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Generative AI Features in Major Databases & Platforms

Learn about Generative AI-powered features currently available to the Rutgers University Libraries community in major e-resources databases and platforms.

Web of Science Smart Search

Web of Science has introduced a new search mode, Smart Search, that incorporates generative AI features. Smart Search may be used to search only within the Web of Science Core Collection or within all of Rutgers' Web of Science databases simultaneously. Traditional Web of Science searching remains available as Advanced Search. To access Smart Search, select Smart Search in the Web of Science menu bar:

Web of Science Smart Search screen displaying a search box where you can enter your query. The Smart Search link in the menu bar is circled.

Smart Search allows you to search for Web of Science documents and/or researchers using the same search box. You may enter keywords or a natural language query into Smart Search. As you type, Smart Search will try to predict what you are typing and will offer autocomplete suggestions. In addition to searching in English, you may search in additional languages, including Arabic, traditional and simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Your search results will display in the language you use to search, with article titles and abstracts automatically translated.

When you run your search, Smart Search analyzes the query using natural language processing in order to produce the query it runs against the Web of Science database(s). For the documents search, it constructs and runs 2 queries: 1) a Boolean query using AND/OR/NOT operators; 2) a semantic query that expands your search using additional terms with similar meanings. Because your query will be both used in a Boolean search and a semantic search, you may receive the best results if you enter a few carefully chosen keywords rather than a lengthy sentence, as all the words in your query will be converted into search terms, so extra words may unhelpfully narrow your results. Both the document and researcher results are ranked using an AI-powered algorithm.

The results page allows you to toggle between Documents and Researchers sections:

Web of Science Smart Search results page. The query is in the search box at the top of the page, and the results display below it. There are tabs for Documents and Researchers results.

 

Each document results includes a co-citation map, which is an interactive visual graph that shows how the paper is connected to others through shared citations. In the Documents section, you may use the "Preferred Search Results" dropdown to limit your results to 1) Semantic and Boolean results; 2) Boolean results alone; 3) Semantic results alone. Note that some articles might have been retrieved by both the Semantic and Boolean searches and thus may or may not appear when the Boolean or Semantic filters are used.

Web of Science Smart Search results section--the Preferred Search Results dropdown has been selected, and we can see 3 options: 1) Combined Semantic and Boolean, 2) Boolean, and 3) Semantic.

User interactions with Smart Search are not used for training.

Please see the Web of Science Release Notes and Smart Search Help Page for information about updates to Smart Search.