Skip to Main Content

Research Process

These pages offer an introduction to the research process at a very general level.

Web of Knowledge

The Web of Knowledge database allows you to track article citations, popularity of topics, major authors in a subject area, and much more. By tracking the amount of times an article has been cited by other scholars you are able to see which article has had the most impact on a particular field of research. These high impact articles are what you want to include in a literature review or an annotated bibliography. Looking at high impact articles will also allow you to discern the authors that consistently publish high impact articles (thus, major authors in the research field) and journals that consistently publish high impact articles (thus, major journals in the research field).

Click the link below to access the database:

For additional guidance, review the following:

Searching Web of Knowledge

To conduct a keyword search in Web of Knowledge, connect to the database through the NU Library's A-Z Database page. Next, select the letter 'W' and click on the link for Web of Knowledge. You will be directed to the Basic Search page for Web of Knowledge. 

 

In the search above, I typed my keyword search for literacy AND "elementary school" AND intervention. I kept my search open to 'All Fields.' However, clicking on the drop-down menu allows you to select the following search field options: Topic, Title, Author, Publication Titles, Year Published, Affiliation, Publisher, and more. Searching my keywords in All Fields will search every one of these fields listed. However, if I wanted to narrow my search, I could select Topic and search within that specific field. 

Search results are organized by Relevance. However, if you're interested in viewing the highly cited articles, select the sorting drop-down menu and choose 'Citations: Highest First' as your sorting option. Selecting this option will sort the results to highlight the articles that have been cited the most. See images below. 

 

Web of Knowledge provides users with access to author profiles. These profiles include a list of the author's publications and citing information. The profiles also include the author's metrics and citation network. To search for an author profile, select the 'Authors' tab from the main search page. 

 

 

There are two ways to search for authors. 

  1. Search by author name.

 

2. Search by author identifier, such as ORCID number or Web of Science ResearcherID

 

 

The example below displays an author profile conducted via name search. 

 

 

If an author profile is available, the search will open directly onto the author's profile page. If not, you will be directed to a search results page. 

 

In Web of Knowledge, searching for cited references is also a possibility. Click on the 'Cited References' tab to use this search functionality. 

Use the search fields to enter the relevant information to find the cited reference. Please see the example below. In addition to these search options, you can also search by Cited Work (or Publication Name), Cited DOI, Cited Volume, Cited Issue, and Cited Pages.

 

Once you have entered the reference information, click on the purple Search button to be directed to the search results. Please see the example below. This will include the cited reference information and a link to review the reference's citing articles. 

Was this resource helpful?