A powerful tool for research

Web of Knowledge (a.k.a. Web of Science) is an on-line database of scientific literature. The use of this is tool is limited to students with a valid campus ID or people associated with an organization that subscribes to the service.

To access the database you may find it from the library main page. http://library.uwsp.edu/
Under Research Point there is a link "Browse databases A-Z." Clicking the letter "W" will reveal a link to "Web of Knowledge (Web of Science)". If you are off campus this link will not work, but if you go through the Research Point links as suggested above you will be able to log in using your campus username and password (using the direct link above will not work).

The training link from ISI gives a number of options and is well worth spending 10 to 30 minutes exploring those tutorials. This training will make a difference later on in your academic and professional careers. Employers do not hire people who have all the answers, but employers love to hire people who know how to find the answers to tough questions. Time spent becoming a master of finding professional peer-reviewed literature is a great investment in your future!

Enter keywords for what you are looking next to the topic line. If you are searching for a specific article that you know the author enter the author's last name, followed by first initial and an asterisk (*).

For example if you wanted to find an article on nanowires that Dr. Zach published, enter the fields as below: Note the use of the asterisk to terminate partial words nanowir* would find "nanowire", "nanowires", "nanowired", etc. This is important for finding all references when the exact search terms are not known. If an article exists, but the search did not find that article, the topic could be terminated earlier such as "nano*" and "Zach".   



What makes Web of Science so much more useful than other search engines is results of simple searches not only gives access to the publications results of the search, but also publications that are very closely related. Executing the search above will give the following display:



The above screen allows further limiting of results by subject area, document type, etc. This feature is helpful if there is a large number of hits.  The "FIND IT!" button will open a new window that may allow you to download the entire article as it appeared in the journal. If the article is not available from the library there will be links to interlibrary loan. The journal article is downloaded directly to your computer without needing to go to the library.



The records found can be observed in greater detail by clicking the title, which brings up the abstract of the article, and several valuable links to other publications that are related to the same topic. The image below is the what the screen looks like when clicking on the title of the article from the main results page (from two images above).


If you are writing a paper or trying to find more information about the topic, the links from an individual record are extremely important! With the search as you performed it, you may or may not have found the exact information for which you were searching, but your search only took a few minutes. When you find a relevant paper the links on an individual record give you access to the articles important enough to the development of this project to be cited by the author. The author has spent weeks, months or years working to find the most important references. Now you have benefit of all of their hard work by clicking the link which is the number next to "References". The number next to "Times Cited" gives links to articles by authors whose research is closely related and perhaps use the methods or results of the paper you found in your search. This very quickly gives access to the most important literature related to the topic of the paper you are writing or the technique that you are trying to do in your laboratory.

Learn how to use this tool now and you will make your time as a student easier and more productive.  Learning these skills as a  first or second year student gives you and advantage over your peers. Being able to cite literature makes your work appear more professional. There are additional tools available that you can explore such as Endnote that makes the tedious job of formating citations effortless. Finding literature that is the latest in-depth information available on your topic makes learning more fun.