A citation index compiles the cited references of journal articles. Levy Library provides three international citation indexes from the Web of Science: the Science Citation Index Expanded, the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index. These can be searched separately or together.

Mount Sinai users should access Web of Science from the Library's home page on the left sidebar under Key Resources, or from the Library's Databases page under the category Impact Factors and Cited Reference Searching.

To Find Citations to an Article or Author

Web of Science is most useful when you have a particular article or author in mind and want to find other papers that refer to that article or author.

Enter the cited author's last name and first initial, followed immediately by an asterisk (*) in the Author search box.

If desired, also enter the full journal title (not an abbreviation) of the cited publication and the publication year.

Click Search.

On the Results page, you'll see one or more citations that match your search terms.

Click the linked Times Cited number to see the list of articles that cite this one.

Click on the linked article title to see more information, including links to Related Records and the References from this article.

If you don't find the article you're looking for, you might be able to find it using a Cited Reference Search.

To Search for Articles about a Topic:

Web of Science contains articles about a huge number of topics, but there are no subject headings to control a search for a topic with many synonyms or contexts; e.g. a search for depression may return articles about psychological depression, tropical depressions and the Great Depression, without returning articles about Dysthymia or Bipolar Disorder.

To search for a topic, make sure to first select Topic from the drop down menus (rather than Author or Periodical Title).

Use the word OR to include synonyms and related terms; e.g. leprosy OR Hansen's Disease

Use an asterisk (*) to truncate your search terms; e.g. resistan* will retrieve articles with the words resistant or resistance in their titles or abstracts.

Select only one or two citation indexes instead of searching all three, if your topic clearly fits into one subject area (e.g. Science, not Social Science, Arts or Humanities).

Sort your results by the number of Times Cited to see the most influential articles on this topic.

Click Analyze Results to see the records in your list grouped by author, institution, source title and more. This enables you to see who is conducting research in this area and where it is being published.

Click on the linked article title to see the full record for the article.

Click the number next to References to view this article's bibliography.

Click the number next to Times Cited to see who has cited this article. Click view related records to see a list of articles that share references with this one.

Click the yellow Levy Library FIND IT button to connect to full-text options for this article.

See our Web of Science Cited Reference Searching guide.

Web of Science provides its own training and support at http://www.isiwebofknowledge.com/.

Librarians are available to support your research. For help with a search or to schedule individual assistance please call (212) 241-7204 or Ask a Librarian.

PDF version

last updated April 2009