158 UK higher Education Institutions Now Subscribe to World's Premier Research Tool
Philadelphia, PA, USA-London, UK - Aug 02, 2005 - Thomson Scientific today announced that academic institutions in the United Kingdom have selected Web of Science® as their research platform of choice. A five year renewal agreement negotiated by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) on behalf of the UK higher education community has provided UK researchers, information professionals and students with free access to an additional six million articles back to 1970. However, many universities are opting to go further with the complete package of 100 years of the world's highest impact scientific literature. Thomson Scientific is a business of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC).
Web of Science provides access to more than 8,700 of the world’s
most influential journals, including complete bibliographic data, searchable
author abstracts and cited references. Today, over 2,500 organizations in 80
countries subscribe to Web of Science.
When discussing the continued success of Web of Science within the
UK, researchers stress the importance of one of its unique features—cited
reference searching—that allows them to navigate forward, backward, and
through the multidisciplinary literature to uncover all the information relevant
to their work.
“Web of Science is a first port of call for me,” said
Dr. Adrian Parker, head of geography, Oxford Brookes University. “The
cited reference capability opens up new pathways and helps me to discover papers
related to my field that I wouldn’t have found otherwise. I keep track
of who is citing my work because it can sometimes start up conversations that
can lead to fruitful new partnerships.”
The last two months have seen a new trend emerging as eight UK universities
have made the decision to extend their holding back to 1900 with the Web
of Science Century of Science initiative. The University of Leeds is one
of them.
“We celebrated our centenary last year,” said Adrian Smith, faculty
team librarian for Biology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of
Leeds. “Our motto ‘et augebitur scientia’ (and science will
be increased, or roughly, let science thrive) embodies our world class research,
from Bragg's Nobel prize (1915) in crystallography to W.T. Astbury's work (1947)
on the nucleic acids, and continues in medicine, science and engineering in
the 21st century. Web of Science exemplifies how advances today may
be built on foundations laid in the early 20th Century. The Library's decision
to purchase the database shows that we recognise that research did not begin
when the internet was invented.”
About JISC
JISC – the Joint Information Systems Committee – is a
joint committee of the UK further and higher education funding bodies (HEFCE),
and is responsible for supporting the innovative use of information and communication
technology (ICT) to support learning, teaching, and research. It is best known
for providing the JANET network, a range of support, content and advisory services,
and a portfolio of high-quality resources. Information about JISC, its services
and programmes can be found at www.jisc.ac.uk.
