Web of Science

Welcome to the guide to the citation database called Web of Science, in which the basic search functions of this database will be introduced. Other functions of this database concerning citation analyses will be presented in tutorials focused specifically on these topics.

Let us look at how one searches for publications with the topic Nutrition recommendations for diabetics.

The system redirects you to the full text in the Science Direct database. In this way you can find full texts of sources listed in Web of Science in other databases. Of course, only those full texts will be displayed for which the university owns licence.

In the entry displayed in this way, you can find names of all authors, contact information for some of them, possibly the abstract of the article and other information such as the type of the document, its language, key words, etc.

You are automatically redirected from Web of Science to the Journal Citation Reports database (JCR) that contains information on the impact factor of the selected journals and other indicators related to citation (these are introduced in a separate tutorial about JRC).

This was an introduction to the Web of Science database. We hope that this overview of its basic functions will help you use this database for your studies and research purposes.

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Acknowledgement

Introduction

Database Searching

Colophon

Database Searching

Mgr. Petr Sejk

Mgr. Jiří Kratochvíl, Ph.D.

University Campus Library – Management of the University Campus at Bohunice

1st ed.

Published by Masaryk University, Brno 2019

Created in collaboration with Service Centre for E-learning at MU,
Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Brno 2019

© 2019 Masaryk University

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Scopus

The multidisciplinary database SCOPUS provides access to bibliographic data and abstracts of articles from 36,000 scholarly journals representing various disciplines (out of this number 23,000 journals are currently issued). Part of this database are also records on patents and contributions in anthologies.

In the scope of scientometrics, SCOPUS offers information on citation count by means of CiteScore, SNIP and SJR indicators as well as counting the author’s h-index. You will learn more about these indicators in a separate tutorial.

If the full text is not available here, we recommend that you search for the title of the journal with the article you want in the search engine discovery.muni in the section List of available journals and books at MU. If the text is not available here either, you may try to search according to the title of the article on the internet (some authors publish preprints in their institutional repository). If you do not find it on the internet, contact your library with a request for an interlibrary loan (ILL).

We presented the Scopus citation database in this tutorial. We hope that this overview of its basic functions will help you use this database for your studies and research purposes.

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Medline

The portal of electronic information resources at Masaryk University http://ezdroje.muni.cz offers in the list of resources the following databases: MEDLINE Complete, MEDLINE (OVID SP), MEDLINE (PubMed). First, let us explain the difference between these databases:

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Discovery

Discovery is an online service that makes it possible to use a single interface for searching publications saved in dozens of databases which Masaryk University subscribes to. The service is provided at the address [object Object].

This tutorial will briefly show how to use Discovery when searching for a publication.

After clicking on this button, the text usually displays in PDF or HTML.

In this case the text is available at the SpringerLink website that is subscribed by Masaryk University. If this is not the case, you can search for the publication in one of the library catalogues or ask directly in your library if they can obtain the required document for you via interlibrary loan (ILL).

The links themselves serve as the Full Text Finder service, i.e. after clicking on it the website of the respective journal/book would open, where we could find the required information.

If the title you are searching for is not on the list, again we recommend verifying whether the text is not already freely available on the Internet. If not, ask your librarian to obtain it via the interlibrary loan service (ILL).

We have introduced the Discovery service. We hope that you will use it and that it will help you access scientific literature.

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Portal of electronic information resources

Masaryk University subscribes to online access to academic journals, book collections and other specialized information resources. These e-resources can be used by employees and students of Masaryk University on university computers and most of those even on computers outside the university (at home, etc.).

An overview of the resources available can be found on the website [object Object]. This site provides up-to-date information about e-resources including manuals and user support.

Medical e-resources and interdisciplinary e-resources containing medicine will be displayed.

On this webpage, you will find information about three types of remote access: VPN, EZproxy, Shibboleth.

Let us first focus on EZproxy and Shibboleth, because these do not require any application to be installed on your computer. You just use the links to the resources here on the portal.

Note: If you want to work with multiple e-resources outside of the Masaryk University network, you need to open each resource via the given link on the EIZ portal.

