10/23/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/23/2025 15:18
WWU News
October 23, 2025
Western Libraries needs to identify roughly $102,000 in subscription cancellations during the 2025-26 academic year to accommodate annual inflation on scholarly journals within a flat Resource Access Budget. This is equivalent to roughly 3.9 percent of our Resource Access Budget annually.
One subscription the Libraries are evaluating as part of this year's annual subscription review process is Web of Science, a multidisciplinary citation database widely used to discover research and analyze research impact. Much of the content included in Web of Science is discoverable through other comparable tools.
We are seeking input from the university community on the extent to which the search and analysis capabilities, such as subject categories and citation metrics, within Web of Science are important to your teaching and research at Western, compared to those included in Scopus, a similar tool with a lower subscription cost.
To facilitate this comparison of Web of Science and Scopus, the Libraries is running a Scopus trial from Oct. 27 through Nov. 14, and is inviting broad participation from the WWU community via the completion a brief feedback survey.
More in-depth information about Scopus can be found on the Scopus LibGuide and recent comparisons between Scopus and Web of Science are available from Iowa State University.
The Scopus trial will be accessible from both on- and off-campus via this link. Students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to participate and provide feedback via this survey.