Abstracts

English-language abstracts written by the author are included in the Science Citation Index Expanded (1991 forward), Social Sciences Citation Index (1992 forward), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (2000 forward), Chem Sciences Citation Index (1991 forward), BioSciences Citation Index (1991 forward), and the Clinical Medicine Citation Index (1991 forward) for all articles where one is provided with the original publication. The full text of the abstract can be searched, viewed, printed, and exported.

Author Name Data For source records, ISI captures (enters into our database) the complete last names and up to 5 initials of each author. For cited references, ISI captures a maximum of 18 characters (up to 15 characters for the last name, a space, and two initials) of the first listed author. However, during data years 1965 to 1974, source author names were captured with a maximum of 11 characters: eight character last names, followed by a space or a period (if truncated), and up to two initials. If the length of the last name permitted, more than two initials were captured. For example, source authors were captured during 1965-1974 like this: A. Johnston was captured as JOHNSTON A D.E. Hofstadter was captured as HOFSTADT.DE A. Rodriguez was captured as RODRIGUE.A A. Rodrigues was captured as RODRIGUE.A G.E.P. Box was captured as BOX GEP Searching for an Author Regardless of the differing lengths of author names explained above, enter the full last name of the author when searching (if you know it); the Web of Science search engine will automatically adjust for data variations. Refer to the help on author searching (on the General Search page, Cited References Search page, or Easy Search page) for search rules and examples. Search Results The only possible false hits occur in the data years 1965-1974 if the first eight characters of the last name searched are the same as the first eight characters of another author's last name. For example: If you perform a general search for the author JOHNSTONE B, you will find all the works by JOHNSTONE B. However, for data years 1965-1974, you will also find all the works by authors where the first eight characters of the last name match. That is, you will also find records in which an author is listed in the source record as JOHNSTON.B (this name was truncated to eight characters), who may or may not be the same author, and as JOHNSTON B (this name exactly eight characters). If you perform a cited reference search for the author CHRISTIANSEN C, you will find all the cited works by CHRISTIANSEN C. However, for data years 1965-1974, you will also find cited works where the first eight characters of a truncated last name match. That is, you will also find records in which a secondary author is listed in the source record as CHRISTIA.C (this name was truncated to eight characters), who may or may not be the same author. Note: For data years 1965-1974, while the Cited Reference Selection page may display the full name of the primary author (up to 15 characters) the full record will display the data from the source record, which may have a shortened version of the name (up to 11 characters). For secondary authors, both the Cited Reference Selection page and the full record will display the data from the source record, which may have the shortened version of the name (up to 11 characters).

Since many of the articles covered in the Citation Databases cite non-periodical literature such as books, you can perform Cited Reference Searches on book titles. You should identify a book by entering the name of the first listed author in the Cited Author field and the abbreviated first word or words of the title in the Cited Work field. If you are not sure if or how a word has been abbreviated, enter the first few letters of the word, followed by an asterisk. For example, to search for records of articles that cite Edith Hamilton's book Mythology, you might enter HAMILTON E* in the Cited Author field and MYTH* in the Cited Work field. This search would find the work whether or not its title has been abbreviated.

Since some of the articles covered in the Science Citation Index Expanded database cite patents, you can perform Cited Reference Searches on patents. Enter the patent's first author in the Cited Author field or the patent number in the Cited Work field. For example, to find the 1912 U.S. patent number 1030304 by H. Hollerith, you could enter 1030304 in the Cited Work field. Note: If you also subscribe to Derwent Innovations Index and the patent is included in the Derwent database, the patents listed on the Cited References Selection page will be linked to the full patent record in Derwent Innovations Index. View the Derwent Innovations Index product page for more information (this link opens a new browser window).