…A manual will display that helps you with installing and launching the OpenVPN application under various operating systems.

After you install the application, launch it and log in with your UČO and secondary password (see the manual for individual operating systems), then you can open the resources you want. After this step, your computer logs in to the website through the Masaryk University network, i.e. it is identified as one of the computers in the Masaryk University network.

Note: VPN distant access will only work with resources available across the entire Masaryk University network (i.e. if the access is limited to a faculty or workplace, access from your own computer will be denied).

You can use the Discovery service to search in the databases of journals and books accessible at MU. This service makes it possible to search through all the listed e-resources with one query.

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If you find too many records/no records

If you find too many records

If you find no more than 100 records, it may still be useful to go through them and find out which relate to your topic. However, if you find more than 100 records, we recommend that you make your search more specific either by means of the panel (see the preceding page) or by adding another key word.

If you haven’t found anything

If you do not find any records with your query, you have two options:

  1. Look for the very specific key words in abstracts/key words of the records not in the titles. In our case the very specific word was “ice hockey” because relevant publications may include both ice and field hockey and therefore the authors included only the word “hockey” in their titles.

  2. If the preceding step does not reveal any records either, you should change something in the search query and substitute a specific term with a more generic one. In our example we could use “winter sports” instead of “ice hockey”.

If full text is not available

If there is neither a direct link to the full text nor a link to a linking service next to the record you found, use the Discovery system to find out whether this text is available. This occurs because all the links are created by a system, not manually. It may therefore happen that the university actually has the online form of the required publication available, but this link was not successfully added to the record found.

That is why we recommend opening the A-to-Z list of e-journals and e-books that the university subscribes to and manually verifying if the journal/book is available. If the respective title is not even in this list, we recommend checking whether it might be available on the internet (some journals provide older issues for free on their websites). If you cannot find the publication in this way either, it is time to use ILL (interlibrary loan), i.e. contact your library with a request for an interlibrary loan or a copy of the document you want. Note, however, that ILL can be used only for titles that are not available in any library located in the same city. For example, if the document is stored in the Moravian Library in Brno, the student’s request for such a publication in the Masaryk University Library will be denied and the student should obtain the publication from the Moravian Library.

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Medline (Ovid)

Let us look now at how to search in the MEDLINE database using the Ovid interface.

After you open the database via the link on the EIZ portal [object Object], the window for searching in MEDLINE appears.

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Introduction

Effectively searching consists in an ability to enter the exact details you want to find into the search engine. In common internet search engines such as Google, we are used to asking a question just as it occurred to us, and then the system usually finds something. However, this is not how databases such as Medline PubMed, Web of Science work. For these, you need to “learn to speak the database’s language”.

Let us show you how to search using as an example “Injury Prevention in Ice Hockey”. In this example, we are interested in English and Czech articles published between 2004–2014.

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Step 1 Determine the topic and define key words

How should you determine the topic? This involves nothing more than thinking about what you want to write about, e.g. your graduate thesis, article, etc. The crucial point of the first step is to define key words, i.e. individual words or phrases that express the content of the given topic. These words help to search for information in various databases, library catalogues as well as in internet search engines. It is important to determine key words that represent your topic aptly and at the same time are commonly used in the given field. By choosing commonly used words, you increase your chances to find information relevant for your topic.

How should I determine key words?

  1. Exclude prepositions, conjunctions and verbs from the topic, i.e. only nouns, adjectives and adverbs should remain.

  2. Take the remaining words and remove those which are too general and often connected with a variety of topics. For example, when searching for Parkinson’s disease, it is superfluous to use words like disease, illness, etc. Similarly do not use words such as method, approach, study, etc. In other words, leave out the words which are not necessary to describe your topic (see the appendix to this material for more examples).

  3. Only basic key words will remain. Before you use them for the search, think about whether these words do not have synonyms commonly employed in the respective field.

Determining key words for our topic

Topic: Injury Prevention in Ice Hockey

Key words: prevention, injury, ice hockey

Synonyms or similar terms: protection, wound, harm, accident

When we defined key words, we removed prepositions. Due to the fact that we will search in databases containing primarily English publications, we also choose some English key words and their synonyms.

