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Heriot-Watt University - Internet Resource Centre

Internet Resources Newsletter

Issue 61 - October 1999

Edited by:

Roddy MacLeod (R.A.MacLeod@hw.ac.uk)

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Table of Contents:

Internet Resources Divider

COMMENT

Web of Science

Many readers of this newsletter from the UK higher education sector will be interested in the Web of Science service . The Web of Science is ISI's new interface providing access to the Science Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index. In the not too distant future (end 1999) is will also provide access to the Index to Scientific and Technical Proceedings. With its multidisciplinary coverage, the name of 'Web of Science' is perhaps a misnomer, but there you are. After various consultation exercises, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has agreed that Web of Science is replacing the current ISI service which has so successfully been hosted at BIDS at the University of Bath for several years.

The new service is available to all Higher Education Institutions funded by HEFC, SHEFC, HEFCW and DENI plus some other sites from the CHEST list. The Web of Science service is supplied by MIMAS as a result of a successful collaborative bid by MIMAS, JRULM and MMU. Phew! That's enough acronyms.

I recently attended a half-day seminar on the Web of Science at Glasgow Caledonian University, given by the knowledgeable and very patient Sheila Padden, Staff Training and Development Co-ordinator, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Extensive documentation, including the seminar workbook, is available from the Web of Science documentation pages.
At the seminar, Sheila explained that the content of the new service is the same as the BIDS service, covering the Science Citation Index Expanded with Cited References and Author Abstracts (1981- ), the Social Sciences Citation Index Expanded with Cited References and Author Abstracts (1981- ) and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index with Cited References (1981 - ). The interface, however, is new. Another difference is that Current Contents Connect (CCC), being the equivalent of the BIDS ISI Autojournals service, which provides Tables of Contents by email, is an additional service to which institutions must subscribe separately.

No doubt some users will like the new interface, and some will lament the passing of the BIDS interface (the BIDS ISI service will remain available until 31st July 2000. The following is taken from a recent press release: "For sites that do NOT move to the new ISI Web of Science Agreement, access to the ISI service from BIDS will end 31st March 2000. For sites that do move across to the new ISI Web of Science Agreement, the ISI service from BIDS will continue to be available and updated until 31st July 2000. After 31st July 2000 the service will definitely be terminated."). New users will not, of course, know any difference. Possibly the biggest change is that all three databases can be searched at the same time through Web of Science, and this is, in fact, the default method of searching. Another positive development is that Web of Science can handle 1000 concurrent users, which is twice the number of open sessions allowed by BIDS. Web of Science offers both Easy and Full Search options, and uses standard Boolean operators (and/or/not/same) so that there is no need to remember symbols such as + - etc. 'Same' finds terms in the same sentence, and phrase searching is possible by simply entering a phrase, without quotes or anything else. The system looks for the actual phrase, rather than the words 'anded' together. For truncation of search terms, use * for any number of characters, and ? for a single character. Full citation searching and references to Related Records (ones which share citations) are also available, and there is good context sensitive help. Incidentally, the help desk address is wos@mimas.ac.uk

Two current disadvantages are that
a) you cannot, as yet, combine search sets together - this will come next year, but in the meantime it may mean that complicated search statements need to be entered in one long line using brackets as necessary;
b) when a search is entered, it is necessary to scroll down to the end of the first page of results in order to find out how many 'hits' there are. I find this very annoying, but apparently there is nothing ISI can do about this at the present time.

It is possible to save searches for use later. As far as I can see, this involves saving to a local file, which may suit some users, but cause problems for others.

The Web of Science is an impressive product, containing references to 20 million articles, and providing coverage of more than 8000 journals and conference proceedings. Over 20,000 new items are added each week. Like any new service, it takes a little getting used to. The online documentation is also impressive, and I was pleased to see that it included subject-specific guides available in various formats (Word 6, Word 7, and PDF). I will definitely be using these as they are clearly written, and cover the essential features of the service.

I happened to experience a problem when searching WOS last thing one Friday afternoon. So I emailed the helpdesk. They were quick to respond. In fact, even before I received the automatic reply stating: "The problem/question you recently reported has been entered into the Manchester Computing Helpdesk System where it will be dealt with promptly. In any future correspondence relating to this problem, please quote the following 'Problem Id' [xxxxx]", I was sent an explanation of the error by someone at MIMAS. Good work!

For members of Heriot-Watt University, more information about Web of Science is available here.

Roddy MacLeod
Senior Faculty Librarian
(R.A.MacLeod@hw.ac.uk)

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