14.1.1 More complex and focused search options

Since Thomson ISI's Web of Science was set up as a bibliographic database, it offers more extensive options for searching with a wide variety of bibliographic fields (e.g. organization, country, city, document type, funding agency). This allows the user to create very complex and focused searches with the Advanced Search function.

With the right search parameters, one can for instance answers complicated questions such as “How many academics affiliated with Australian universities have published in Nature between 1995 and 2005”? or “How many articles have academics affiliated with University X published in field X in the last 5 years?”

However, although these options are very useful for fine-grained bibliometric research, they are not necessary for any of the functions of citation analysis described in this book. In fact, Google Scholar often provides a much more convenient choice in that respect.