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Step 2 Form the search query

After you have determined the key words and their synonyms, start to form the search query – or to put it simply – create a query so that a database will understand what exactly you are looking for. In the beginning it is important to form such a query that will cover all existing publications on the given topic, so try to use all the key words. Only if the search fails should you change the query, e.g. replace some of the words with a more generic term, or leave them out, because they might not be as essential as you thought.

Effective searching consists in providing the database with a maximum details right for the first search. To enable this, you must not forget that the key words may appear in various grammatical forms and may have different relationships to each other. Wildcard and helping characters as well as Boolean Operators will aid you with this.

Wildcard characters

Wildcard characters are selected symbols which stand for one or more characters in the given key word. The asterisk (*) is used in the databases, the question mark (?) in the catalogue of Masaryk University, and the percentage sign (%) in the Information System of Masaryk University. Wildcard characters are suitable placeholders for suffixes, prefixes or endings. You can use them to look for variants of the given key word.

Example uses of the wildcard characters:

*anada = searching for both Kanada and Canada

p*diatrics = searching for both pediatrics and paediatrics

nemoc* = nemoc, nemoci, nemocnice, nemocniční, nemocný etc.

Remember three basic rules for using wildcard characters:

  1. You can only use one wildcard in one key word (correct = p*diatrics, incorrect = p*diatric*)

  2. The wildcard must be joined with at least three characters (e.g. for cure use cur* not cu*).

  3. The wildcard cannot be used together with other search operators (see below), because the database would search for the exact sequence of characters including the “letter” (*) which is nonsense.

Helping characters

Characters that help with searching are inverted commas (""). These are used to delimit a key word formed by two or more words (e.g. "molecular biology", "organic chemistry"). If you enter a phrase delimited in this way, you are telling the database that you are looking for the exact phrase in the given form. If you do not use the helping characters, the database searches for publications where the given words (e.g. molecular biology) occur but not necessarily as a phrase.

Let us show you how the helping characters work using the example of "medical ethics".

The publication found ,[object Object], the helping characters

What Do Medical Students Think about Medical Ethics?

The publication found ,[object Object], the helping characters

Balkan Medical Journal is Now a Member of Committee on Publication Ethics

Recommendation:

Despite the facts mentioned above, it is useful to ask yourself the question below before you use the helping characters: “Am I totally sure that the term I am looking for is only written in the way I enter into the search engine? Are there really no different endings, prefixes, etc.?” If your answer is yes, use the helping characters. Otherwise, it is better to leave the words separately, provide them with a wildcard and connect them with a Boolean operator (see below). It can be assumed that these words written separately together with other key words will help you find publications connected to the topic.

Use wildcard and helping characters in your key words

For the topic Injury Prevention in Ice Hockey, we choose to employ the keywords given below in which we use wildcard or helping characters:

Key word

Key word with wildcard/helping characters

Commentary to key words adjustment

prevention

prevent*

Possible variants: prevention, preventive, etc.

protection

protect*

Possible variants: protection, protected, protect, etc.

injury

injur*

Possible variants: injury, injuries

wound

wound*

Possible variants: wound, wounded

harm

harm*

Possible variants: harm, harmed

accident

accident*

Possible variants: accident, accidental, accidentally, etc.

ice hockey

"ice hockey"

A consultation with experts from the Masaryk University Faculty of Sports Studies has shown that this is a set phrase without other grammatical variants.

Boolean operators

After performing the changes explained above, combine key words with so-called Boolean operators, which specify the logical relationship between key words. The most commonly used operators are AND, OR, and NOT.

AND

If you connect key words with the AND operator, you tell the system that you are searching only for such texts that include all terms entered. Therefore if you connect more key words with the AND operator and the system finds some texts, it is very likely that the content of the documents is related to your topic.

OR

Using the OR operator tells the search engine that we are looking for texts containing at least one of the terms entered. The OR operator is suitable for searches in which your key word has commonly used synonyms and so you can find all documents to the given topic through one search regardless of which synonym the authors have used.

NOT

The less often used NOT operator is suitable in cases when your topic is on the borderline between two fields and you are only interested in texts from one of them.

