2. GENERAL SEARCH TIPS for citation databases Ruchareka Asavisanu Stang Mongkolsuk Library and Information Division Faculty of Science, Mahidol University http://stang.sc.mahidol.ac.th

3. Refining your search with Boolean Operators NOTES : “Help” NOTES : Different databases have different details. Check their “Help” files to find out what to use.

4. Boolean Operators And - combines search terms so that each search result contains all of the terms. For example : processor AND intel Or - combines search terms so that each search result contains at least one of the terms. For example : acetaminophen OR tylenol Not - excludes terms so that each search result does not contain any of the terms that follow it. For example : beam NOT laser AB

5. Boolean / Logical Operators George Boole Named for George Boole, an English mathematician Boolean algebra (1815-1864), who developed Boolean algebra

6. Implied Boolean Operators In some search engines + and – signs can be used as alternatives to the Boolean operators AND and NOT. Automatic "and" Queries in Google Vacation hawaii (= vacation AND hawaii) beam –laser (= beam NOT laser) Automatic Exclusion of “Common Words” Star Wars Episode +I or "Star Wars Episode I"

7. Phrases Enclosing terms in quotation marks forces a search engine to read them together as a phrase. “dna fingerprinting” “mars pathfinder” “fiber optic network”

8. Nesting Enclose words or phrases in parentheses to specify the order of operation, as with mathematical equations. (“heart attack” OR “myocardial infarction”) AND “high blood pressure”

9. Truncation (*) Symbol Symbol used at the end of a word to retrieve variant endings of that word. For example : teen* retrieves teen OR teens OR teenager OR teenagers However: cat* retrieves cat, cats, but also cataclysm, catacomb, catalepsy, catalog, etc.

10. Wildcard (?) symbol Some databases allow for wildcards to be embedded within a word to replace a single character. For example: comp???tion retrieves composition, competition, computation, etc. wom?n retrieves woman, women

11. Truncation (*) and Wildcard (?, $) in Web of Science database * represents any group of characters, including no characters ? represents any single character $ represents one character or no characters en?oblast* finds endoblast, endoblasts, entoblast, entoblasts Hof$man$ W* finds Hofman, Hoffman, Hoffmann, Hoffmanova

12. Truncation (!) and Wildcard (*) symbols in ScienceDirect Truncation : Use ! For example : behav! would find "behave," "behaviour," "behavioural“ Wildcard : Use * For example : wom*n would find "woman" and "women“ transplant** would find "transplant,“ "transplanted," and "transplanter"

13. Proximity Operators Near (N) - finds words near to one another in any order Cattle N2 feeding finds cattle feeding, feeding cattle, feeding dairy cattle Within (W) - finds words near to one another in the order in which they were typed feeding W2 cattle finds feeding cattle, feeding dairy cattle, feeding beef cattle, etc., but not cattle feeding

14. Proximity Operators in ScienceDirect Author Search smith W/1 r = R Smith and Smith, R raymond W/3 smith = Raymond Smith, Raymond J. Smith and Raymond J. A. Smith smith W/3 r! = R. Smith, Ray Smith, Raymond Smith, R Smith and RJ Smith

15. Proximity (Adjacent) Operators NEAR (n) WITHIN (w) ADJACENT (adj) WITH SAME (use in Web of Science database) All terms separated by the operator must appear in the same subfield. (same sentence, same address) e.g. fac sci SAME mahidol univ

16. Field Searching (using Field Tags) Author / AUAuthor [AU] Title / TITitle [TI] Abstract / ABAbstract [AB] AD = <address> SO= <journal name>

17. Keyword vs Subject Search Two basic ways of searching for information in a database: keyword search = what you say; words that you use to describe your topic subject search = what they say; words used by professional indexers where all like topics are “indexed” under the same subject phrase Ex. Medical subject headings (MeSH terms) in PudMed MEDLINE

18. Keyword vs Subject Heading Keyword Any word that appears in any field of an online record Search single words, phrases, and combinations of words or phrases Powerful technique Subject Heading Assigned using a controlled thesaurus Official list of standard acceptable headings Library of Congress (LC) National Library of Medicine (NLM)