Citation Searching in Web of Science

This tutorial will cover:About Web of Science

page 2Accessing Web of Science page 3Conducting an Author Search

page 4 Using a ResearcherID page 8Creating a Citation Report page 10Conducting a Cited Reference Search

page 12 Search Operators page 16

About Web of Science The Web of Science (WOS) Core Collection’s coverage begins in

1993 and includes Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) (prev. called Science Citation Index), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI).

WOS Citations Reports only cover the journals included in WOS’s databases. Books, articles, conference proceedings and other publications by the author in question not in WOS are not included. Additionally, citations from works not included in the WOS databases are not included.

Accessing Web of ScienceTo access Web of Science, type the database’s name into the search box in the center of the Libraries’ homepage and click on the link.

Author Search

Select “Author Search” from Search dropdown list

Author Search1) Enter author’s last name and initials

2) Click “Add Author Name Variant” to include alternate names the author may have published under

3) Click “Select Research Domain”

Author Search1) Select field(s) that apply to author’s work

2) Click “Select Organization

Author Search

1) Select author’s organization(s), including current and past associations

2) Click “Finish Search”

Author Search Number of publications by Stephen Hawking in WOS

Use this panel to narrow results if necessary

Number of works that cited an article (click to see list)

ResearcherIDResearcherID allows you to claim items published under variant names and institutions (you must register with WOS).

1) Check items you want to claim

2) Click “Save to ResearcherID”

Citation Report

Click “Create Citation Report”

A Citation Report can be created from most results list. It provides aggregate citation statistics for a group of articles, publication and citation activity per year, average citation per item, average citation per year and H-Index analysis.

Citation Report Statistics for all articles in set

Statistics for individual articles

Click to see more years

Narrow list by publication year

Remove articles from list

Print, email or export as text or Excel file

Cited Reference Search

Conduct a Cited Reference Search to find improperly formatted citations of a work or to find citations of publications not included in WOS.

Select “Cited Reference Search”

Cited Reference Search

1) Enter Author’s Name

2) Enter Publication Title using WOS abbreviation

(click here for list)

Cited reference search for: Hawking, S. W., & Horowitz, G. T. (1996). The gravitational Hamiltonian, action, entropy and surface terms. Classical And Quantum Gravity, 13(6), 1487-1498.

3) Enter Publication Year 4) Click “Search”

Cited Reference Search

This is the WOS entry for the article

2) Check the entries that match article

These are variants (missing issue #, similar page number)

3) Click “Finish Search”

1) Compare the entries with the complete citation to locate the variant citations

Cited Reference SearchComplete list of articles in the WOS Core Collection that cite “The gravitational Hamiltonian, action, entropy and surface terms”.

Printing, emailing and saving options

Search Operators

Symbol Retrieves Example

* Zero or more characters

ethyl* = ethylene ethylacetate ethylformamide

*ethyl = methyl dimethyl hydroxyethyl

*ethyl* = trichloroethylene methylpyridinium

? One character only en?oblast = entoblast endoblast

$ Zero or one character eight$ = eight eighth eighty

For Topic searches, truncation requires a minimum of 3 characters

Wildcard Characters

All search terms must occur to be retrieved.

TOPIC: aspartame AND cancer*

Retrieves documents that contain both aspartame and cancer*.

Any one of the search terms must occur to be retrieved. Use when searching variants and synonyms.

TOPIC: aspartame OR saccharine OR sweetener*

Retrieves documents that contain at least one of the terms.

Excludes records that contain a given search term.

TOPIC: aids NOT hearing

Retrieves documents with aids, excluding any which also contain hearing.

Boolean Operators

Search Operators

Search Operators

Phrase Searching

Exact matches for phrases can be found by searching on the terms enclosed in quotation marks. Wildcard characters can be used inside quotation marks.

“electromagnetic field” = electromagnetic field

“electromag* field” = electromagnetic field electromagnet’s field

Near/ Finds terms in the same field; user specifies proximity. Default is 15 words if user does not specify a number.

electromag* near/3 field = electromagnetic field electromagnetic radiation field field pattern in electromagnetism electromagnets created a strong field

Same Terms must occur within the same sentence. Use in Address field only.

By default, there is an implied AND connecting terms entered as a phrase. Searching a phrase retrieves records that contain all searched terms found in the title, abstract or key words fields. electromagnetic field = electromagnetic AND field

Proximity Operators