Do not forget:

If you form a more complicated query in which various operators are combined, you need to place key words connected with one operator into parentheses and separate them in this way from other key words connected with another operator. This is like in mathematics where 1 x 2 + 3 differs from 1 x (2 + 3).

Finalize the search query

Based on the information above, we can finalize the search query. Let us show you one variant only with basic key words and another one with all key words we have chosen to use.

Search query in English

Variant with basic key words

prevent* AND injur* AND "ice hockey”

Variant with all key words

(prevent* OR protect*) AND (injur* OR wound* OR harm* OR accident*) AND "ice hockey"

Notice how the key words are connected in the variants with all key words.

Synonyms are connected with the OR operator and placed in brackets that are joined with the AND operator.

Which fields should I use for my query?

In online databases, you can usually specify whether you want to search in the publications’ titles, their abstracts, or full texts.

We recommend searching in the title of the document first because titles of scientific texts usually contain basic key words that describe the content of the document. Therefore, the likelihood is high that the publication found is connected with your topic.

Another possibility is to search in abstracts or key words. Because abstracts summarize basic information about the publication and contain key words, relevant texts should be found as a result of your search. This is true also for the case that the database also lists the key words supplied by the authors.

The last option, which is however problematic, is to search in all fields or in full texts. This may lead to displaying documents which contain key words you chose in different places (some in the title, others in full text, etc.) If the text contains your key words only once or twice, you can assume that it is not related to your topic.

If necessary, you can also combine the search fields. A very specific term, for example, may not appear in the title. Therefore, you search for it in the abstract while you look for the other words in the title search field.

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Step 3 Determine formal requirements

After you create the search query, think about the formal requirements of your search, i.e. how old the information you are looking for should be, what language the material is written in, what type of document it is, etc. Most databases provide the possibility to specify the search results in this way (e.g. if you need articles from the last ten years, because information in your field becomes outdated quickly, and you also want information only in your language and English, because these are the languages you understand).

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Step 4 Choose information sources

The last step is to think about the sources which you will use for searching. There are three options:

The Internet

An easily accessible source containing information of varying quality. If you search for scientific information, we recommend using specialist search engines for scientific texts such as Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com) instead of the classic Google search engine, which like Yahoo, Bing etc. finds both high- and poor-quality websites (e.g. websites created by the lay public or for commercial purposes only).

Note:

Google Scholar uses a somewhat different searching mechanism: you do not need to write the AND operator, and a dash is used instead of the NOT operator. The asterisk (*) replaces not just characters in a word but a whole word. As far as individual grammatical variants are concerned, Google Scholar is able to derive them from the word entered and search for them on its own.

Library catalogues

Library catalogues are also commonly accessible. We recommend using university catalogues or catalogues of libraries which operate on the national level (in Czechia there are National Library in Prague, Moravian Library in Brno). University libraries focus primarily on academic literature and national libraries archive all books and journals published in the Czech Republic thanks to the so-called legal deposit. If you cannot find the document in your library, you can contact the library with a request for an interlibrary loan (ILL).

Electronic sources (databases)

Licensed online databases of academic literature are clearly a source of high-quality information, they always contain bibliographic data and sometimes even full texts of scientific articles or monographs. Most such databases contain information on publications whose quality is ensured by peer review, i.e. articles are only published when they passed review.

For searching, use first the Discovery service (http://discovery.muni.cz), which provides one interface for accessing records from almost all databases Masaryk University subscribes to. A part of this service is LinkSource which makes it possible to verify whether a full text is accessible (for more see the animated tutorial).

The same query is then used in Web of Science and Scopus databases, which are citation databases containing records from prestigious, academic and peer-reviewed publications. These publications are followed for their citation rate, i.e. how often other authors whose publications are in these databases cited them. The databases above do not store full texts, but they provide a linking service for each record which helps to verify whether the full text is available in another database (this feature can be accessed via the SFX button).

You should also search the Medline PubMed database, because they are crucial for the field of medicine. Medline PubMed also features the Full Text Finder linking service.

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Step 5 Let’s do it! Let’s search!

