To do a topic search, enter the search term or phrase in the Basic Search box. This finds the term or phrase anywhere in the record.
There is no subject thesaurus in BA/BP. There is, however, some controlled vocabulary to help with searching. See more in field searching.
Because BA/BP relies primarily upon word searches, there are special techniques that can be used to improve a search.
Wildcard characters--use truncation for more control of the retrieval of plurals and variant spellings:
Phrase searching:
Connect your search terms with AND, OR, or NOT:
(Click the image to enlarge)
Search By Author
Up to 100 authors per article are included in BA/BP, which include full first names when available. Searches for articles by a particular author can be accomplished in two ways.
Search: Select Author from the drop-down menu on the main search screen and enter the author’s last name and first name/initials, if known (smith susan p or smith sp). Authors may publish under their full names or just with initials, so try the truncation symbol ($): (smith s$ or smith $). Because of the variations in author names, it might be more helpful to browse by author:
Browse: Choose Select from Index (the green AZ icon in the search field). Enter the author’s last name and first initial. From the resulting list, select the name(s) of interest. For name variants (smith s and smith sp), do a separate search for each name then combine the resulting sets with the OR operator.
Search By Article Title
To search for an article title in BA/BP, select Title from the drop-down menu on the main search screen and enter words from the article title.
Search By Journal Title
Search: Select Publication Name from the drop-down menu on the main search screen and enter words from the journal title. Use wildcards (* $ ?) with title abbreviations.
One way to narrow a search is to search for the word/phrase of interest in a specific field. Fields identify different areas on an articles record, such as title, author, abstract, etc. To search within a specific field, type in the a field label plus the topic in parentheses. Example:
Last names containing a space should be searched with and without the space. Click on the Help tab in Web of Science for advanced examples of field searching. Field searching hints:
|
List of Fields and Field Codes AD=Address |