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Web of Science

Guide to using Web of Science, a multidisciplinary citation database

Using BIOSIS Citation Index

BIOSIS Citation Index offers several unique options for searching, including various taxonomical data terms and concept headings.

biosis citation index search options

What's unique about BIOSIS databases?

The BIOSIS family of databases - video from Clarivate.

Search fields

Searching for a topic: Selecting Topic searches a number of fields including the title, abstract, concepts, and the data tables.
Taxonomic data: This searches the fields Super Taxa, Taxa Notes, Organism Classifier, Organism Name, Variant Details.
Clicking on the Search Tool will allow you to browse the Super Taxa hierarchy
Major concepts: These are headings which describe the focus of the article. There are less than 200 Major Concept phrases and clicking on the Search Tool allows you to browse and select from a list.
Concept codes: These are more detailed headings regarding the subject area of the article. There are less than 600 concept codes, and you can also search the index by clicking on the Search Tool.
Identifying codes: This is a numerical field to search for ISSN, ISBN, patent number/class/date, or accession number
Taxa notes: This displays a drop-down menu to select common terms for organisms.