First let’s take a quick tour
of the Web of Science home page.
You can search a number of different databases
on the Web of Science platform.
Choose a database here.
These will depend on your institution’s
subscription.
If you’re not sure which is best for you,
use the All Databases option,
which searches all available 
data resources at the same time.
I’m going to search the Web of Science Core
Collection for my examples, but all the search
tips I show you in this demonstration can
be used anywhere in the Web of Science.
Before beginning your search, be sure to set your
search preferences at the bottom of the page
Select the years of your search under Timespan.
The years available will depend on your institution’s
subscription.
Then click on the arrow to expand more options.
By default all indexes or databases within
your subscription are searched,
unless you choose to deselect any.
You may also choose to enable or disable search
suggestions or change the default number of
search fields from one to three.
Begin with a Basic Search or select other
options such as Cited Reference Search,
Advanced Search, or Author Search.
Choose a field for your basic search 
from the dropdown menu.
You can enter a simple search in one field,
or if you’d like to combine searches,
add additional fields.
You can always clear the screen back to the default.
For searches done in the Topic and Title fields,
Web of Science suggests alternate search terms
if you’ve made a spelling error.
Enter your search term and click the Search
button.
If alternate terms are suggested you’ll
see them just above the search box.
Here I’ve misspelled Parkinson’s Disease and
a suggestion has been made for me.
Click the link for the correct term to be
taken to the search results.
If you’d prefer more control over how your
search terms are treated,
I’ll show you some additional search tools that can help.
Truncation symbols, also known as wildcard characters,
are used to find plural forms and variant
spellings of words.
There are three truncation symbols available
for use in the Web of Science.
The asterisk is the most flexible symbol and
stands for any number of characters, including zero.
In the example shown here, *carbon*
 would find carbon, hydrocarbon, or polycarbonate.
The dollar sign stands for zero or one character.
The question mark stands for one character
and can be repeated to find a specific number
of characters.
These truncation symbols can be used at the
beginning, middle, or end of a word or phrase,
or in combination.
Search operators allow you to combine terms
in exact ways to find just what you’re looking for.
The AND operator finds all terms entered.
The example shown here will find the phrase
stem cell as well as the word lymphoma.
When using OR, at least one term must occur.
Aspartame OR saccharine OR sweetener will
retrieve articles that contain any one of those terms.
The NOT operator excludes terms from your
search.
A search for mobile phones NOT iphone will
retrieve records containing mobile phone,
excluding any that contain iPhone.
Proximity is a way to specify how close one term
should appear to another.
If you would like to search for an exact phrase,
enter it in quotation marks.
You may use wildcard characters within quotation
marks to retrieve variations in spelling
and plural forms.
NEAR finds terms within the same field, and
allows you to specify how far apart terms should be.
If NEAR/10 is used, search terms must be within
a maximum of 10 words from one another.
If no number is specified the default is 15
words.
The SAME operator is used only in the Address
field and retrieves terms that all occur within
the same address line.
Let’s apply some of these search tools in an example.
This search demonstrates the use of the NEAR
operator as well as truncation.
First, I’ve selected the Topic field from
the dropdown menu on the right.
Topic searches article titles, abstracts and
keywords.
I’ve entered the term osmium and specified
that I want it to appear within five words
of the root term hydroxy.
I’ve included the asterisk truncation symbol
both before and after hydroxy.
Now click search.
Over 400 results are returned that match my
search statement.
Examining the results I see that I found articles
that contain the word osmium near terms like
dihydroylation
and hydroxytamoxifen.
These variations were found because I used
both left and right hand truncation.
This is a quick summary of the most commonly searched fields common to all Web of Science data resources,
along with examples to illustrate each.
The Topic field searches article titles, abstracts
and all keywords or controlled terms.
Enter words or phrases in this field to retrieve
records about your topic.
The author field searches every available
author on a paper.
The most effective way to search is last name,
followed by one or more initials.
Some author names in the Web of Science display
unique identification numbers called ResearcherIDs or ORCID ids.
If an author has created a free profile on
researcherid.com or orcid.org this ID number
will be associated with items in the Web of
Science that he or she has tagged as their work.
This helps to differentiate authors with the
same name and initials.
Use the Author Identifiers field to search
this identification number.
Use the examples in this table as a quick guide.
Full explanations of each search field can
be found in the Web of Science help file.
The Web of Science help file can be found
here in the upper right corner.
You can also find links to additional training
and support options here.
