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Read Web of Science exported files

Source: R/read_wos.R
read_wos.Rd

Parse Web of Science (WoS) export files in multiple formats and return a tidy table. The function automatically dispatches to a specialized parser based on the format argument and can also download from a URL if file points to an http:// or https:// resource.

Usage

read_wos(file, format = "bib", normalized_names = TRUE)

Arguments

file

Character scalar or vector. Path(s) to a WoS export file, or a single URL (http:// or https://) pointing to a WoS export.

format

Character scalar. Export format; one of "bib", "ris", "txt-plain-text", or "txt-tab-delimited".

normalized_names

Logical. If TRUE (default), use standardized column names when possible; if FALSE, keep original WoS field tags.

Value

A tibble with the parsed WoS records. See Details for notes on added/coerced columns (DI2, PY, DB) and column ordering.

Details

  • file may be a single path/URL or a vector of paths; multiple files will be combined row-wise when applicable.

  • When file is a URL, the file is downloaded to a temporary path before parsing (a progress message is printed).

  • If normalized_names = TRUE, selected WoS tags are mapped to standardized names (e.g., AU → author, TI → title, PY → year, DI → doi, DE → keywords, SR → unique_id, etc.; the exact mapping depends on the format). Otherwise, original field tags are preserved.

  • The output includes:

    • DI2: an uppercase, punctuation-stripped variant of DI (if present),

    • PY: coerced to numeric (when present),

    • DB: a provenance flag indicating the source/format and whether names were normalized.

  • Columns with ALL-CAPS tags (e.g., AU, TI, PY) are placed first, followed by other columns, and DI2 is relocated just after DI.

Supported formats

  • "bib" — BibTeX export

  • "ris" — RIS export

  • "txt-plain-text" — Plain-text export

  • "txt-tab-delimited" — Tab-delimited export

See also

Internal parsers used by this function: read_wos_bib, read_wos_ris, read_wos_plain, read_wos_tab.

Examples

bib_file <- system.file("extdata", "sample_wos.bib", package = "birddog")
M <- read_wos(bib_file, format = "bib", normalized_names = TRUE)
head(M)
#> # A tibble: 3 × 17
#>   AU     TI    SO       PY DI    DI2   TC    SR    DE    ID    AB    DT    CR   
#>   <chr>  <chr> <chr> <dbl> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
#> 1 Silva… Adva… JOUR…  2020 10.1… 1012… 12    WOS:… cita… BIBL… This… Arti… John…
#> 2 Ferre… Comm… RESE…  2021 10.1… 1012… 8     WOS:… pate… PATE… We a… Arti… Silv…
#> 3 Olive… Mapp… JOUR…  2023 10.1… 1012… 3     WOS:… topi… STRU… This… Arti… Silv…
#> # ℹ 4 more variables: DB <chr>, volume <chr>, number <chr>, pages <chr>

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# load data from a URL
M <- read_wos("https://example.com/savedrecs.bib", format = "bib")
} # }