Database Guides: Web of Science - All databases

Web of Science (previously known as Web of Knowledge) is a gateway service to several databases including the Web of Science Core Collection (for access to the Citation Indexes).

The full list of databases available via the Web of Science service is:

The Web of Sciences - all databases search is useful for searching across the whole range of databases available from the Web of Science gateway. It covers many different subject areas and will find mainly journal article references.

Login to the Portal and then choose Web of Science - all databases from the A-Z List of Online Resources.

The All Databases tab will be automatically selected.

See Successful Search Techniques.

Automatically everything is selected for searching. 

Note you can narrow your search to a specific database by selecting the Tabs along the top of the screen.

Select the date range you want to search by using the Timespan options on the right hand side (default isLatest 5 Years ), the date range selection does not apply to the selected external collections. Enter your search and click on Search.

AND searches (to narrow the search), e.g., car AND pollution

OR searches (to broaden the search), e.g., car OR automobile OR vehicle

PHRASE searches: will find 2 or more words in that order, eg health service

Truncation: use * for multiple letters, e.g., estuar* will find estuary, estuarine, estuaries. Use ? for one or zero characters, e.g., colo?r will find color or colour.

CITED REFERENCE SEARCH: Citation searching allows you to find articles that have quoted a given article in their reference list. This type of search should be carried out using all the years of the database.  

Choose the down arrow next to Basic Search above the Search box and select Cited Reference Search.  

First enter the details of your article of interest: enter the author’s name in the Cited Author box in the form: beveridge m*  the author’s last name is entered first and you can add the asterisk truncation symbol * if you do not know all of the author’s initials.  Then enter the year that the article was published in the Cited year(s) box: e.g. 1985. It is probably best to leave the Cited Work box empty as authors are sometimes inconsistent in their citations.  Click on the Search button.

On the next screen you will see a list of potential matching references. Select the check box(es) next to your reference of interest. (Note you may need to tick more than one checkbox due to inconsistencies in the way your article of interest has been cited). Then click on the Finish Search button.  The next screen will display a list of all the articles (from across all Web of Science citation databases) that cite your selected reference.

See also the video below showing a Cited Reference search.

Click on the Full-Text button that displays under each record - then choose the Check WebBridge button , which provides links to the full text of the journal if available, or to the library catalogue, to check if we have the item in paper format.

Records can be downloaded into RefWorks (a software product for managing references and formatting bibliographies).

See also StirGate

For help, click on the Help option in the top right handside of the Web of Science screens.

Results are displayed in summary format, up to ten items are displayed per page. To go to another page of results, click the navigation arrows or type a page number.

To see the full record of an item in the results listing, click on the record title.

Web of Science results: You can mark items from the results listing screen by selecting the checkbox next to record(s) and then selecting Add to Marked List at the top right hand side of the records listing. Then select Marked List on the far right hand side of the grey menu bar above the results.  From the Marked List screen you can choose to print, email or output your records to bibliographic management software (such as RefWorks): choose the Print or Email icons or choose your bibliographic software in the Send to drop down menu.