When should I use Web of Science?

Web of Science is a great database for finding any biology or science papers, especially if you're citation chasing or looking for interdisciplinary papers. You can also try PubMed if you're looking for medical topics and SciFinder Scholar if you're looking for certain substances or reactions.

How do I get started? 

You'll usually want to start by searching for a Topic, which if the default search box. Web of Science will automatically include simple synonyms including the plural version of a keyword. If you're looking for recent papers, set the timespan to "Latest 5 years" or specify a date range. You can also refine results after you've done your search.

I'm getting too many results. What do I do?

You have several choices:

• Narrow down your search terms. Searching for "breast cancer" treatment will bring back too many results, while "breast cancer" treatment "stem cell" brings back a much more manageable amount. If you're unsure how to narrow down a topic, look at some of the results you're getting. Pay attention to what specific topics they focus on and what keywords they use.
• Refine your results. The left-hand toolbar on the search results page has many options for narrowing down your results. Some of the most useful are:
  • Web of Science Categories: narrow your search to specific topics
  • Document Types: limit to only articles, conference proceedings, etc.
  • Research Areas: narrow your search to broad subject areas (chemistry, biology, etc.)
  • Publication Years: limit results to a certain year
• Sort your results. The sort option is in the right-hand corner, and the default sort is newest publication date to oldest. If you're looking for the most important papers on a topic, try sorting by Times Cited--Highest to Lowest. This will put the most-cited papers (a.k.a. more important papers in the field) at the top of your list.