  By using publications from Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), Fosso
Wamba and his colleagues published an interesting and comprehensive paper in
Technological Forecasting and Social Change to explore the structure and
dynamics of artificial intelligence (AI) scholarship. Data demonstrated in
Fosso Wamba's study implied that the year 1991 seemed to be a "watershed" of AI
research. This research note tried to uncover the 1991 phenomenon from the
perspective of database limitation by probing the limitations of search in
abstract/author keywords/keywords plus fields of WoSCC empirically. The low
availability rates of abstract/author keywords/keywords plus information in
WoSCC found in this study can explain the "watershed" phenomenon of AI
scholarship in 1991 to a large extent. Some other caveats for the use of WoSCC
in old literature retrieval and historical bibliometric analysis were also
mentioned in the discussion section. This research note complements Fosso Wamba
and his colleagues' study and also helps avoid improper interpretation in the
use of WoSCC in old literature retrieval and historical bibliometric analysis.
