At the recent American Library Association (ALA) annual conference in Chicago, we organized a panel titled: Hacking the Web of Science data?- From bibliometric projects to researcher portals. The session explored uses of Web of Science data outside of our traditional platform via APIs and raw data.
The panelists included:
Ann Beynon (moderator)
Clarivate Analytics
Eamon Duede
Executive Director | Knowledge Lab & Metaknowledge Research Network
University of Chicago
Junming Huang
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Northeastern University
Anita Foster
Electronic Resources Officer
The Ohio State University
Gene Springs
Assistant Professor / Collections Strategist
The Ohio State University
In this unique session, we brought together researchers and librarians to talk about using Web of Science Core Collection data for research projects. The researchers, Eamon Duede and Junming Huang, discussed how their labs at University of Chicago and Northeastern University respectively, use the WoS Core Collection XML raw data to explore the complexities of the scientific enterprise. The audience was captivated by the range of questions they are helping to answer.
Some examples include:
• What is the relationship between team size and innovation? Are we funding the right types of research to get the most return?
• How can we use the citation network to identify researchers aligned with a new funding opportunity?
• How do you define a research field and how do fields evolve over time?
• Can we predict the future citation behavior of a paper based on its characteristics?
• Can we allocate credit to authors based on the citation network?
• Is there a gender gap in science and how can we understand it better?
• Do researchers in a given country tend to cite mainly research from their country?
Then Anita Foster and Gene Springs provided the library perspective. The Ohio State University recently licensed Web of Science Core Collection raw data (XML) for the use of researchers across their campus. Anita and Gene told the story of why Ohio State University pursued this acquisition as part of a campus-wide initiative around data science. As data science and network science programs grow along with the rise of big data, the library’s role is evolving to accommodate this type of research. They also gave their librarian colleagues some tips on pursuing a data license like this and implementing it smoothly.
During the Q&A portion, we had a lively discussion about what surprised the researchers about the data, and the policy implications of their findings. In one case, the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored a workshop to further discuss their findings.
This session enlightened the librarians in the audience about the various, interesting types of research that can be done with our extensive citation data, and how the library can support this type of research through an institution-wide license.
Download the presentation here >
If you are interested in using the Web of Science Core Collection raw data for research projects, contact your Clarivate Analytics representative or contact us here
