The Web of Science Core Collection consists of six online indexing databases: Since 2008,
779-426: The Web of Science, wrote: Citations are the formal, explicit linkages between papers that have particular points in common. A citation index is built around these linkages. It lists publications that have been cited and identifies the sources of the citations. Anyone conducting a literature search can find from one to dozens of additional papers on a subject just by knowing one that has been cited. And every paper that
820-549: The above disciplines. Among other WoS databases are BIOSIS and The Zoological Record , an electronic index of zoological literature that also serves as the unofficial register of scientific names in zoology . Clarivate owns and markets numerous other products that provide data and analytics, workflow tools, and professional services to researchers, universities, research institutions, and other organizations, such as: As with other scientific approaches, scientometrics and bibliometrics have their own limitations. In 2010,
861-669: The coverage of Web of Science, in November 2009 Thomson Reuters introduced Century of Social Sciences . This service contains files which trace social science research back to the beginning of the 20th century, and Web of Science now has indexing coverage from the year 1900 to the present. As of February 2017, the multidisciplinary coverage of the Web of Science encompasses: over a billion cited references, 90 million records, covering over 12 thousand high impact journals, and 8.2 million records across 160 thousand conference proceedings, with 15 thousand proceedings added each year. The selection
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#1732765617324902-588: The creation of structure drawings, thus enabling users to locate chemical compounds and reactions. The following types of literature are indexed: scholarly books, peer reviewed journals, original research articles, reviews, editorials, chronologies, abstracts, as well as other items. Disciplines included in this index are agriculture , biological sciences , engineering , medical and life sciences , physical and chemical sciences , anthropology , law, library sciences , architecture , dance, music, film, and theater. Seven citation databases encompasses coverage of
943-496: The databases produced by Clarivate, the ESCI is the easiest one to get into and that as a result it contains many predatory journals . Citation index The earliest known citation index is an index of biblical citations in rabbinic literature , the Mafteah ha-Derashot , attributed to Maimonides and probably dating to the 12th century. It is organized alphabetically by biblical phrase. Later biblical citation indexes are in
984-409: The dynamics of the emerging global science landscape", and that academia needs to develop more sophisticated data and impact measures to provide a richer understanding of the global scientific knowledge that is available to us. Academia has not yet built digital infrastructures which are equal, comprehensive, multi-lingual and allows fair participation in knowledge creation. One way to bridge this gap
1025-690: The even more selective WoS database. Research outputs in this context refers to papers specifically published in peer-reviewed journals that are indexed either in Scopus or WoS. Both WoS and Scopus are considered highly selective. Both are commercial enterprises, whose standards and assessment criteria are mostly controlled by panels in North America and Western Europe. The same is true for more comprehensive databases such as Ulrich's Web which lists as many as 70,000 journals, while Scopus has fewer than 50% of these, and WoS has fewer than 25%. While Scopus
1066-754: The geographical and topic bias – for example Ciarli found that by comparing the coverage of rice research in CAB Abstracts (an agriculture and global health database) with WoS and Scopus, the latter "may strongly under-represent the scientific production by developing countries, and over-represent that by industrialised countries", and this is likely to apply to other fields of agriculture. This under-representation of applied research in Africa, Asia, and South America may have an additional negative effect on framing research strategies and policy development in these countries. The overpromotion of these databases diminishes
1107-406: The global population but less than 1% of global research output". This fact is based on data from a World Bank/Elsevier report from 2012 which relies on data from Scopus. Research outputs in this context refers to papers specifically published in peer-reviewed journals that are indexed in Scopus. Similarly, many others have analysed putatively global or international collaborations and mobility using
1148-516: The greatest impact in a particular field, or more than one discipline, can be located through a citation index. For example, a paper's influence can be determined by linking to all the papers that have cited it. In this way, current trends, patterns, and emerging fields of research can be assessed. Eugene Garfield , the "father of citation indexing of academic literature", who launched the Science Citation Index , which in turn led to
1189-455: The important role of "local" and "regional" journals for researchers who want to publish and read locally-relevant content. Some researchers deliberately bypass "high impact" journals when they want to publish locally useful or important research in favour of outlets that will reach their key audience quicker, and in other cases to be able to publish in their native language. Furthermore, the odds are stacked against researchers for whom English