Authors sometimes provide a list of keywords or terms that they feel best represent the content of their paper. These keywords are contained in the ISI record (1991 data forward, depending on the database) for each article and are searchable. In addition, ISI generates KeyWords Plus for many articles. KeyWords Plus are words or phrases that frequently appear in the titles of an article's references, but do not necessarily appear in the title of the article itself. KeyWords Plus may be present for articles that have no author keywords, or may include important terms not listed among the title, abstract, or author keywords.

Records in the ISI database include a document type indicator that categorizes articles using content/format categories such as Article, Book Review, Editorial, Letter, Correction. You may limit your search by selecting a single document type or group of document types. To select more than one item in a list, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) each item. The default selection is all document types. Document types are: Art Exhibit Review Article Bibliography Biographical-Item Book Review Chronology Correction, Addition Dance Performance Review Database Review Discussion Editorial Excerpt Fiction, Creative Prose Film Review Hardware Review Item About An Individual    Letter Meeting Abstract Music Performance Review Music Score Music Score Review News Item Note Poetry Press Digest Record Review Reprint Review, Bibliography Script Software Review Theater Review TV Review, Radio Review, Video Review

Records in the ISI database include a language indicator that categorizes articles by the language in which they are written, with articles in more than one language categorized as Multilanguage. You may limit your search by selecting a single language or a list of languages. To select more than one item in a list, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) each item. The default selection is all languages. Languages are: Afrikaans Arabic Bengali Bulgarian Byelorussian Catalan Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Finnish Flemish French Gaelic    Galician Georgian German Greek Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Italian Japanese Korean Latin Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Multilanguage Norwegian    Persian Polish Portuguese Provencal Rumanian Russian Serbian Serbo-Croatian Slovak Slovene Spanish Swedish Turkish Ukrainian Welsh

The question mark ( ? ) and asterisk ( * ) characters are called wildcards because they can be included in a search term to represent unknown characters. The question mark represents any single character. The asterisk represents any group of characters, including no characters. Wildcards can be used in any Easy Search, General Search, or Cited Reference Search field, as long as you observe the following restrictions (refer to the help for those specific pages for more specific information and examples): Wildcards may be used within and at the ends of search terms, but not at the beginning (e.g., SUL*UR and BIOLOG* are allowed, but not *NATAL). The asterisk wildcard must be preceded by at least three letters in the Topic field on the General Search page, when peforming an Easy Seach for a topic or for articles about a person, or in the Cited Work field on the Cited Reference Search page. For example, BIO* is allowed, but not B* or BI*. Note that the number of characters required before the asterisk is configurable and may be different at your site. Only two wildcards can be used within a single word, and when two wildcards are used, the word will be truncated after the second wildcard. Asterisk (*) Examples At ends of terms: You can use the asterisk to replace the end of a word when you want to search for all possible endings of a given root. For example, enter BIOLOG* to search for words that start with BIOLOG and end with any character or group of characters (e.g., BIOLOGY, BIOLOGIST, BIOLOGISTS, BIOLOGICAL). You can use the asterisk after an author's first initial to search for the name if you don't know the other initials, or whether the author has more than one initial. For example, enter KELLOG S* to search for works by authors whose last name is KELLOG, whose first name starts with an S, and who may or may not have other initials (e.g., KELLOG S, KELLOG SA, KELLOG, STA). You can use the asterisk in the SOURCE TITLE or CITED WORK fields when you do not know an exact journal title. For example, enter COMPUT* to search for journals whose titles begin with words such as COMPUTE, COMPUTER, COMPUTERS, COMPUTING, COMPUTATION, COMPUTATIONAL, COMPUTATIONS. In the middle of terms: You can use the asterisk in the middle of terms to search for terms that have alternate spellings. For example, enter SUL*UR to search for SULPHUR or SULFUR. You can use the asterisk in the middle of an author's name when you are unsure of the spelling. For example, enter HOF*MAN to search for HOFMAN or HOFFMAN. Use the asterisk wildcard carefully so that it does not broaden your search more than you intend. Very broad searches not only take time, they may return many more records than you are willing to look through. For example, entering CELL* as a search term in the Topic field when no other search values are used will retrieve any record in the selected database(s) containing any word starting with CELL in the title, keyword, or abstract field. The resulting list will be huge. Using this Topic search term in conjunction with an author name and perhaps a source title would result in a more effective, well-focused search. Question Mark (?) Examples At ends of terms: You can use the question mark to search for variant single letter endings. For example, enter BARTHOLD? to search for BARTHOLDY or BARTHOLDI. In the middle of terms: You can use the question mark to search for variant spellings. For example, enter EN?OBLAST to search for ENDOBLAST and ENTOBLAST.

