Five Tips for Literature Retrieval and Analysis in Web of Science
October 31,2023 Features
Written by Alice BAO, Library
Edited by CHEN Chen, Library
GONG Weifan, Library
Updated 1540 CST Oct 31, 2023
Edited by CHEN Chen, Library
GONG Weifan, Library
Updated 1540 CST Oct 31, 2023
01 Basic Retrieval
You can search by keywords, titles, authors, publication names, DOI numbers, etc. to retrieve specific research topics, papers published by a particular author/institution, or literature published in specific journals or years.

For example, to retrieve research papers on economics published in the last five years, set the topic as "Economics" and the time span as "Last 5 years," then click the "Retrieve" button, as shown below:

02 Refining Search Results
When facing a large number of search results, it is essential to refine them to quickly identify which papers to read first and gain an understanding of the subject, literature types, authors, institutions, countries, etc. In the "Refine results" column, you can refine the results based on publication year, document type, subject category, country, institution, etc.
For example, when reading review articles related to the topic, you can quickly understand the research content and progress in the field by selecting "REVIEW" in the document type and clicking "Refine."

Using the refine search results feature enables you to quickly narrow down the literature of interest and improve research efficiency.
03 Finding Highly Cited Papers on a Specific Study
In Web of Science, you can easily view the citation count of a paper and identify highly cited papers by sorting the results based on "Times Cited." The sorting options in the toolbar above the search results allow you to sort based on citation count, time, author, journal, etc.

Additionally, in the refined search results list, you can directly select highly cited papers and hot papers in the field.


04 Analyzing the Overall Development Trends of Research Topics
By clicking the "Analyse results" button in the literature results retrieval interface, you can analyze the retrieved literature.

Analyzing the publication years can reveal the publication trends of papers related to the topic and help determine the development stages of the research topic.

Furthermore, you can analyze the authors in the search results to discover productive researchers in the field, choose peer reviewers, identify potential collaborators, or track the publications of influential researchers.

You can also perform institution analysis, country/region analysis, etc., to identify universities and research institutions with high output in the field, facilitating collaboration and discovering research institutions worth further exploration.

05 Accurately Checking the Citation Status of a Paper
Sometimes, you may need to check the citation status of a specific paper. In the search options, select "Cited Reference Search" and use the first author's name, article title, cited year, etc., to retrieve the citation information.


These are five useful tips for using Web of Science. Of course, there are many more techniques to explore, which we will continue to share in future posts.