Research Data Services

Through a Dartmouth Library subscription Dartmouth faculty, students and researchers may access the Web of Science database, which indexes and contains metadata from over 12,500 academic journals in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

With this subscription, Dartmouth community members may access Web of Science data in three different ways:

1. Through the Web of Science web interface - accessible from campus or with a Dartmouth VPN.
2. Using either of two Web of Science APIs (Starter or Lite)
3. With the Web of Science xml dataset

Each of these options presents different opportunities and challenges.

The web interface allows the easiest and quickest access. You can perform simple or advanced searches, then export the metadata from your results. You may export between 500 and 1000 records at a time (depending on the format of exported documents you choose: Excel, plain text files, tab-delimited files, etc.). Most researchers will probably prefer this method as it is by far the easiest to begin (no special access requests required nor programming knowledge needed).

For faster access to the dataset that can be automated, you can try the Web of Science Starter API. For those with programming experience in Python, instructions for getting started are here [insert link]. Others, who may need help getting started with this API, may contact Dartmouth Library's Research Data Services helpline for advice or to make an appointment. This method is ideal for administrators and researchers who want to regularly access WoS data and would like a way to automate this data retrieval.

Finally, the most comprehensive way to access this dataset is through the Library's Web of Science XML dataset. To learn more about this dataset and for licensing conditions, please visit our Web of Science XML data page. To request access to the SQL database we have setup for accessing, filtering, sorting, and analyzing data from this dataset, please visit [insert link here]. Best for researchers who would like to automate the retrieval of WoS data but want to access data fields not accessible with the APIs (abstracts and references are not provided by the available APIs, for example).

Comparison of Dartmouth Library's Web of Science data products

Features Comparison Table

A comparison of ways to access Web of Science dataset using Dartmouth Library's subscription.

	Web Interface	Starter API	XML / SQL Dataset
Access Requirements	web browser	request API key from Clarivate some basic programming in Python or R	request access from Research Data Services
Data Available
Simple Metadata (author, title, data, WoS / ISSN/ DOI ids)
keywords
content summary (Abstract, Research Areas / WoS Categories)
Citation Information	(Articles Cited)*		(Articles Cited)
Data Extraction / Limits	Export 500-1000 records at a time (but only up to 100,000?)	5000 requests per user per day with 50 records / request (250,000 records / day max)	Unlimited
Search Fields	Simple or advanced searches (by author, title, keyword, abstract, year, funding agency, etc.)	Simple or advanced searches (by author, title, keyword, abstract, year, funding agency, etc.)	All fields
Possible Use Cases
Citation Analysis
Filter or compare results by discipline or subject area
automate retrieval of author / journal / subject area scholarship
automate retrieval of impact (citation frequencies, etc.)
analysis of use of specific terms in title and abstract
full-text analysis		<-- see cell to the left

* can view list of citing articles too, but not available for export