Search operators are special words you can include in search fields to indicate logical relationships between multiple terms. For example, you can search for jointly authored articles by putting both author names in the General Search Author field, joined by the logical operator AND (e.g., JONES CR AND SMITH CW). Search operators must be separated from other items in a search field by either spaces or angle brackets. For example, APPLES AND ORANGES is a valid search. The search operators supported by the Citation Databases are: AND - all terms joined by AND must occur in the field for a record to be selected OR - any one of the terms joined by OR must occur in the field for a record to be selected NOT - the term following NOT must be absent from the field for the record to be selected. SAME - the terms joined by SAME must occur within the same sentence (where sentence is understood to be a period-delimited string) for the record to be selected. (Note: In Keywords and Keywords Plus, both terms must occur within the same keyword phrase – not simply the entire list.) SENT - (identical to the SAME operator) the terms joined by SENT must occur within the same sentence (where sentence is understood to be a period-delimited string) for the record to be selected. Use only the listed operators in the following fields on the Easy Search, General Search, and Cited Reference Search pages: Easy Search - Topic - AND, OR, NOT, SAME, SENT Easy Search - Person - AND, OR, NOT Easy Search - Place - AND, OR, NOT, SAME, SENT General Search - Topic - AND, OR, NOT, SAME, SENT General Search - Author - AND, OR, NOT General Search - Source Title - OR General Search - Address - AND, OR, NOT, SAME, SENT Cited Reference Search - Cited Author - OR Cited Reference Search - Cited Work - OR Cited Reference Search - Cited Year - OR You may use more than one search operator in a field. For example, you could enter AIDS OR HIV OR ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME OR HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS in the General Search Topic field to search for records containing any one of these words or phrases. If you use several different operators in the same field, you should use parentheses to indicate which operators should be evaluated first. Without parentheses, operators are evaluated in the following order, from highest to lowest precedence: SAME and SENT NOT AND OR Since NOT is evaluated before AND or OR, you will need to use parentheses in any search expression where you want AND or OR to be evaluated first. For example, if you wanted to search for all records containing the word SUICIDE, but not records containing either the phrase DOCTOR-ASSISTED or PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED, you would enter SUICIDE NOT (DOCTOR-ASSISTED OR PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED) in the General Search Topic field. The parentheses indicate that the OR operator should be evaluated first. Examples: AND Enter GORBACHEV AND YELTSIN to search for records containing both words. OR Enter GORBACHEV OR YELTSIN to search for records containing either GORBACHEV or YELTSIN, including those records that contain both terms. NOT Enter GORBACHEV NOT YELTSIN to search for records containing GORBACHEV but not containing YELTSIN. SAME Enter GORBACHEV SAME YELTSIN to search for records containing the words GORBACHEV and YELTSIN in the same sentence. Note that the order in which these words appear is not dictated by the SAME operator. OPERATOR COMBINATIONS Enter (HONEY BEE* OR HONEYBEE* OR APIS MELLIFERA) SAME DANC* to search for records containing any one of the words or phrases in parenthesis (e.g., HONEY BEE, HONEY BEES, HONEYBEE, HONEYBEES, APIS MELLIFERA) in the same sentence as any word beginning with the letters DANC (e.g. DANCE, DANCES, DANCING).