Web of Science (All Databases): Keyword searching

To find articles/document on a topic, enter keywords (search terms) into Web of Science's search boxes. If running a default 'topic' search, Web of Science searches for documents that include your search terms in their titles, abstracts (summaries), author-provided keywords and 'keyword plus' (index terms based on the titles of an article's references). The following steps will help you  identify and organise your keywords carefully so that you're more likely to find the most relevant results:

1. Identify the words/keywords in your assignment/research question that are most relevant to your topic (i.e. words that distinguish the title from any other title). For an example, let's consider this question: “Evaluate various options for preventing injuries in the sport of high jumping". 
   
   Using our example, you might select the following keywords from this title: preventing, injuries and high jump. It's generally best to exclude generic terms such as "evaluate".
    
2. Treat each word that you select from your title as a "separate" concept within the overall topic. Then, for each concept, identify any alternative words that have the same/similar meaning (or have opposite meanings e.g. inequality, equality). Different authors use different words to describe the same concept and if your keywords don't reflect this, you may miss important articles. Here's a list of keywords, organised by concept, based on our search example: 

• Truncation: with some searches, you can increase the number of your results by entering an asterisk at the end of the stem of a word e.g. if you just enter injur*, Web of Science searches for: injure, injures injured, injuring, injury. Web of Science automatically searches for both the singular and plural versions of some words, but not all, so you might need the asterisk to retrieve both. 
   
• US spellings: Web of Science automatically searches for both the UK and US variant spellings of the many words. For example, if you enter stigmatise, it will also search for stigmatize. The exception to this is if you truncate the word by entering the asterisk after the 's' (stigmatis*) because the database has to search for each letter before the asterisk appears. Therefore, it's better to place the asterisk after the 'i' (stigamati*). Other common UK/US variants include colour, color, paediatric, pediatric.

• Using multiple search boxes: Note the screenshot. if your topic contains multiple concepts, you should enter each concept's set of keywords in a separate search box. To display an additional search box, click the + add row button just below and to the left of the search boxes (check that the boxes are set as you require them e.g. to 'topic' - as in the above screenshot - rather than 'author'). Don't change the default "AND" setting between each search box - you need this so that each of your results covers all the concepts.
  
  
• Entering alternative keywords: If you've identified alternative keywords for the same concept, you must enter OR in between each one. e.g. injur* or fractur* or dislocat* or damag*. Otherwise, Web of Science limits your search results to those that only feature ALL of the alternative keywords.
   
• Entering phrases: to search for a precise phrase, enter the words within "speech marks e.g. "high jump" or "physical therapy".