After you have performed the steps described above, start searching by providing the search engine with maximum indices which the system can use to search for information, and more importantly where it should search (in titles, abstracts, key words, full texts, etc.).

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Medline (PubMed)

PubMed, which facilitates searching for bibliographic data on medical publications, is a freely available interface to the Medline database. This search engine is maintained by the National Library of Medicine in the USA at the following address: [object Object].

There are two ways to perform a search. First we will focus on the simpler way and also explain how to find full texts. The more complicated way to search will be addressed at the end of this tutorial.

As you can see the full text has really been displayed.

In this case you are redirected to the website of the relevant journal, directly to the full text of the web version of the article.

In the event that the full text is not accessible here, we recommend verifying with the Discovery service ([object Object]) in the list of journals whether the journal might be accessible in a different database. If not, you can try the following method.

If you are interested in a publication which lacks a link for a freely available text or to which your institution does not have a license, you may try your luck and search the website of the journal to see whether this particular article might be available for free there.

That this option is possible will be demonstrated using the example of article 37.

As you can see, in this case the publisher has made the full text available online for free.

If you cannot access the publication with any of the methods mentioned above, contact your library with a request for an interlibrary loan.

The final form of the query is now complete and by clicking on Search you can start the search. The next steps will be the same as was shown in the previous parts of this tutorial.

Although PubMed is only a search engine, it is a valuable source of information for medical community, especially because of the links to full texts next to the individual records.

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Bottom line

When you search in online sources, determine the key words first. Then adjust them as necessary with wildcard and helping characters and combine them with Boolean operators. Then think about whether you want to search for a specific type of document (e.g. journals only) from a certain time period (e.g. the last ten years) written in selected languages (e.g. English, German), etc.

First search in the titles of publications (or alternatively in abstracts/key words). If you find more than 100 records, change your query so that it is more specific. If you do not find anything, look for a very specific term in abstracts/key words rather than in titles. Whether the full text of the publication is available can be determined by means of a direct link or the linking service (Link Source, SFX).

If the full text cannot be found in this way, use the Discovery system to verify whether the journal/book is not in the list of journals/books there. If not even this method helps you to find the full text, check whether the article might be freely available on the internet (e.g. an article on the journal’s website). The last step is to order the publication via ILL (interlibrary loan).

Sources of pictures in the text

  1. Byrd E. How can Internet Monitoring help your Organization? [Internet]. TalkTechToMe. 2011 [ci-ted April 18, 2014]. Available from: http://www.gfi.com/blog/internet-monitoring-organization/

  2. Edinburghcitylibraries. Upgrade your membership for eBook use [Internet]. Tales of One City. 2013 [cited April 18, 2014]. Available from: https://talesofonecity.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/upgrade-your-membership-for-ebook-use/

  3. Sellers C. Do You Remember How to Use a Card Catalog? | In Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress [Internet]. Library of Congress. 2010 [cited April 18, 2014]. Available from: http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2010/09/do-you-remember-how-to-use-a-card-catalog/

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Access to e-resources from university hospitals

An overview of electronic information resources (EIZ portal) that Masaryk University subscribes to can be found on the website http://ezdroje.muni.cz. These e-resources are available to people working at Masaryk University (students, employees), which means that employees of the University Hospital Brno and St. Anne’s University Hospital Brno can search either through a specific database or through the entire contents of EIZ MU (e.g. Medline PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, etc.) at once via the Discovery system ([object Object]). The methods for how to search are described below.

Access to a specific database

  1. Open the portal http://ezdroje.muni.cz, click on the link Resources by title or click on Resource overview in the menu and then select Resources by title.

  2. After you have selected the database, click on the title of the source or on the link more info and then on Connect to the resource.

  3. A login page will then be displayed where you enter your UČO and secondary password. The database opens after you have authenticated, and you can start working.

    1. If you do not know your secondary password, create a new one at [object Object]

    2. When you open a database as described above, you can only work with the given database. If you want to open another database, you need to use the method above. If you want to search all journal and book e-resources (EIZ) with a single query, use the Discovery system (see below for how to do this).

