The product is intended to introduce students to the basic principles of scholarly research, through the concept of cited references, or author footnotes, and the importance of electronic linking in scholarly literature. The Web of Science evolved from the Science Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index print indexes. These were once used for advanced cited reference searching at colleges, universities, corporations and government organizations. Today, the Web of Science is a comprehensive archive of all significant research information. Users can have access to ten years of data for current and retrospective searching.
Users can keep up with the latest developments with weekly updates to the database.
The Web of Science also offers links to additional resources, such as the ISI Chemistry Server, Derwent Innovations Index and the National Library of Medicine's NCBI genetics sequencing database. Searching in the Web of Science depends on the subscription depth of the institution, with over fifty years of data available.