Web of Science
Clarivate's publisher-neutral citation index — six decades of curated, cover-to-cover indexing built around the citation as the unit of discovery.
At a Glance
- Publisher
- Clarivate (Institute for Scientific Information)
- Coverage
22,000+ journals indexed cover-to-cover plus conference proceedings and books; 97M+ records; 2.4B+ cited references across 254 subject areas.
- Access
Institutional subscription (Core Collection sold as editions — SCIE, SSCI, AHCI, ESCI, plus conference and book indexes).
- Free alternative
- OpenAlex
- Regional
Included in India's ONOS; the freely searchable Master Journal List lets anyone check coverage.
Our Take
The oldest name in citation indexing and still the most selective — its in-house editorial team curates rather than auto-ingests, so the signal-to-noise ratio is high and the back catalogue reaches to 1900. That curation is also its blind spot: narrower than Scopus, thinner on non-English and Global South literature, and humanities coverage that leans Anglophone. Where Web of Science genuinely pulls ahead is citation analysis — the Citation Network and Analyze Results tools turn a cited-by number into a map of who, where, and when. Use it as your precision instrument; pair it with OpenAlex or SciELO when you need reach.
Power Tips
- Use NEAR/n proximity inside the Topic field, which also works in citation reports.
- Traverse forward and backward citations in the Citation Network panel, then Analyze Results by country, institution, or funder.
- Build a Citation Report to read the per-year curve — a flat-then-spike shape flags a ‘sleeping beauty’.
- Save any citing set as an alert for ongoing monitoring.
Alternatives & Complements
Scopus, OpenAlex, Dimensions, Google Scholar (for reach)
Figures last verified: June 15, 2026