How to do an effective literature search basic user

How to do an Effective Literature Search?

Stop Searching, Start Discovering


The scenarios
• “I just join as new graduate students and I am not
sure how to do a literature search”
• “I have been into research for sometimes now but I
spend a lot of time to get the articles I want”
• “I wanted to start a new research work, how can I
get the right literature in the shortest possible
time?”

  If you experience similar concerns, this module
may help you to do an effective literature search


How to start?
• There are many ways to begin literature search,
generally we have:
– Keywords (most commonly use)
– Begin from a paper given by your mentor
– References from a given paper
– Journals in your interest of subject areas
– Authors, if you know some …

• As a beginner, we will only talk about keyword
search in topics or titles

Let’s start …
• For example, we want to do a search in “Japanese
encephalitis”, a virus transmitted from mosquitoes
and very prevalent in Southeast Asia and the Far
East
• But … you did not know how to spell “encephalitis”
What can we do?
Use Wildcards!


Here is how wildcard works …

Use wildcard to
help you!
Put an “ * ” after the
word to retrieve all
combinations of
words from 0 to
infinity characters
•Under Topic Search, just type in “Japanese ence*” and hit button search
•The search will return all combinations of words begin with “ence”
•Other wildcards include: ? (if it is only one character) $ (if it is 0 to one character)


Take note * will get what you want and those
you don’t want …

Note that ence*
will also get you:
•Encephalitis

•Encephalic
•Encephala
•Enceinte
•… etc
Be selective!

Immediately you
identify the word
“encephalitis” from
your search results!


Now just want to retrieve the right results?
• “Japanese Encephalitis” is a type of disease, which
used to call “Japanese B Encephalitis”
• Use inverted commas to get the exact words
Use inverted
commas “ … ” to
get the exact terms


Use Search History to combine your search
results

The total
records found


Narrow down your search: use Refine Results

Select the subjects you are
interested and narrow your
search results


Refine further to get what you want

Refine further to retrieve
only review articles and
now you left 46 articles
to read and select
Note: you can repeat
this refine process in
different orders and
combinations to get
result sets you want!


Which one to read first? Why not go for highly
cited articles first …

Note: You can also
sort by author if that
helps you to retrieve
faster. (Be aware that
selection of articles is
necessary, never
expect one search to
get all relevant results
… The good news is

you have only 46 to
scan instead of 2720)

Sort your result sets
using Times Cited
and get those highly
cited articles appear
on first page


Got what you want? Drill down to read more ...

Get the full text if your
library subscribes to the
journal. Get information
directly from NCBI also

Running out of keywords? Try
KeyWords Plus, you may find
more relevant keywords
suggested by references’
authors


Don’t stop here … explore from here

Interesting! Ever think of why this
article has been cited so many
times? What papers are these?
Find out more … click from here

Looking for articles sharing the
same references? Explore from
here!
Don’t forget: References
is another great source to
explore relevant articles


Follow up? It’s easy … right from here

Want to follow up? Create an
Citation Alert and get email
whenever this article gets new
citation

Why not checking the Impact
Factor of the journal or maybe
other relevant contents?


Don’t forget: You also have Citation
Map to help you!
You will be surprised to find out that an article in Virology
has applications in:
•

Immunology

•

Infectious Diseases

•

Microbiology

•

Neurosciences

•

Pediatrics … etc

Ten different new application fields!

  Use Citation Map today … you new

way to discover hidden applications!


Get organize … start from beginning

Save selected records
into EndNote or EndNote
Web. Remember:
Manage of references
takes time, so start
managing them now
Do you know? EndNote

Web comes free for
Web of Science and
EndNote users!


Last note to take …
• Effective literature search really depends on many
factors, some of which are:
– How much you have known a subject
– Your research experience
– Guidance from mentors
– Your library resources … access to the right literature, etc

And … vary from discipline to discipline


Always remember …
• Literature search is an iterative process
• You must do it from time to time throughout your
course of research
• Selective contents and tools in Web of Science
(WOS) get you the right literature, not overload you
with irrelevant literature – Effective search
• In simple terms … If you can get relevant literature
effectively within 3 months using WOS, why bother
to spend one year or even longer just to do similar
search without WOS?
• You have a choice …
Stop Searching, Start Discovering

Need help? Contact us
Features presented here are basic, if you want to learn
advance features in WOS … write to us


For technical help, please direct to
If you are from:

Please write to:

Japan



Korea



China



ANZ



Rest of APAC (including
SEA, HK, Taiwan, India)
Stop Searching, Start Discovering

Thank You!
Stop Searching, Start Discovering

Contact Information
To view additional recorded training, please visit our website
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