Web of Science - General Search Guide

Introduction | Searching | Search Rules | Managing Results | Search History | Citation Alerts | Related Records

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Introduction

Web of Science offers access to Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and to Arts and Humanities Citation Index. Approximately 9,000 research journals are indexed and JCU access is for 1972+.

Unlike other journal indexes, the citation indexes in Web of Science enable you to examine a document's historical origin and follow through to its current position in the research literature. A full bibliographic record in Web of Science has links to:
· References: items cited by the author(s) when the paper was written
· Times Cited: number of times that the paper has been cited and a link to the citing papers.

Access to Web of Science is from the Electronic Databases page :

1. Click Web of Science in the list of Electronic Databases
2. Click the Select a Database tab on the ISI Web of Knowledge welcome screen
3. Choose Web of Science from the available databases to begin searching

Searching

All 3 indexes will be searched from 1972 onwards, by default. Click Change Limits at the bottom of the screen (see Figure 1) to make different choices

Figure 1

The drop-down menus allow you to simultaneously search several fields from records in the database. The 3 default fields are:

1. Topic:

Enter a word or phrase that might appear in the article title, abstract, or keyword list. For example:

• Enter antibod* to search for records containing antibody or antibodies.
• Enter mars SAME saturn to search for records containing both Mars and Saturn in the title, keyword field, or same sentence of an abstract.
• Enter mars AND saturn to search for records containing Mars anywhere in the title, abstract, or a keyword field, and Saturn anywhere in the title, abstract, or a keyword field.

2. Author:

Enter and author/editor name with the last name first, followed by a space and up to 5 initials. Unless you know all initials in an author's name, put an asterisk after the initial(s) you have entered (e. g., Hoffman E*). You may also enter last names without initials. For example:

• Enter hoffman e* to retrieve records by E Hoffman or EG Hoffman.
• Enter oconnor OR o'connor to retrieve records by O'Connor (which may appear in the record as OConnor).

3. Publication Name:

Enter a publication name to search the Source field within a record. For example :

• Enter journal of cell biology to search for records of articles published in this journal.

Search Rules

• Searches are not case sensitive
• Searches for Exact Phrases require the phrase to be enclosed in quotation marks
• Separate two or more terms by logical operators such as AND, OR, NOT, or SAME (terms joined by SAME must occur within the same sentence)
• Wildcard characters:
  • * zero to many characters
  • ? 1 character
  • ?? 2 characters, etc.

Wildcard characters can be placed within a word or at the end

• Use parantheses to specify order of precedence. Otherwise operators are applied in the following order: SAME, NOT, AND, OR

Managing Results

Figure 2 shows the Results screen for a search on the topic of "coral bleaching":

Figure 2

If you wish, you can Refine Results by subject area, document type etc.

You can then choose one of 5 options to sort your results by :

• Latest Date. This is the default sort. Records are sorted in reverse chronological order.
• Relevance. Sorts by how frequently the search term occurs.
• Times Cited. Retrieved records are in descending order by number of times cited.
• First Author. Sorted alphabetically by the first named author.
• Source Title. Sorted alphabetically by the source journal title.

You can check boxes to mark records on the Results page and then click the Add to Marked List button. Clicking on Marked List displays a list of records you have marked during the current session. You can elect to sort your marked list of records by date, author, title or times cited. You can also check boxes beside the fields you wish to include with your records, and then print, save, or email your records. You can also export your records to referencing software such as EndNote.

You can click on Analyze Results to view rankings of the authors, journals, etc for your set of results.

Search History

When you perform a search, the results of your search appear in a table which you can access by clicking the Search History button. You can combine your search sets with AND or OR to further refine your search records. For more complex set combinations you should choose Advanced Search.

Citation Alerts

Registered users can click on Create Citation Alert from any Full Record page to receive email alerts on future citations to that record.

Related Records

Related Records are two records that share at least one cited reference. Clicking on Related Records from any Full record page is a way to locate relevant research that cannot be found by traditional subject or author searching.

Cited Reference Search | Advanced Search

 

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