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Biotechnology Information Center Home

For Maximum Retrievals in the Agricultural / Biological / Medical Sciences, Search Web of Knowledge.

Recently the Web of Knowledge search platform was revamped, so that now, when you search "all databases", the records are automatically de-duplicated. If the record of interest is in multiple databases (as they frequently are), the default will be to show the Web of Science record for it if it is in Web of Science. In the case of a record that is present in multiple databases, there will be links to other versions of the record from the Web of Science record, in case you prefer to see the record as presented in another database.

Searching Web of Knowledge in the "all databases" searches the following resources, simultaneously:

From the results in the table below, you can see that you will get more search retrievals from searching the whole Web of Knowledge database, than from searching any of the individual databases.

Recommendation: Search Web of Knowledge in the "All Databases" mode UNLESS you need to:

  • Set up a email search alert. These can not be set to run across "all" the databases, so you will need to set them up in each individual database. Since Web of Science is updated weekly, it's recommended that you start by setting up topical or table of contents alerts from it. Depending on your topic, you'll want to set up alerts in other databases, too.
  • Run a cited reference search. Use Web of Science -- it is the only database running under the Web of Knowledge platform that has this feature.
  • Create a Citation Report, which includes the h-index. For this, you need to search Web of Science in the general search (not cited reference) mode.
  • Find the Impact Factor for a journal. A link to this option is only available from searches run in the Web of Science database. Searches run in the "All Databases" mode of searching will not display this link. Of course, you can still look up the journal's impact factor by directly searching Journal Citation Reports.
  • Use some of the search handles that are specific to particular databases, e.g., Medline's MESH (Medical subject headings), CAB's descriptors, Biological Abstracts' Concept Codes, etc.
  • Export keywords, subject headings, and other database-specific information into EndNote or RefWorks. When you export records from an All Databases Web of Knowledge search, only the bibliographic information (author, title, citation) and the abstract will be exported.

Note: Many ag / bio / medical resources are NOT included in the Web of Knowledge platform, and, for now, you will need to continue to search them individually. For example:

Searched: 2/5/08:

 
biofuel*
"Brassica rapa"
"ion channels*"

"Apis mellifera" or honeybee* or
"honey bee*"
"neuronal plasticity"
aging and osteoporosis
"open access" and publishing
Web of Science, 1970- 1,922 1,051 18,312 12,109 2,296 1,247 184
Biological Abstracts, 1926- 613 1,871 11,105 12,949 1,689 945 26
CAB Abstracts, 1910- 2,318 1,517 1,329 29.968 35 153 5
Food Science & Technology Abstracts, 1969- 51 93 21 188 2 6 0
Medline (=PubMed), 1950-  259 451 34,052 5,861 19,756 2,835 210
Zoological Record, 1864- 10 132 458 10,113 57 4 1
Web of Knowledge – search all of the above databases, simultaneously 4,070 3,183 48,143 41,344 17,039 4,425 360
 
   

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  |  University Library
Biotechnology Information Center (BIC)
Send a note to: Katie Newman, Biotechnology Librarian
Page updated: Tuesday, 22-Apr-2008 15:56:26 CDT KN