Research Commons

Research Commons, located on the Web of Science platform, is a journal index that expands Web of Science to include broader geographic, topical, and Open Access journal coverage. Its article metadata is sourced from Open Access platforms, including CrossRef and OpenAlex. It increases the breadth of journals available in Web of Science, adding more journals published in the Global South; more social sciences, arts, and humanities journals; and more Open Access journals. All Research Commons articles and their citations are indexed by Web of Science, connecting them to the Web of Science citation network and allowing users to explore their citation connections to other research on the Web of Science platform.

Research Commons journals have not undergone the same evaluation and curation process as other Web of Science journal collections. To make sure it is still possible to search exclusively within Web of Science's curated content, Research Commons is not part of the Web of Science Core Collection. Also, because some Research Commons content may not be peer-reviewed, the default setting in Web of Science's All Databases search excludes it from the results list. Users must choose to include it in their results if they would prefer to do so. 

When viewing an article record and the number of times it has been cited by other sources, citation counts are recorded for each database separately so that users can choose which databases' citation counts to consider.