Using Web of Science to study the growth of an area of research

[Alexander Grimwade]

You are correct. The limits on the search based on timespan and on the Web
of Science database you select (SCI, SSCI etc) are reflected in the
statement on the results page "n records matched your query of the x,xxx,xxx
in the data limits you selected." You can verify this by changing the
timespan and/or the database.


---------------------------
Alexander M Grimwade Ph. D.
HISTCITE SOFTWARE LLC
P. O. Box 2423
Bala-Cynwyd PA 19004
USA

agrimwade at histcite.com
(484) 270 8471
www.histcite.com 


-----Original Message-----
From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics
[mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Carol Brach
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2009 2:17 PM
To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Using Web of Science to study the growth of an area of
research


Hello everyone, I am brand new to this list and appreciate the opportunity
to ask a question.

I would like to validate data that I retrieved from Web of Science, Science
Ed.

If you do a "search for" a topic on the main search page, and use the
timespan limit to limit retrieval to one year only (eg. 1991 - 1991) at the
very end of the results page, in small print you see "XXXX records matched
your query of the XXX,XXX,XXX in the data limits you selected".

I have been assured means that XXX,XXX,XXX is the total number of articles
that were included in the WOS Sci Ed database for that year.

Thus it is possible to get a simple ratio between the number of total
articles and the number of articles that appeared on a particular topic in a
particular year.

I have been assured by two Thomson consultants that this is true, but I
would be very grateful if someone from this list would agree that this is
the correct understanding of these figures.

Thank you!

Carol

--
Carol A. Brach
Engineering Librarian
University of Notre Dame
(574)631-5070