IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v115y2018i1d10.1007_s11192-017-2622-5.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Web of Science use in published research and review papers 1997–2017: a selective, dynamic, cross-domain, content-based analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Kai Li

    (Drexel University)

  • Jason Rollins

    (Clarivate Analytics)

  • Erjia Yan

    (Drexel University)

Abstract

Clarivate Analytics’s Web of Science (WoS) is the world’s leading scientific citation search and analytical information platform. It is used as both a research tool supporting a broad array of scientific tasks across diverse knowledge domains as well as a dataset for large-scale data-intensive studies. WoS has been used in thousands of published academic studies over the past 20 years. It is also the most enduring commercial legacy of Eugene Garfield. Despite the central position WoS holds in contemporary research, the quantitative impact of WoS has not been previously examined by rigorous scientific studies. To better understand how this key piece of Eugene Garfield’s heritage has contributed to science, we investigated the ways in which WoS (and associated products and features) is mentioned in a sample of 19,478 English-language research and review papers published between 1997 and 2017, as indexed in WoS databases. We offered descriptive analyses of the distribution of the papers across countries, institutions and knowledge domains. We also used natural language processingtechniques to identify the verbs and nouns in the abstracts of these papers that are grammatically connected to WoS-related phrases. This is the first study to empirically investigate the documentation of the use of the WoS platform in published academic papers in both scientometric and linguistic terms.

