Web of Science

Introduction

This database is brought to you by the MIT Libraries and the School of Science.

Web of Science includes:

Science Citation Index (1973- )
Abstracts (1991- )

Social Sciences Citation Index (1973- )
Abstracts (1992- )

Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1973- )
Abstracts (2000- )

Web of Science indexes 5,700 major science and engineering journals, 1,700 social science journals, and 1,100 arts and humanities journals. Features include citation searching and links to related articles as well as author, title, and subject searching.

Searching Tips

See Web of Science Help for more details on searching.

Search by Phrase

Example:

thin films
retrieves all records with the phrase "thin films"

Use Boolean Operators

Operator	Example
AND retrieves records with both words/phrases	oil and pollution
OR retrieves records with one or both words/phrases	o’neil or oneil
NOT retrieves records with the first word/phrase but the second	york not new
SAME retrieves records with both words in the same field or sentence	ozone same deplet*

Use wildcards

*	replaces 0 or more characters; must be preceded by at least 3 letters in most cases
?	replaces exactly 1 character
$	searches for British and American spellings of the same word, e.g. vapo$r retrieves vapor or vapour

Use All At Once

Example

thin film* and semiconduct*

de la rosa or delarosa

(labo*r or employee) and (party same politics)

Author name searching
Enter an author/editor name with the last name first, followed by a space and up to 5 initials. Unless you know all initials in an author's name, put an asterisk after the initial(s) you have entered. For example, to search for the author Wolfgang Ketterle, enter ketterle w*.

Cited Work searching
Use the Source List to find the abbreviated title for the journal you are searching for. Journal titles may have been abbreviated in other ways not on this list. Use truncation to broaden your search to ensure you capture all variations of a title. Example: Enter J AM CHEM* OR J AMER CHEM* OR JACS* to look up references to articles published in the journal Journal of the American Chemical Society. Or enter NATURE* to look up references to articles published in the journal Nature, Nature Genetics, or Nature Medicine.

This page was last updated on 09/20/07