Database-specific search engine
Licensed
Broad spectrum healthcare
Broad spectrum related/other fields
Related areas e.g. biochemistry, toxicology.
Journal articles
Primarily articles from scientific journals, small proportion of articles from newspapers, magazines and newsletters.
Broad spectrum of research designs
International
English
Multiple interface languages
Spanish
English preset, nine languages in total.
English
Daily
Monday through Friday.
- Differences to the freely available MEDLINE via PubMed: More advanced use of search techniques, citation searching and export of all hits at once only possible up to a maximum of 1000 hits (larger numbers of hits must be exported one after the other).
Basic functions
Search functions
AND, OR, NOT and SAME. The operator SAME only works in the address field to find different terms in the same search field that a hit must contain, information on this can be found here: Link. In other search fields, its use is identical to the AND operator.
?(replaces exactly one character) , $ (replaces zero or one character), *(replaces zero, one or more characters).
NEAR/n; n is to be replaced with the number of words within which the terms may be located in relation to each other.
Simultaneous use of wildcards and quotation marks possible.
By using the "Topic" search field, the title, abstract and the free text terms specified by the authors of the publications are searched.
E.g. Author, Publication date, Document type.
Filter functions
Can be narrowed down to the exact year.
"Research Areas".
E.g. Article, Review, Book.
E.g. by Authors, Publishers and Open Access.
In the left-hand section of the hit list, you can limit or exclude publications with certain properties.
Display of search results
Publication date, oldest hits first or "Recently added".
By first author, alphabetically ascending or descending.
Alphabetically ascending or descending.
E.g. citation frequency (ascending and descending) or according to the most recent indexing.
Display of 10, 25 and 50 hits per page possible.
Search process and export
Individual components of the search history can be deleted and/or combined with each other (AND, OR). The operator NOT must be manually written to the search history via "Edit" (to do this, combine two entries with AND or OR and then manually replace them with NOT).
Via e-mail and/or RSS feed.
Individually or in blocks with a maximum of 1000 hits at once.
Support functions
E.g. saving the search and/or creating automatic notifications of newly indexed hits.
If a closing quotation mark has been forgotten, for open brackets and operators without an associated search term.
Special functions
Important search commands
The search term is searched for in the title, abstract and index terms of the publication specified by the authors.
Search term is only searched for in the title.
Search term is only searched in publications with participation from a specific country.
Web of Science uses the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), a directory of all scientific journals with an impact factor. The journals in the JCR are divided into scientific disciplines ("Research Areas") (e.g. Geriatrics & Gerontology or Psychiatry). By using the search command SU you can search for publications in journals of corresponding scientific disciplines.
Controlled vocabulary
The index terms used by MEDLINE are referred to as MeSH Terms. These are listed on an independent page, the MeSH Browser, in a hierarchical tree structure. In this browser, search terms can be entered directly into a search field and checked for the presence of adequate MeSH terms (also known as descriptors). It is recommended to search for suitable MeSH terms for each search term individually and independently of each other.
In addition to superordinate MeSH terms and subordinate MeSH terms, subheadings (also known as qualifiers) are also assigned to each individual MeSH term (regardless of whether they are superordinate or subordinate). These are subcategories of the respective MeSH term. They are used to further specify or narrow down the search. Some of the subheadings are also organized hierarchically.
The subheadings are entered as follows: Mesh term/name of the subheading or MeSH term/abbreviation for subheading.
An overview of all subheadings that can be used in MEDLINE and their abbreviations can be found here: Link.
A list with the hierarchical arrangement of the subheadings can be found here: Link.
Not all subheadings are assigned to every MeSH term.
Example:
MeSH Term: Diabetes Mellitus
Superordinate MeSH term: Endocrine System Diseases
Possible subordinate MeSH terms: Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2
Possible diabetes-related subheadings: diagnosis (DI), rehabilitation (RH), therapy (TH)
Diabetes with subheading diagnosis: Diabetes Mellitus/diagnosis or Diabetes Mellitus/DI
MEDLINE via Web of Science also has a search for MeSH terms integrated on the page itself. The MeSH terms and their super- and narrower terms can be found by clicking on "[Thesaurus]" behind "MeSH Heading" on the right-hand side of the "Advanced Search" screen. Here you must primarily search for an index term. In addition, superordinate and narrower terms of index terms can be searched for and added to the search using the bar at the bottom of the screen.
The procedure described is only intended to find suitable MeSH terms with the MeSH Browser in order to use them together with the other search terms in a search string in the Web of Science interface. When entering subheadings, the short form also specified in the MeSH Browser must not be used, as otherwise an error message will appear during the search process. The longer form must therefore always be entered (e.g. diagnosis instead of DI).
Switch to the MeSH browser page: Link.
