Narrowing your topic
What you enter into the database search bar shapes what you will find. If you enter in a term like depression, you'll get a ton of results, but it may be hard to sort through everything. Try combining topics to get more targeted results.
Examples: depression AND gender; depression AND "socio-economic status," etc
Finding older articles that have been cited many times
Web of Science will show you the connections between articles, including how many times each one has been cited / which ones are the "hot papers" in the field.
For example:
- click the box next to "highly cited papers" on the left of your search results (this will only appear if you have a lot of results)
- narrow your search to see oldest first, and you can see older papers and their connections, which can help you get a more historical view of your topic
(Note: depending on your topic, the oldest papers may or may not go back too far.)
Finding journal information
Click on the title of a journal if it is hyperlinked. In Web of Science, this will show you more information about the journal's impact, which can give you a better sense of how influential it is (or not).
Finding related articles
Click on an article's title to see if the database has assigned "related," or "suggested" articles. Sometimes this can help you unearth material you might not have otherwise found.
