Access an array of data across subjects and regions, providing a comprehensive picture of research output to understand data in context and maximize research efforts.

The Data Citation Index on the Web of Science provides a single point of access to quality research data from repositories across disciplines and around the world.

Through linked content and summary information, this data is displayed within the broader context of the scholarly research, enabling users to gain perspective that is lost when data sets or repositories are viewed in isolation. These connections allow researchers to efficiently access to an array of data across subjects and regions, providing a comprehensive picture of research output, to maximize research efforts and accurately assess importance.

For more than 50 years, Thomson Reuters has provided intelligent information to accelerate research, discovery, and innovation.

Today, more than 20 million researchers around the world rely on Web of Science to uncover connections across a variety of disciplines and content types.

And the Data Citation Index lets them start where discoveries begin.

What you can do:

  • Discover and attribute — or receive — credit for the creation of scholarly digital research data
  • Pinpoint primary research by understanding the impact of the scholarly research it supports
  • Measure the contribution of digital research in specific disciplines and identify potential collaborators

    There are over 500 repositories around the world estimated to hold millions of gigabytes of data from research studies and other funded investigations. Sharing these data offers many advantages for the entire research community; however, the datasets live in disparate repositories around the world that vary significantly by (or within) disciplines or even type of study. Although the organic growth of repositories allowed for great innovations and approaches to data management, the variance also lead to a "silo" environment of disconnected resources.

    The new Data Citation IndexSM from Thomson Reuters is designed to be the first single source of data discovery for the sciences, social sciences and arts and humanities. Data Citation Index fully indexes a significant number of the world's leading data repositories of critical interest to the scientific community, including over two million data studies and datasets. The records for the datasets, which include authors, institutions, keywords, citations and other metadata, are connected to related peer-reviewed literature indexed in the Web of Science™.

REPOSITORIES BY DISCIPLINE

OVERALL COVERAGE

Life Sciences

48%

Social Sciences

20%

Physical Sciences

23%

Arts & Humanities

7%

Multidisciplinary

2%

 


With the ever increasing amount of digital data being produced and made available, either voluntarily or through policy requirements from grant funding agencies, the need to discover and provide credit for the creation of scholarly research data has never been greater. We work hard to balance the selection of material for with the ever-increasing abundance of digital web based resources.

Research data considered for inclusion include data studies, data sets and microcitations deposited in a recognized repository. 

Definitions:

  • Data repository: a database or collection comprising data studies, data sets and/or microcitations which stores and provides access to the raw data. Constituent data studies, and sometimes individual data sets, are marked up with metadata providing a context for the available raw data.
  • Data study: description of studies or experiments held in repositories with the associated data which have been used in the data study. (Includes serial or longitudinal studies over time). Data studies can be a citable object in the literature and may have cited references attached in their metadata, together with information on such aspects as the principal investigators, funding information, subject terms, geographic coverage etc. The level of metadata provided varies between repositories.
  • Data set: a single or coherent set of data or a data file provided by the repository, as part of a collection, data study or experiment. Data sets may present in a number of file formats and media types: they may be number based files such as spreadsheets, images, video, audio, databases etc.  Data sets can be a citable object in the literature and may have cited references attached in their metadata, but more commonly they inherit the metadata of the overall study in which they are used.