Access to full texts via the Discovery search engine

1. Opening Discovery

Open Discovery at the website [object Object]. At the top a yellow toolbar will appear with a note that to access full texts you must log in first. Click on this yellow toolbar and a webpage will open. Enter your UČO and secondary password there. You can then start looking for publications and accessing their full texts. The manual on how to use Discovery together with other aids can be found at the URL[object Object].

2. Access to full text

After you find the required record, there are two ways to access the full text.

If the record was found in the full text resource, an icon Full Text PDF will appear. In the event that the record was found in a bibliographic database without a full text, click on the link Full Text Finder.

The Full Text Finder helps you find out whether a full text is available at Masaryk University in one of the full-text databases, e.g. as a subscription to a journal. If Masaryk University subscribes to the database with the required document, a link or links to full text will be displayed under Resources Found (Full Text). If Masaryk University does not subscribe to the resource with the full text, we recommend searching for the publication on Google (some authors may have published their texts on ResearchGate or Academia.edu). If you do not succeed, contact your hospital library or University Campus Library with a request for interlibrary loan.

How to find out whether Masaryk University subscribes to an online access to a certain database

  1. Open Discovery at the website [object Object]. At the top a yellow toolbar will appear with a note that it is necessary to first log in in order to access full texts. Click on this yellow toolbar and a webpage will open. Enter your UČO and secondary password there.

  2. Click on List of available journals and books at MU in the menu.

  3. Enter the title of the journal or its ISSN into the search field. Confirm your choice by clicking on the Search button.

  4. If Masaryk University subscribes to online access to some of the journal’s volumes, a record will display with links to the full text of the respective volumes. Individual links are equipped with information about available volumes.

    In case of problems contact the technical support at eiz@muni.cz.
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Medline Complete

After you open the database via the link on the EIZ portal [object Object], the search interface appears in MEDLINE Complete on the platform EBSCOhost.

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Practice in forming search queries

We have prepared an exercise for how to form search queries. You will find a couple of topics below for which you can create a search query. The next page will show you the solution to this exercise.

Instructions

Affinity chromatography and its application for separating dehydrogenases.

affinit* AND chromatograph* AND (separat* OR disjoin* OR secess* OR seclus*) AND dehydrogenas*

Diagnosis of bacterial meningitis and its consequences

bacter* AND meningit* AND (diagnos* OR (consequence* OR complicat* OR result*))

Pralidoxime treatment of organophosphate poisoning

(treatment* OR therap* OR cur* OR medication*) AND organophosphat* AND pralidoxim*

Medical rehabilitation plan and approach after traumatic impairment of the spine.

(treat* OR rehabilit*) AND (plan* OR process*) AND (traum* OR injur* OR wound* OR harm*) AND spin*

Possible vectors of Borrelia burgdorferi other than the castor bean tick, Ixodes ricinus.

("Borrelia burgdorferi" AND vector*) NOT "Ixodes Ricinus"

Uncooperative patients in paediatric dentistry

uncooperat* AND (dent* OR stomatolog*) AND (child* OR pediatric* OR paediatric* OR infant*)

Pentacam and lenses examination

pentacam* AND lens AND (examin* OR diagnos*)

Appliances principles, examination methodology and tests’ overview for determining the quality of colour vision

instrument* AND (examinat* OR test*) AND color* AND vision*

Appropriate alcohol consumption as a factor protecting vessels

moderat* AND (alcohol* OR ehanol*) AND (intak* OR consumpt*) AND (HLD OR atheroprotect* OR "protective factor" OR "myocardial infarction")

Gene expression regulation with small interfering miRNA

regulat* AND gene* AND express* AND (miRNA OR "micro RNA")

Examination lenses – principle of light beams passage and its uses

(lens* OR lentil*) AND (investigat* OR contact*) AND (optic* OR ophthalm*) AND (laser* OR ray*)

The solutions provided above may obviously differ from your answers as far as the choice of key words is concerned. The key words may differ due to your knowledge of medical terminology in the given field. The main thing is the structure of the query, i.e. whether the words are connected in the appropriate way, and whether appropriate Boolean operators, wildcard characters, etc. were used.