Getting the Most Out of Web of Science: Wildcards

Wildcards are symbols used in place of letters or words to help you broaden your search.  Here's how they work:

• The asterisk (*) represents any group of characters, including no character. It is best for using with the root of your term.

Examples:

• The question mark (?) represents any single character. It is especially good for finding the American and British variation of your term.

Examples

• The dollar sign ($) represents zero or one character. It can find American and British variations or the plural form of your term.

Examples

To find out more about this search technique in Web of Science, take a look at the help page about Wildcards.

Some tips for using wildcards in Web of Science:

• When searching in the topic or title fields, a wildcard must be preceeded by at least three characters.


• A wildcard can never be the first character in a search term.


• Wildcards can't be used in the publication year field.

You can also use more than one wildcard at a time.

Example: