New Web of Knowledge Platform

Detail of new platform.

As of July 17, all Web of Knowledge databases -- including Web of Science, Biosis Preview, and Medline -- will switch to a new default platform.  The new platform will have a gray background, which will be easily distinguished from the soon-to-be old platform's bright green background.

The new platform will include additional search features, such as: (i) left-hand truncation, (ii) elimination of "stop words" list, (iii) "near" searches, and (iv) lemmatization.

Lemmatization option.

What will this mean for people using W of K databases? First, left-handed truncation means you will be able to use a search term like "*phosphate" to search for "monophosphate," "triphosphate," etc.  Second, the database will no long ignore common "stop words,"  like "a," "b," and "of," so you can search for a phrase like "vitamin a" without the database automatically eliminating the "a" from your search.  Third, after  turning on the "lemmatization" feature, a search for "mouse" would also find "mice, and a search for "run" would also include "running" and "ran." Note: this feature is turned on or off by a small, easy-to-over-look drop-down menu at the bottom left of the search screen. Fourth, if you type in a search term like "glia near/5 skeletal" the database will search for articles in which the term "glia" is within five words or the term "skeletal."

Button to preview new platform.

Until July 17, users can preview the new platform by from any W of K database by clicking the "Discover the new Web of Knowledge" button in the upper right corner of the screen.  This button takes you to a web page with a large orange button towards its top, which  when click takes you to the new platform.

After July 17,the current platform (identified by the green background) will become the "secondary" platform, which you will still be able to access at webofknowledgev4.com until the end of the calendar year.

For information about additional features of the new platform, see the Thompson Reuters page describing them.