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In this Guide: |
Use the Search In drop down menu to limit to citation databases in the Core Collection or to select other database content. You can also select individual resources within the Core Collection and filter results by date range.
By default, all six databases in Web of Science Core Collection are searched at the same time. To use a specific citation database
select Editions, then deselect the databases that are not desired and select the time period desired.
Use the drop-down menu to the left of the search field to do the following searches:
Basic Search: Use this option to search by Topic, Title, Author, etc.
Author Search: Use this option to search by author last name and initial of first and middle name.
Cited Reference Search: Use this option to search for articles that have cited a particular journal article or book. Fill in as much information as you know and click on Search.
Advanced Search: Use this option to search with field labels (to limit the search to a particular field, like author or journal). See online help for more details.
Topic: Searches title, abstract, author keywords, and Keywords Plus. Because WOS has no subject headings, remember to search for all possible synonyms and spellings. Use truncation and Boolean operators to expand/narrow your search.
Title: Searches article titles. Title refers to the title of a journal article, proceedings paper, book, or book chapter. Note: To search for the title of a journal, select the Publication Title field.
Author: Searches these fields: Authors and Group Author. For Authors, enter the last name first followed by a space and the author's initials.
Publication Titles: Searches for journal titles, book titles, proceedings titles, and more. Also referred to as "source titles." (Enter words from the journal title, or select from the Publication Name Index)
Year Published: Searches the publication year field. It will search both the publication and the early access date fields. You can search for a single year or a range of years.
Affiliation: Searches preferred organization names and/or their name variants.
Funding Agency: Searches for the name of a Funding Agency within the Funding Acknowledgment within a record.
Publisher: Searches the unified publisher name.
Publication Date: Searches the publication date field. Records with early access date are retrieved using this date instead of final publication date. Month and day are optional, but they need to be present/absent in both date boxes (from/to).
Abstract: Searches the abstract field.
Accession Number: Searches the Accession Number field. The Accession Number is a unique identifying number associated with each record in the product. Example: WOS:000301236900016
Address: Searches the Address fields for a full or partial name of an institution and/or location from an author's address.
Author Identifiers: Searches the Web of Science ResearcherID and ORCID ID fields. This will return documents authored by the researcher with that Web of Science ResearcherID or ORCID ID.
Author Keywords: Searches the author keywords field (use quotation marks for exact match)
Conference: Searches conference title, location, date, and sponsor.
Document Type: Searches the document type of the document. Click in the search box to select from the list of document types. The default selection is All Document Types. If you select multiple types, the found records can be any of those.
DOI: Searches the DOI field for records that have them.
Editor: Searches for editors, typically found for books and proceedings. For names, enter the last name first followed by a space and the author's initials.
Grant Number: Searches for the Grant Number within the Funding Acknowledgment within a record.
Group Author: Searches group authors, which are organizations or institutions that are credited with authorship of a publication.
Keyword Plus ® : Searches the keywords plus field (for words or phrases that appear frequently in the titles of an article’s references and not necessarily in the title of the article or as Author Keywords)
Language: Searches the language of the document. Click in the search box to select from the list of languages. The default selection is All languages. If you select multiple languages, the found records can be any of those languages. (For a complete list of languages see https://images.webofknowledge.com/images/help/WOS/hs_language.html)
PubMed ID: Searches the PubMed ID field, The PubMed ID is a unique identifier assigned to each MEDLINE record. The PubMed IDs from MEDLINE are also found in equivalent records from other databases.
Web of Science Categories: Every record in Web of Science Core Collection inherits the subject category of its source publication (journal, book, etc.). A record can be assigned to more than one category.
Saved History: To run a saved query, click on the History tab:
Basic Search: The general search options from the drop down menu next to the search boxes allow searching of source documents (articles from source journals, bibliographies, etc.).
Search options include searching by:
Topic Keyword: Because SCI has no subject headings, remember to search for all possible synonyms and spellings. Use truncation and Boolean operators to expand/narrow your search.
Title: Searchestitles of articles, books (not applicable to University of Toledo), and proceedings.
Author: For an author search, use the format lastname, first initial (if known). If the middle name is known, include that initial as well. For a more comprehensive search, use an asterisk to truncate the name: lastname i*. This will retrieve all articles by I. Lastname, no matter what the middle name is. Also consider using the author index to select name variations.
Author Identifiers: Searches ResearcherID numbers or Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) identifiers
Group Author: Use this option to search for corporate authors: organizations, task forces, committees, etc.
Editor: Note: a corporate author can also be an editor
Publication Name: Enter words from the journal title, or select from the Publication Name Index.
