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The Web of Science is an electronic index licensed by UofT which encompasses the Citation indexes with which you are probably familiar, e.g. Science Citation Index. The coverage of the online version is much broader; it has about 2000 more journals than the print or CD-ROM versions. The period covered is shorter, however, starting at 1993,

I notice that some SERIES are covered, e.g. IAU symposia (but not IAU colloquia).

The original idea behind ISI's Citations indexes was to use an article in hand to find more papers on the same topic by searching for articles that have one or more of the same references. Citation indexes are also used to determine how often a particular article is cited and by whom. (Don't forget though, that an article can be cited in a negative way. One of several drawbacks of using these indexes for assessment purposes.) One can still use Web of Science in those ways of course. But it is also useful as a general searching tool.

Web of Science is easy to use, has a good help system and has lots of extras that other databases don't have such as a list of journals covered, definitions, etc.

(Note re dates: Science Citation Index has 10-year print cumulations going back to 1945. There's nothing online before 1974, and no citation indexing anywhere before 1945.)

The following notes and tips are arranged roughly by screen, as you see them when using the database.

Screen One (title)

• Choose full search.

Screen Two ('full search')

• Choose a time period. The time period attached to an article is that in which it is INDEXED, not that in which is received, so it it is best to choose a span of time later than that in which you are interested.
• Note that if you want to select one or more specific years, you must mark TWO button here; "year selection" and the year(s) in question.
• You must also choose 'cited search' or 'general search', depending on the strategy you are going to use (i.e. look for citations to articles or do a general keyword search).

Screen Three A ('general search')

• Full boolean capabilities available; 'same' can be used to constrain terms to the same field e.g. title.
• Author- if you don't have two initials use * (truncation).
• Journal source- use full name even though the display is an abbreviation; see list (no boolean is allowed here). It is important to check this carefully, for example, ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS contains the word 'and', but the supplement has '&' in it instead.
• Address is a useful tool for narrowing an indefinite author search. You must enter the term as the author uses it, though- no easy trick. Truncation is a definite boon here, so is the operator 'same' which seems to refers to the same line in this context. Don't forget that a parent organization or sub-department might be used by the author, rather than the term you have in mind.
• You may constrain the results to a particular language and/or document type and sort them in various ways. (see bottom of screen)

Screen Three B ('cited reference search')

• A big advantage to the online version of the Citation indexes is that you can search by second author, but only if that article is, in fact, indexed in the database. To be thorough, one might better search for the paper and then use the first author for a citation search.
• One must use an abbreviation for journal name here, unlike in general search. There is a list.
• You can't search by vol. or page nos.
• Special instructions for searching for citations in a particular year.

Screen Four (RESULTS)

• Once you have found your article(s) you may jump directly to the references in it, if they are in this database. Note that "cited reference" at the head or a particular article refers to the references IN that article, not articles that cite it. Articles dated prior to 1993 will be listed here but will not be in the database in the sense of being a full record, searchable etc.
• You can also search for "related records", i.e. ones which share references with the one on screen. These articles are displayed in order of number of shared references, highest first.
• For citation searching, don't forget that typing, scanning and other types of errors are made- there might be more than one 'form of entry' of the single article or author that you are using. Check any similar looking hits before clicking on "search" on the next screen- especially if they are not hot linked. (Don't forget that an author's initials might be misstyped or missing altogether.)
• You cannot download the results as text in one step, nor email them. If the list is short the best way to save the results might be to drag and drop them from the browser screen to a word processing file. Otherwise, mark one or more of the records individually, or click the 'mark all' button; then click the submit button. Once you have done that, a "Marked List" button appears at the top of the screen. Go there, then select "Format for Print", then select "File", then "Save As" etc.
• You can also download them into reference manager software (don't forget to mark and "submit" records before leaving the page and following subsequent instructions.)

How to do a cited reference search limited to a specific year

1. From the Welcome screen choose "Full Search"

2. From the next screen choose "Year selection" and then mark the box for, let us say, 1997; also, mark the box for "Science Citation Index"; from the same screen click on the button for "Cited Ref Search" (Note that you have to mark BOTH the year and "Year Selection".)

3. From the next screen enter the name of the cited author in the cited author window; as an example try "davies d"; click on the "Lookup" button.

4. At the top of the next screen you will notice "58 references matched query." This is where it begins to get confusing. The number 58 does not refer to the number of papers in the 1997 database citing papers by D. Davies nor does it refer to the number of papers published by D. Davies in 1997.

What the number 58 does indicate is the number of papers written by D. Davies that have been cited by authors in ALL years in the database -- not just 1997.

The display of hits makes this doubly confusing. The hits displayed are from the Cited Reference field of the database. They are cited refs of Davies' papers. Next to each is the number of papers citing them in ALL years available, not just 1997. To perform the actual search for all the papers citing Davies' papers in 1997 you must go one step further and search on each of the hits displayed. You would:

5. Hit the "Select All" button; when the boxes for each reference are marked, you would hit the "Next 10" button. From the next list you would hit the "Select All" button, and then the "Next 10" and so on until all 58 references had been marked.

6. Having selected all 58 references, you then hit the "Search" button. Only now will the system compile a list of all papers citing D. Davies for 1997.

7. The next screen will be a list of all papers citing papers by D. Davies in 1997. You will notice that there is no total number of references listed at the top of the screen. To get the total number of papers published in 1997 citing papers by D. Davies you must move to the bottom left hand corner of the screen. There you will see the statement, "139 of 923591 documents matched the query." What this means is that 139 papers published in 1997 cited papers by D. Davies.

This does seem like an impractical and roundabout way to get something so basic to the way the database is used. But I did call ISI about this and was assured that this was the only way to get a citation count.