Suggested Citation

  • Kai Li & Jason Rollins & Erjia Yan, 2018. "Web of Science use in published research and review papers 1997–2017: a selective, dynamic, cross-domain, content-based analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 115(1), pages 1-20, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:115:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2622-5
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-017-2622-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-017-2622-5
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-017-2622-5?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Xin Shuai & Jason Rollins & Isabelle Moulinier & Tonya Custis & Mathilda Edmunds & Frank Schilder, 2017. "A Multidimensional Investigation of the Effects of Publication Retraction on Scholarly Impact," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 68(9), pages 2225-2236, September.
    2. Isabella Peters & Peter Kraker & Elisabeth Lex & Christian Gumpenberger & Juan Gorraiz, 2016. "Research data explored: an extended analysis of citations and altmetrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(2), pages 723-744, May.
    3. Erjia Yan, 2014. "Finding knowledge paths among scientific disciplines," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 65(11), pages 2331-2347, November.
    4. Pan, Xuelian & Yan, Erjia & Wang, Qianqian & Hua, Weina, 2015. "Assessing the impact of software on science: A bootstrapped learning of software entities in full-text papers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 860-871.
    5. W. C. Adair, 1955. "Citation indexes for scientific literature?," American Documentation, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(1), pages 31-32, January.
    6. William W. Hood & Concepción S. Wilson, 2001. "The Literature of Bibliometrics, Scientometrics, and Informetrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 52(2), pages 291-314, October.
    7. Katalin Orosz & Illés J. Farkas & Péter Pollner, 2016. "Quantifying the changing role of past publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 108(2), pages 829-853, August.
    8. Daniel B. Klein & Eric Chiang, 2004. "The Social Science Citation Index: A Black Box—with an Ideological Bias?," Econ Journal Watch, Econ Journal Watch, vol. 1(1), pages 134-165, April.
    9. Henry Small, 1973. "Co‐citation in the scientific literature: A new measure of the relationship between two documents," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 24(4), pages 265-269, July.
    10. Heather A Piwowar & Roger S Day & Douglas B Fridsma, 2007. "Sharing Detailed Research Data Is Associated with Increased Citation Rate," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 2(3), pages 1-5, March.
    11. Editorial Article, 0. "Abstracts," Economics of Contemporary Russia, Regional Public Organization for Assistance to the Development of Institutions of the Department of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, issue 3.
    12. Ponomarev, Ilya V. & Williams, Duane E. & Hackett, Charles J. & Schnell, Joshua D. & Haak, Laurel L., 2014. "Predicting highly cited papers: A Method for Early Detection of Candidate Breakthroughs," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 49-55.
    13. Henry Small, 2011. "Interpreting maps of science using citation context sentiments: a preliminary investigation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(2), pages 373-388, May.
    14. Bradford Demarest & Cassidy R. Sugimoto, 2015. "Argue, observe, assess: Measuring disciplinary identities and differences through socio-epistemic discourse," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(7), pages 1374-1387, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rey-Long Liu, 2017. "A new bibliographic coupling measure with descriptive capability," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 110(2), pages 915-935, February.
    2. Michel Zitt, 2015. "Meso-level retrieval: IR-bibliometrics interplay and hybrid citation-words methods in scientific fields delineation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(3), pages 2223-2245, March.
    3. Ruth Zárate-Rueda & Yolima Ivonne Beltrán-Villamizar & Daniella Murallas-Sánchez, 2021. "Social representations of socioenvironmental dynamics in extractive ecosystems and conservation practices with sustainable development: a bibliometric analysis," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(11), pages 16428-16453, November.
    4. Mehdi Amirkhani & Igor Martek & Mark B. Luther, 2021. "Mapping Research Trends in Residential Construction Retrofitting: A Scientometric Literature Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-18, September.
    5. Barbara McGillivray & Paola Marongiu & Nilo Pedrazzini & Marton Ribary & Mandy Wigdorowitz & Eleonora Zordan, 2022. "Deep Impact: A Study on the Impact of Data Papers and Datasets in the Humanities and Social Sciences," Publications, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-40, October.
    6. Andrey Guskov & Denis Kosyakov & Irina Selivanova, 2016. "Scientometric research in Russia: impact of science policy changes," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(1), pages 287-303, April.
    7. Mike Thelwall & Marcus Munafò & Amalia Mas-Bleda & Emma Stuart & Meiko Makita & Verena Weigert & Chris Keene & Nushrat Khan & Katie Drax & Kayvan Kousha, 2020. "Is useful research data usually shared? An investigation of genome-wide association study summary statistics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(2), pages 1-11, February.
    8. Bikun Chen & Dannan Deng & Zhouyan Zhong & Chengzhi Zhang, 2020. "Exploring linguistic characteristics of highly browsed and downloaded academic articles," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(3), pages 1769-1790, March.
    9. Rey-Long Liu, 2015. "Passage-Based Bibliographic Coupling: An Inter-Article Similarity Measure for Biomedical Articles," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(10), pages 1-22, October.
    10. Rons, Nadine, 2018. "Bibliometric approximation of a scientific specialty by combining key sources, title words, authors and references," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 113-132.
    11. Xie, Qing & Wang, Jiamin & Kim, Giyeong & Lee, Soobin & Song, Min, 2021. "A sensitivity analysis of factors influential to the popularity of shared data in data repositories," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    12. Maryam Yaghtin & Hajar Sotudeh & Mahdieh Mirzabeigi & Seyed Mostafa Fakhrahmad & Mehdi Mohammadi, 2019. "In quest of new document relations: evaluating co-opinion relations between co-citations and its impact on Information retrieval effectiveness," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 119(2), pages 987-1008, May.
    13. Heather Keathley-Herring & Eileen Van Aken & Fernando Gonzalez-Aleu & Fernando Deschamps & Geert Letens & Pablo Cardenas Orlandini, 2016. "Assessing the maturity of a research area: bibliometric review and proposed framework," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 927-951, November.
    14. Jeong, Yoo Kyung & Song, Min & Ding, Ying, 2014. "Content-based author co-citation analysis," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 197-211.
    15. Hyoungjoo Park & Dietmar Wolfram, 2017. "An examination of research data sharing and re-use: implications for data citation practice," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(1), pages 443-461, April.
    16. Azima, Mahshad & Seyis, Senem, 2023. "Science mapping the knowledge domain of energy performance research in the AEC industry: A scientometric analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 264(C).
    17. Zhigao Liu & Yimei Yin & Weidong Liu & Michael Dunford, 2015. "Visualizing the intellectual structure and evolution of innovation systems research: a bibliometric analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(1), pages 135-158, April.
    18. Yin, Xicheng & Wang, Hongwei & Wang, Wei & Zhu, Kevin, 2020. "Task recommendation in crowdsourcing systems: A bibliometric analysis," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    19. Chaker Jebari & Enrique Herrera-Viedma & Manuel Jesus Cobo, 2021. "The use of citation context to detect the evolution of research topics: a large-scale analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(4), pages 2971-2989, April.
    20. Derek R. Smith, 2012. "Impact factors, scientometrics and the history of citation-based research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 419-427, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:115:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2622-5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.