You should first set which hits are to be searched for. The following options can be selected for this:
- "Main Heading (Descriptor) Terms": Search for MeSH terms
- "Qualifier Terms": Search for subheadings
- "Supplementary Concept Record Terms": Search for (chemical) substances that are not listed in the MeSH terms
- "All Terms": Search for all entries named above The other options are very specific and can generally be neglected. For most literature searches, the setting "Main Heading (Descriptor) Terms" is recommended if you want to search for specific MeSH terms, especially as the associated subheadings of a MeSH term found can also be displayed later if desired.
You can then choose between two basic search settings directly to the right of the search field:
- "FullWord Search": searches for MeSH terms in which the search term entered represents the entire word (leads to fewer but more precise hits)
- "SubString Search": Searches for MeSH terms in which the search term entered only maps part of the word (leads to more, but less precise hits) As a MeSH term that matches as closely as possible should be found, the "FullWord Search" setting is a good choice. Only if no hits can be found with this setting and after exhausting the three options described in the next step should the "SubStringSearch" setting be selected. An exception is if it is already known that the search term entered is part of several words and these words (or the MeSH terms for these words) should also be found. In this case, the "SubStringSearch" setting is recommended right from the start.
The selected search setting can then be additionally specified by clicking on one of the following three buttons to the right of the setting in the previous step. This also starts the actual search process:
- "Exact Match": finds MeSH terms that exactly match the search term entered, regardless of whether they are superordinate or subordinate MeSH terms (leads to a single, but very precise hit)
- "All Fragments": finds MeSH Terms that contain the entered search term as part of the word (leads to more, but less precise hits)
- "Any Fragment": finds MeSH Terms that contain at least part of the entered search term as part of the word (leads to even more, but less precise hits) Since the aim is to find a MeSH Term that matches as closely as possible, it is a good idea to start by searching with "Exact Match". If no MeSH term is found, the search can be repeated with "All Fragments". If still no matches are displayed, "Any Fragment" enables an even broader search.
Depending on the search settings selected and the number of MeSH terms found, opens - a direct view of a specific, most suitable MeSH term or
- a list of potentially suitable MeSH terms found. Under "Sort by" these can be sorted either by relevance or name, and under "Results per page" the number of MeSH terms displayed per page can be set (only 20 or 1000 possible). The most suitable MeSH term can be selected from the list with a click and the direct view described above also opens.
In the direct view, general information on the respective MeSH term can be found under the "Details" tab, the subheadings assigned to the respective MeSH term under "Qualifiers" and the respective superordinate or subordinate MeSH terms in a tree view under "MeSH Tree Structures". The information under "Concepts" can generally be ignored.
MeSH terms found in this way can be entered into the PubMed search interface both on their own and in combination with associated subheadings for the actual literature search. The following search commands are available for this purpose, which can be entered in upper or lower case.
Search for all hits to which the MeSH term (or the MeSH term with a specifically entered subheading; without entering a subheading, all subheadings belonging to the MeSH term are taken into account) has been assigned, without including subordinate mesh terms. The search can be narrowed down to a specific subheading by entering / and the name of the subheading after the MeSH term.
Search for all hits to which the MeSH term (or the MeSH term with a specifically entered subheading; without entering a subheading, all subheadings belonging to the MeSH term are taken into account) has been assigned as the main term/main topic, without including subordinate mesh terms. By entering / and the name of the subheading after the MeSH term, the search can be narrowed down to a specific subheading.
Subordinate index terms are not automatically included in the search if a superordinate index term is used in the search strategy. For this purpose, the exp command must always be entered, which can be used in combination with the above two search commands and results in subordinate MeSH terms being included, if necessary with appropriately selected subheadings.
Citation searching
Backward citation searching
Forward citation searching can be carried out by clicking on the number of "Cited References" next to the respective search hit.
Forward citation searching
Forward citation searching can be carried out by clicking on "Times Cited" next to the respective search hit.
Export of results
Export of single hits
- Click on the hit to be exported.
- In the "Export" tab, select the desired file format for the export in the gray field above the hit list.
- In the window that opens, select the content or scope to be exported. Then click on "Export".
- All further steps depend on the web browser and reference management software used. Alternatively, hits can be added to the "Marked List" and then exported.
Export of all hits at once
Export of all hits (alternative)
A maximum of 1000 hits can be exported at once.
- In the "Export" tab, select the desired file format for the export in the gray field above the hit list.
- In the window that opens, select the option "Records from 1 to 1000" in the tab to include all references for the export. If necessary, select the scope of the references to be exported under "Record Content" settings. Now click on "Export".
- All further steps depend on the web browser and reference management software used. Depending on the number of hits, this procedure can be repeated until all hits have been exported. The ranges of the hit numbers in the two fields must be defined so that 1000 of the subsequent hits are always exported (e.g. first 1 to 1000, then 1001 to 1500, 1501 to 2000)...).