1230-468: The inclusion and representation of marginalised research demographics within the global research landscape. Web of Science The Web of Science ( WoS ; previously known as Web of Knowledge ) is a paid-access platform that provides (typically via the internet) access to multiple databases that provide reference and citation data from academic journals , conference proceedings , and other documents in various academic disciplines . Until 1997, it
1271-554: The journal Science . In 1959, Garfield started a consulting business, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), in Philadelphia and began a correspondence with Joshua Lederberg about the idea. In 1961 Garfield received a grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to compile a citation index for Genetics. To do so, Garfield's team gathered 1.4 million citations from 613 journals. From this work, Garfield and
Emerging Sources Citation Index - Misplaced Pages Continue
1312-644: The journal Human Geography , 41% of editorial board members are from the United States, and 37.8% from the UK. Similarly, ) studied ten leading marketing journals in WoS and Scopus databases, and concluded that 85.3% of their editorial board members are based in the United States. It comes as no surprise that the research that gets published in these journals is the one that fits the editorial boards' world view. Comparison with subject-specific indexes has further revealed
1353-472: The journal evaluation metric CiteScore, has identified 216 journals from 70 publishers to be in the top 10 percent of the most-cited journals in their subject category based on the CiteScore while they did not have an impact factor. It appears that the impact factor does not provide comprehensive and unbiased coverage of high-quality journals. Similar results can be observed by comparing the impact factor with
1394-434: The more objective journal metrics, there is a growing view that for greater accuracy it must be supplemented with article-level metrics and peer-review. Studies of methodological quality and reliability have found that "reliability of published research works in several fields may be decreasing with increasing journal rank". Thomson Reuters replied to criticism in general terms by stating that "no one metric can fully capture
1435-728: The order of the canonical text. These citation indices were used both for general and for legal study. The Talmudic citation index En Mishpat (1714) even included a symbol to indicate whether a Talmudic decision had been overridden, just as in the 19th-century Shepard's Citations . Unlike modern scholarly citation indexes, only references to one work, the Bible, were indexed. In English legal literature, volumes of judicial reports included lists of cases cited in that volume starting with Raymond's Reports (1743) and followed by Douglas's Reports (1783). Simon Greenleaf (1821) published an alphabetical list of cases with notes on later decisions affecting
1476-411: The precedential authority of the original decision. These early tables of legal citations ("citators") were followed by a more complete, book length index, Labatt's Table of Cases...California... (1860) and in 1872 by Wait's Table of Cases...New York... . The most important and best-known citation index for legal cases was released in 1873 with the publication of Shepard's Citations . William Adair,
1517-416: The present day. This technology points to a deficiency with the keyword -only method of searching. Second, subtle trends and patterns relevant to the literature or research of interest, become apparent. Broad trends indicate significant topics of the day, as well as the history relevant to both the work at hand, and particular areas of study. Third, trends can be graphically represented. Expanding
1558-607: The scope of WoS, integrating the SciELO citation index – a move not without criticism – and through the creation of the Emerging Sources Index (ESI), which has allowed database access to many more international titles. However, there is still a lot of work to be done to recognise and amplify the growing body of research literature generated by those outside North America and Europe. The Royal Society have previously identified that "traditional metrics do not fully capture
1599-525: The two most trusted or authoritative sources of bibliometric data for peer-reviewed global research knowledge across disciplines. They are both also used widely for the purposes of researcher evaluation and promotion, institutional impact (for example the role of WoS in the UK Research Excellence Framework 2021 ), and international league tables (Bibliographic data from Scopus represents more than 36% of assessment criteria in
1640-557: The use of English as the lingua franca of science is in knowledge production, because its use benefits "worldviews, social, cultural, and political interests of the English-speaking center" ( p. 123). The small proportion of research from South East Asia, Africa, and Latin America which makes it into WoS and Scopus journals is not attributable to a lack of effort or quality of research; but due to hidden and invisible epistemic and structural barriers (Chan 2019 ). These are
1681-509: Was originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information . It is currently owned by Clarivate . Web of Science currently contains 79 million records in the core collection and 171 million records on the platform. A citation index is built on the fact that citations in science serve as linkages between similar research items, and lead to matching or related scientific literature, such as journal articles , conference proceedings , abstracts, etc. In addition, literature that shows