The History and Evolution of Web of Science in Research

If you hang around academics long enough, you’ll notice a pattern: people keep bringing up Web of Science like it’s part of the furniture. Professors mention it when talking about journal quality, grad students swear by it for their literature reviews, and universities love to flash their “Web of Science indexed” papers when showing off.

But here’s the thing—it didn’t just pop up overnight. Web of Science has a long backstory, and honestly, it’s pretty interesting if you care about how research gets tracked, stored, and ranked. Let’s rewind a little.

The Spark: Eugene Garfield and a Frustrated Scientific World

Back in the 1950s, scientists had a big problem: too many papers, not enough ways to connect them. Imagine digging through endless library shelves, trying to figure out which study influenced which. Total nightmare.

Enter Eugene Garfield, an information scientist who thought, “What if we just use the citations as a map?” In other words, instead of only looking at a paper, why not look at who that paper is referencing—and who’s referencing it?

That idea gave birth to the Science Citation Index (SCI) in 1964. At first, it was literally books—big, heavy print volumes stacked in university libraries. Not glamorous, but revolutionary. Researchers finally had a way to trace how knowledge flowed.

From Dusty Volumes to Digital

Fast forward to the 1980s and 90s. Computers were spreading, the internet was on the rise, and lugging around giant citation books started to feel ancient. The Citation Index made the leap to digital formats, and suddenly everything got quicker.

By 1997, the first version of Web of Science came online. Instead of flipping through pages or reels of microfilm, you could type a search query and get results in seconds. For scholars used to slogging through stacks of journals, this felt like magic.

Not Just Science Anymore

At first, it was very science-heavy: biology, chemistry, physics. But research doesn’t stay in neat little boxes. Over time, the platform expanded into the social sciences, arts, and humanities.

That move was huge. Suddenly, an economist in London and a historian in New York had access to the same level of citation data as a biologist in Tokyo. Web of Science became less of a science-only tool and more of an all-academia tool.

The Hand-Offs: ISI, Thomson, Clarivate

Now, here’s where things get corporate. Web of Science originally belonged to Garfield’s Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Thomson Reuters got the hold of it in 1992 and nurtured it into an international standard.

Later, in 2016, the platform was sold off once more to Clarivate Analytics, which continues to run it today. Each turnover saw the database grow, get smarter, and connect to evaluation systems used in research by universities and governments.

Impact Factor, For Better or Worse

One of Garfield’s legacies is the impact factor, a metric that calculates how often articles in a journal get cited. Love it or hate it, the impact factor changed the way journals and researchers were judged.

Some call it useful; others say it pushed academics to chase citations rather than ideas. Either way, the fact that it came out of the citation indexing system shows just how influential Web of Science has been in shaping academic culture.

The Modern Beast

Today, Web of Science isn’t just a citation list. It’s a whole ecosystem:

• Core Collection with sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

• Specialized indexes for patents, data sets, chemistry, and more.

• Analytical tools like InCites that let universities measure research impact in ways Garfield probably never imagined.

Nowadays, researchers are not just using it to find journal articles but also to analyze current trends, track collaborations among research groups, and forecast emerging areas of research.

The Negative Takes on It

Be fair—I am not going to say Web of Science stands perfect. Critics claim that it favors English-language journals, so sidelining research from those whose languages are not English. Others complained about over-emphasis on metrics; this pressures people to publish for numbers rather than knowledge.

Yet, notwithstanding its shortcomings, it remains a trusted system. There are competitors out there, such as Scopus and Google Scholar, but Web of Science has history going for it, and that counts for something.

Why It Still Matters

Think about it: We are living in a world where millions of papers are being published every year. Without some kind of sorting, it would be jumbled and chaotic. Web of Science stands as that filter. It doesn't capture everything and is not even a perfect filter, but it is considered to be a mark of credibility.

For students, it’s a guide through the mess. For researchers, it’s a record of influence. For universities, it’s a badge of quality.

Wrapping Up

The history of Web of Science is basically the history of how academia learned to manage its own flood of information. From Garfield’s dusty citation books to today’s sleek digital platform, it’s been evolving alongside research itself.

So, next time you hear someone brag that their paper is “indexed in Web of Science,” you’ll know the backstory. It’s not just a database—it’s a piece of academic history that keeps shaping the way knowledge gets shared, judged, and remembered.