A citation database features the ability to index basic bibliographic information of each article and the names of all authors, their affiliated institutions, and bibliography. By using three types of citation relations—i.e., references (retrospection of previous studies), cited references (follow up of subsequent studies), and relevant literature, citation database can conduct literature search in a snowball manner. This is also recommended for researchers who want to search for research papers across different disciplines or comprehensive disciplines.
The scope of NCKU's subscription includes the Web of Science Core Collection, i.e., Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), which contain over 21,100 journals.
Scopus collects over 22,000 journals and also shows the controlled vocabularies exclusive to MEDLINE and Embase if bibliographic records are also indexed in these databases. It provides researchers with an alternative path for indexing.