The recently launched Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) is an additional index to the Web of Science Core Collection (which includes in our subscription the Science Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index, the Arts & Humanities Citation Index and others listed on the “Learn more” page on the WoS platform). It joined the WoS family of indexes in 2015.
ESCI goes beyond WoS collections in that it indexes journals from emerging fields of research and of more regional significance. As of December 2017, ESCI indexes a further 7,300 journals, 1,733 of which are Open Access (or include OA) and 75% with 5 years or more backfile. The subject spread is 52% Social science, 12% Arts & Humanities, and 36% Sciences, so the majority of publications are focused on the social sciences and arts and humanities. Journals covered emanate from countries across the globe, including emerging titles in the Far East and South America, and MIMAS estimates 80% comprise research output from outside North America.
Launched by Clarivate Analytics who now publish WoS, the ESCI is intended to answer to the “rapidly changing research fields and the rise of interdisciplinary scholarship … providing greater discoverability which leads to measurable citations and more transparency in the selection process”. It is part of Clarivate’s programme with ESCI to keep the journals in it separate from the main indexes forming WoS, but the company notes publications “can continue to be considered for inclusion in products such as SCIE, SSCI, and AHCI, which have rigorous evaluation processes and selection criteria”.
Indexing from 2015 to the present of journals in the ESCI is available in our current subscription (detail of this should be added to our subscriptions details page shortly).
Trial access is now available up to 31 October 2018. This trial provides access to the archive which covers the years 2005 to 2014, including indexing of the ESCI journals for those years. This indexing is on offer from Clarivate as a backfile purchase, so we are keen to have your feedback on the value of this data. Please send your feedback to ejournals@lib.cam.ac.uk. Thank you.
Access is enabled on the Web of Science platform at this link or via the Cambridge LibGuides Databases A-Z. (Note that the WoS link does not now require a Raven authentication on campus.) To search the ESCI only please click on “More settings” on the Web of Science “Basic Search” page and adjust the tick boxes for the respective collections accordingly.
A fact sheet about ESCI is available here.
Electronic Collection Management 