Web of Science and Current Contents to Be Discontinued
Scopus to Begin
On July 1, 2008, the MU Libraries will begin a three-year subscription to the Scopus database, and Web of Science and Current Contents will no longer be available. This decision was a financial one – these changes in database subscriptions will result in a savings to the University of Missouri system of over $250,000/year - money that can be used for more highly used, highly valued full-text online journal resources such the ScienceDirect Freedom Collection. The Scopus database is currently available as a trial subscription.
At one time, Web of Science and Current Contents provided unique search features, but now the library has other resources to fulfill many of those needs. Your subject librarian can help you identify alternative resources to meet your specific search requirements.
Like Web of Science, the Scopus database provides information on the number of times an article has been cited. In addition to being far less expensive than Web of Science, Scopus has some distinct advantages, including:
- Scopus indexes more journals. In examining coverage overlap, 7644 journals were indexed only in Scopus; 1321 were indexed only in Web of Science; 7507 journals were indexed in both. See Chart. Check Scopus coverage for a specific journal.
- In published comparisons of cited reference search results, both Scopus and Web of Science were found to contain unique cited references. In general, cited reference counts for the past 12 years were higher in Scopus than in Web of Science. See the following Scopus vs WOS articles.
- Far superior formats for emailed results. See Examples.
- Citation Tracker lets you view a table of cited references for an author by year from 1996-date. See Example.
- Follow Findit@MU links to an article's references. See Examples.
- Press the Download button to save up to 50 full text articles from a search result (when full text is available)
- Search first and middle names of authors, not just initials.
- Narrow a search by author affiliation. See Example.
- More search options, including automatic plural stemming, CAS registry number search, more proximity operators.
- RSS alerts.
What does this change mean to you?
If you have alerts set up in Web of Science or Current Contents, they will stop working at the end of June. Scopus provides similar services. Check with your subject librarian about your options.