Web of Science (EN): Get going

Web of Science is a multidisciplinary search engine and also a citation database for scientifc and scholarly literature in all areas of study.

For many articles WoS contains the references given by the authors, as well as the citations of that particular article by other authors. That way you can easily find related articles and you can also find information about the impact an article has (made).

Use the  to get to the article itself.

In this LibGuide you can find information and useful tips on Web of Science.

You will find Web of Science in the list of search engines of the University Library.

The database can be accessed by Utrecht University or UMCU staff and students via SolisID or UMCU login.

• Journal articles and reviews covering all disciplines (Sciences  and Social Sciences), from 1900 onwards. For Arts & Humanities from 1975
• Book reviews
• Conference Proceedings covering all disciplines: 1990-present
• All content of a journal, including editorials, introductions to special issues, obituaries, letters to the editor etc.
• Citations of articles
• Citation scores of authors and citation data of the publications by author



• Select a database to begin

  You can use the Editions dropdown menu (see box Web of Science Core Collection) to select the specific editions of the database you wish to search, for example the (Social) Science Citation Index or the Arts & Humanities Citation Index

• Choose a search field. All Fields is the default and searches all sections in each article record. You can combine search fields or limit yourself to a specific field from the list to target exactly what you need

• Click Add date range if you wish to narrow your results by publication or index date

Tips:

1. Type your search terms in the search box and use the option 'Topic' to search for title, abstract and keywords
2. Use English search terms (if other languages are not needed)
3. You can limit your search to, among other options, publication date, document type or open access articles (options available in the gray column left of the list of results)
4. Sort your results on date, relevance or number of citations (dropdown menu  next to 'Relevance 'in the gray area above the list of results)

When you have found an article, you may find more literature by clicking on:

• Citations:  gives a list of recent publications referring to this article
• References:  gives a list of publications referred to in the article (bibliography)
• Related records: gives an overview of publications containing the same literature references (click on the title first)
• The name of the author, in order to get more publications by this particular author

Use Web of Science to:

• Find scholarly articles, conference proceedings and reviews
• Find citations and conduct a further search based on the citations you found
• Check how many times and by who publications have been cited
• Author citation reports (H-index)

The Web of Science Core Collection contains:

Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) --1900-present
Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) --1900-present
Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) --1975-present
Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) --2015-present

Next to the core collection you can also search through the KCI-Korean Journal Database (1980-present), MEDLINE® (1950-present), the Russian Science Citation Index (2005-present) and the SciELO Citation Index (2002-present).

If you are searching for a specific journal go to the Web of Science Master Journal list. If you want to know which journals are included in the 4 collections click on the blue button 'Search journals', choose 'Web of Science Coverage' and select the collection of your choice.

In your search for scholarly literature you may sometimes find the UBU-link. This link provides information about the availability of digital publications via the University Library.  Sometimes the UBU-link is in the form of a yellow button, but it can also be a text link.

Want to know more about all options to access digital publications? Visit our Online Access page.