LibGuides: Advanced Searching Techniques: Advanced Searching in Web of Science

Boolean Operators

AND	To find records containing all terms [Example: blood pressure AND stroke]
OR	To find records containing any of the terms [Example: myocardial infarction OR heart attack]
NOT	Exclude records containing certain words in your search [Example: cardiovascular disease NOT heart attack]
NEAR	To find records containing all terms within a certain number (n) of each other [Example: stress NEAR/3 sleep]
SAME	Search terms that must occur within the same sentence [Example: Tufts SAME Boston, biodivers* same conserv*]

Truncation and Wildcard

Truncation and wildcard characters are used for more control in retrieving plurals and different spellings.

*	To retrieve words with variant zero to many characters [Example: disease* will include diseases, diseased, diseasing, diseasedness etc.]
?	To retrieve words words with the replacement of 1 character [Example: wom?n includes women, woman]
$	Retrieves zero or one character [Example: disease$ includes only diseased, diseases ]
" "	To search exact phrases [Example: " strict dietary restrictions "]

Advanced Searching Techniques in Web of Science

WIth your search terms, field notations and the Boolean, Wildcard and Truncation commands, you can structure a query that is easily replicable and editable. This is the beauty of Advanced Searching--greater control, that hopefully results in stronger searches.

Here are some pointers of the Advanced Search features in Web of Science:

Each search term in the query must be identified as a field tag. In a basic search, generally all fields are searched, but with Advanced Search you will need to specify. Some of the most common field tags are below:

AD= Address	OO= Organization
AI= Author Identifiers	PS= Province/State
AU= Author	PY= Year Published
CF= Conference	SA= Street Address
CI= City	SG= Suborganization
DO=DOI (Document Object Identifier)	SO= Publication Name
ED= Editor	SU= Research Area
FG= Grant Number	TI= Title
FO= Funding Agency	TS= Topic
FT= Funding Text	UT= Accession Number
GP= Group Author	WC= Web of Science Category
IS= ISSN/ISBN	ZP=Zip/ Postal Code
OG= Organization- Enhanced

Advanced Search Examples

Using some field tags and operators, let's try constructing a search:

Let's try retrieving records with the name of a specific organization, let's say Tufts University, for documents about biodiversity conservation efforts.

OG= (Tufts University) AND TS= (biodivers* "and" conserv*)

Search Web of Science

Web of Science Advanced Search Tips

To search on the name AND, OR, NOT, NEAR, and SAME, enclose the name in quotation marks. Example: "Or"
Extra spaces around opening and closing parenthesis () and equal = signs are ignored.
Use SAME in Address searches, in Topic searchers AND works exactly like SAME.