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Databases

Summarized here are the widely used databases or those that have some unique features. We have
also included a good number of the freely accessible databases. Interestingly good deal of useful
information can be extracted using freely accessible bases.

Web of Science /Web of Knowledge (WoS/WoK)

Guided by the legacy of Dr. Eugene Garfield, it is the oldest and one of the most respected databases
or indexes widely used ever since its creation in 1961 in the form of ISI. With the integration of
Science Citation Index (SCI) with Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) in 1972 and Arts and
Humanities Citation Index in 1978 (A&HCI), it continues to be one of the most important databases.
The Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) was bought in 1992 by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare,
and became known as Thomson ISI. Later Thomson Scientific itself became part of the Thomson
Reuters Corporation. In 2016 Thomson Reuters sold its Intellectual Property & Science Business,
which included the WoS, to Onex and Baring Asia and was available with the brand name Clarivate
Analytics, and continues to be known under the same brand even now under a different owner.

In its present form, WoS represents a comprehensive platform, which allows us to track academic and
scholarly literature across 254 disciplines from almost 171 million records and almost 1.9 billion cited
references. It is an integrated, versatile platform, with easy access to high-quality diversified scholarly
information in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities, as well as search and analysis
tools. Users can search the relevant information existing in international journals, open-access
resources, books, patents, proceedings or web sites. It is one of the trusted global citation databases
as well as one of the most powerful search engine, delivering publication and citation data, with
reliability, for assessment and research.
At present, WoS is a platform for a large number of databases; the Web of Science Core Collection
indexes every piece of content cover-to-cover, creating a complete and certain view of over 115 years
of the high-quality research. The Web of Science Core Collection consists of six online databases:

1. Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) covers more than 8,500 notable journals encompassing
150 disciplines, covering from the year 1900 to the present day.

2. Social Sciences Citation Index covers more than 3,000 journals in social science disciplines, again
covering from the year 1900 to the present day.
3. Arts & Humanities Citation Index covers more than 1,700 arts and humanities journals starting
from 1975. In addition, 250 major scientific and social sciences journals are also covered.
4. Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) covers over 5,000 journals in the sciences, social science,
and humanities.
5. Book Citation Index covers more than 60,000 editorially selected books starting from 2005.
6. Conference Proceedings Citation Index covers more than 160,000 conference titles in the Sciences
starting from 1990 to the present day.
Web of Science is included in the larger database Web of Knowledge, (for details visit clarivate.com),
however the two databases are generally used interchangeably in the literature.

Scopus/Science Direct

Widely respected and used like Web of Science, launched in 2004, Scopus is also a big commercial
bibliographic database that cover scholarly literature from almost any discipline. It is one of the

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