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Web of Science Core Collection: Introduction

Web of Science Core Collection is a painstakingly selected, actively curated database of the journals that researchers themselves have judged to be the most important and useful in their fields.

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What is Web of Science Core Collection?

1900 - present

Web of Science Core Collection is our premier resource on the platform and the world's most trusted citation index for scientific and scholarly research.

It is a curated collection of over 21,000 peer-reviewed, high-quality scholarly journals published worldwide (including Open Access journals) in over 250 science, social sciences, and humanities disciplines. Conference proceedings and book data are also available.

What makes Web of Science Core Collection unique?

  • All the journals that we select for inclusion in the collection are indexed cover-to-cover.
  • For each paper we capture:
    • all the authors
    • all author affiliations
    • the abstract and keywords (if provided by the author)
    • funding acknowledgements, including agency and grant numbers (if provided)
    • all the cited references

When possible we also add the following metadata for our indexed papers:

  • ORCID identifiers
  • Additional funding data from Medline and researchfish
  • Unified institution names
    • Organization name variants--the different ways authors refer to their organization--have been unified to a preferred org name. We have unified over 5,000 institutions worldwide and there is ongoing work to unify many more. This expedites the process of searching for an institution's total publication output.

What is a citation index?

If you're new to citation indexes, this short video highlights the unique benefits of using a citation index.

What is our selection process?

Journal Selection Process

The Web of Science Core Collection is a curated collection of high quality scholarly content. Click on the tabs to find out more about our selection process for journals, conference proceedings, and books.

The Web of Science Core Collection is a curated collection of high quality scholarly content. Click on the tabs to find out more about our selection process for journals, conference proceedings, and books.

The Web of Science Core Collection is a curated collection of high quality scholarly content. Click on the tabs to find out more about our selection process for journals, conference proceedings, and books.

Getting Started

1. Access Web of Science from your library’s electronic resources page.

2. Create a sign-in for Web of Science (top right corner of the landing page).

While optional, creating a sign-in allows you to:

  • access Web of Science offsite (http://webofscience.com)
    • Roaming access is 6 months.
    • Sign in onsite to refresh roaming access for another 6 month period.
  • save your searches
  • set up search alerts and citation alerts
  • save lists of records for later use
  • sign in with the same credentials for InCites, EndNote online, and ResearcherID

3. Sign up for live web-based training. Register for a class and walk through our products with an expert trainer.

4. Watch our video tutorials on YouTube. This playlist of short videos from our YouTube channel walks you through key features on the Web of Science platform.

5. Use the tabs at the top of this guide to explore other features of this resource.

PDF Guides

What is Cited Reference Search?

Why you should include cited references as part of your literature search.

Author Name Searching

Tips on improving the accuracy of your author searches.

Organization Name Searching

Watch the video on searching for organizations in Web of Science Core Collection.

Web of Science Core Collection Videos

Watch the complete playlist of video tutorials on the Web of Science Core Collection.

Trust the Difference

Tilla Edmunds, Content Management Director for Web of Science, discusses how the quality and quantity of data in the Web of Science sets it apart.


Want more details about what makes Web of Science different, and examples of why it's the most trusted citation index in the world? Read more about why you should Trust the Difference.