Researchers and students in UK universities now have access to one of the most powerful research tools on the internet. The Web of Science, produced by the Institute for Scientific Information, is being hosted for UK users at Mimas, a computer data centre at the University of Manchester funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee.
Users can search for articles and abstracts from more than 8,000 top journals in science, the social sciences and the arts and humanities. They will also be able to track papers cited in a particular scientific paper and see later papers that cite an earlier one, allowing them to follow work in progress.
Academics in Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia and Brazil already have access to the Web of Science, which contains 25 years of data and is being expanded to 50 years in some areas. Individual UK university librarians must decide whether to buy it for their institution.