DOI: Search by Digital Object Identification number; enter partial codes with an asterisk (*) to find multiple records
Year Pubhlished: Enter a four-digit year or a range of years; this overrides the timespan setting
Address: Author affiliation. There are many common abbreviations in this field; check the abbreviations list.
Organization-Enhanced: Searches the Preferred Organization Index for preferred organization names and name variants
Conference: Example -- Fiber Optics AND Photonics AND India AND 2000
Language: Searches 51 languages (for a full list consult the Web of Science Help). Retrieves only those records that contain the search term(s) entered plusthe document type(s) selected. A set of limits will appear this selection is made.
| All languages English Afrikaans Arabic Basque Bengali Bulgarian Byelorussian Catalan |
Chinese |
Gaelic |
Japanese |
Persian |
Slovak |
Document Type: Retrieves only those records that contain the search term(s) entered plusthe document type(s) selected. A set of limits will appear this selection is made.
| All document types Article Abstract of Published Item Art Exhibit Review Bibliography Biographical-Item Book Book Chapter Book Review Chronology |
Correction Correction, Addition Dance Performance Review Database Review Discussion Editorial Material Excerpt Fiction, Creative Prose Film Review Hardware Review |
Item About an Individual Letter Meeting Abstract Meeting Summary Music Performance Review Music Score Music Score Review News Item Note Poetry |
Proceedings Paper Record Review Reprint Review Script Software Review TV Review, Radio Review TV Review, Radio Review, Video Theater Review |
Funding Agency: Enter the full name of an agency or specific terms e.g. National Agency AND Science
Grant Number: Note --some grant numbers will find the same record
Accession Number: Each record in Web of Sciencve has a unique identifying number
PubMed ID: A unique identifier assigned to each MEDLINE record
The database supports the following search options to allow for more powerful searching:
Truncation: Use an asterisk (*) for zero- and multiple-character truncation (i.e. echocardiogra* searches for echocardiogram and echocardiography). Use a question mark (?) for single character truncation (i.e. wom?n searches for women and woman). These symbols can be used together, if necessary, and in any search field.
Operators: Common operators are available in Web of Science:
- AND -- to narrow results to items found in two or more search sets
- OR -- to combine synonyms
- SAME -- terms must be in the same sentence, in any order
- Quotation marks -- search terms as a phrase ("myocardial infarction")
- NEAR/x -- to find records where the terms joined by the operator are within a specified number of words of each other, x being the number to specify the maximum number of words that separate the terms. NEAR without /x will find records where the terms joined by NEAR are within 15 words of each other.
- Parentheses --to force the expression inside the parentheses to be searched first.
After making selections and typing in terms, hit the Search button.
After completing one search, there is a Refine Results option on the left side of the results page for filtering or running a search for another topic within the results:
To determine if an article is available through the UToledo Libraries (online or in print), click on the Find It! button:
To see the full item record, click on the article title. Viewing the full record will show related information, including information about citations, keywords, funding information, and institutional affiliation. Click on View Abstract to get a quick summary of an article.
In the Cited Reference Search there are indexes to assist with some types of searching: author, group author, cited author, cited work, Organization-Enhanced, and Publication Name. The links to the indexes will be below the drop-down menu after the type is selected (See the example below):
When you click to get to an index, there will be options for browsing: clicking on the appropriate letter, or typing the first few letters of the name/title to jump to that location in the list. Click on the Add button next to each name/title that you’d like to include in the search. The selected terms are added to the field at the bottom of the page. Click on the OK button at the bottom of the page to enter the search into the search form and continue constructing the search.
Combining Simple Searches to Create Complex Searches
One of the features of the database is the search history, with which you can combine simple searches into more complex searches. To view the search history, click on the Search History tab at the top of the page. Click next to the searches to be combined, then select AND or OR. Then click on the Combine button.
To view the results of the combined search, click on the link in the results column next to the combined search.
In Search History, search sets can also be deleted and search histories saved to be run again at a later date.
After completing one search, there is a Refine Results option on the left side of the results page to run a search for another topic within the results. Using this option does not run a separate search for the second topic that can be separately combined later. The Refine Results menu also allows you to refine your search by subject areas, document type, author, titles, publication years, institutions, languages, and countries.
Saving Search Histories to Run Later (Manually or Automatically)
To save a search history to run at a later time, first create a free account with Web of Science. The databases are updated every week, and there is a time period option to search the last week’s updates.
Search histories can be saved on the server (to have the search re-run automatically as an alert, the history needs to be saved on the server) or on the local workstation (on the hard drive or other storage device).
To manually run a saved search, log in, then select Searches and Alerts from the tool bar drop-down menu. Select the saved search from the list provided, or Click on Browse to locate your search on a local server, then click on Open. On the list of saved searches, you can delete a search or modify the settings before running it.
