Web of Science: Searching

On the first screen - Web of Science will default to all databases - you need to change this for the best results:

• From the drop down menu under All databases select Web of Science Core Collection:

You can specify a date range for your search and select citation indices from Web of Science’s Core Collection using the option beneath the search box, to add date range
:

then choose publication date, all years,  or select one of the other options which appear by clicking on the downward arrow.

Combine terms using the connectors AND, OR, NOT from the drop down menu or by typing them directly into the box.

OR – use OR to find articles which use any or several of your search terms, or to combine terms that are similar

This will increase the number of articles found

e.g. Hormone replcement therapy OR HRT

AND – use AND to find articles which use all of your search terms, or combine terms that are different

This will reduce the number of articles found

e.g. HRT AND Ostearthritis 

NOT - use NOT to exclude terms

e.g. copper NOT lead

*Use this search with caution as it may exclude relevant results*

Truncation – placing a * at the natural end of a word (the stem) will find all variations
 e.g. cyan* will find cyan, cyanide, cyanotic, cyanosis, and cyanobacteria   

Phrase searching – Placing double quotation marks around terms will search for it as an exact phrase

e.g. “oxygen depletion”

For full details of how Web Of Science uses truncation and phrase searching visit the Web of Science Search Rules page which has details of wildcards as well as left-hand truncation and how hyphens and apostrophes are searched.