The Web of Science Core Collection database is a collection of several cross-searchable databases covering not just the traditional “hard” sciences, but also the social sciences, and the arts and humanities. The databases are:
The Web of Science interface enables searching across all resources simultaneously, thus allowing a far wider coverage than most traditional databases in the Solent Library collection. Another strength is the indexing of all references cited in the publications covered, and linkages to the original documents. This allows for the searching of cited references in a piece of work, or of publications citing that piece of work. You can also find related records, papers that cite some of the same research.
The benefit of searching this citation collection is that one can search for current and retrospective information successfully in over 21,000 peer-reviewed scholarly journals (including Open Access journals), covering science, social sciences, and humanities. It also includes 50,000 books, and over 160,000 conference proceedings. The Web of Science collection is particularly good for citation searching, that is, to discover how many times a particular author or article has been cited and by whom, and to locate later works which cite a specific article, allowing one to trace the development of a particular research path. It is important to note that this database covers what the vendor considers to be the "best" journals; the focus is on indexing English language sources.
A recent addition to the Web of Science is Author Profiles. These profiles are initially created by algorithms, but you can also claim and edit your own profile to keep it accurate and up-to-date.