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Advanced Search Tips

Searching by Author

Enter an author's given name, surname, or complete name. For example, to search for documents with the author "Patrick O. Brown", you can enter Patrick, Brown, or Patrick O. Brown. The names must be in exact order; for example, Patrick O. or O. Brown, but not Patrick Brown. Accented characters must be entered with accents.

If there are no or too few results, search the article text, for all the words, where the words occur anywhere in the article, and enter the author's first name and surname. For example, searching for all the words Patrick Brown anywhere in the article will return articles containing both "Patrick" and "Brown" anywhere except in the title, abstract, and references.

Search for multiple authors by using the "Add another author..." link to create more author name fields. Please enter only one name per field.

To remove an author field, use the "Remove" link next to the field. You may also leave one or more fields blank.

Editing Your Query

You can use the following tips to edit an existing query that appears on a search results page or use them to conduct an advanced search query within the search field that appears at the top of every page.

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General

A search query is broken up into terms and operators. There are two types of terms: Single Terms and Phrases. A Single Term is a single word such as global or climate. A Phrase is a group of words surrounded by double quotes such as global warming. Multiple terms can be combined together with Boolean operators to form a more complex query (see below).

Wildcards

Advanced Search supports single and multiple character wildcard searches within single terms (not within phrase queries).

The single character wildcard (?) search looks for terms that match that the search term with the single character replaced. For example:

te?t will return text, test, tent, etc.

Right truncation involves placing the wildcard on the right-hand-side of the search string. For example:

clea? will return clear, clean, cleat, etc.

This wildcard can be used multiple times within the same string:

ra?n? will return rains, rainy, etc.

The multiple character wildcard (*) search looks for 0 or more characters. Right truncation involves placing the wildcard on the right-hand-side of the search string. For example

radio* will return radiometer, radiometric, radiosonde, etc.

Note: You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.

Fuzzy Searches

Advanced Search supports fuzzy searches based on the Levenshtein Distance, or Edit Distance algorithm. To do a fuzzy search use the tilde symbol ("~") at the end of a Single word Term. For example, to search for a term similar in spelling to roam use the fuzzy search:

roam~ will return terms like foam and roams.

Proximity Searches

Advanced Search supports finding words that are a within a specific distance away. To do a proximity search, use the tilde symbol ("~") at the end of a Phrase. For example, to search for vaccine and disease within 10 words of each other in a document, use the search:

vaccine disease~10

Range Searches

Range Queries allow one to match documents whose field(s) values are between the lower and upper bound specified by the Range Query. Range Queries can be inclusive or exclusive of the upper and lower bounds. Inclusive range queries are denoted by square brackets ("[" ... "]"). Exclusive range queries are denoted by curly brackets ("{"..."}"). Sorting is done lexicographically.

title: {Aida TO Carmen}

This will find all documents whose titles are between Aida and Carmen, but not including Aida or Carmen.

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. Advanced Search supports AND, "+", OR, NOT and "-" as Boolean operators.

Note: Boolean operators must be ALL CAPS.

OR

The OR operator is the default conjunction operator. This means that if there is no Boolean operator between two terms, the OR operator is used. The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document. The symbol "||" can be used in place of the word OR.

To search for documents that contain either global warming or just warming use the query:

global warming

or

global warming OR global

AND

The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document. The symbol "&&"; can be used in place of the word AND.

To search for documents that contain global warming and warming climate use the query:

global warming AND warming climate

+

The "+" or required operator requires that the term after the "+" symbol exist somewhere in the field of a single document.

To search for documents that must contain global and may contain climate use the query:

+global climate

NOT

The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. The symbol "!" can be used in place of the word NOT.

To search for documents that contain global warming but not climate use the query:

global warming NOT climate

Note: The NOT operator cannot be used with just one term. For example, the following search will return no results:

NOT global warming

-

The "-" or prohibit operator excludes documents that contain the term after the "-" symbol.

To search for documents that contain global warming but not warming climate use the query:

global warming -warming climate

Grouping

Advanced Search supports using parentheses to group terms to form sub queries. This can be very useful if you want to control the boolean logic for a query.

To search for either global or warming and climate use the query:

(global OR warming) AND climate

This eliminates any confusion and makes sure you that climate must exist and either term global or warming may exist.

Field Grouping

Advanced Search supports using parentheses to group multiple terms to a single field.

To search for a title that contains both the word warming and the phrase climate change use the query:

title: (+warming +climate change)

Escaping Special Characters

Advanced Search supports escaping special characters that are part of the query syntax. Simple Search does not support escaping these characters. These characters will cause error when entered into the Simple Search. The current list special characters are

+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \

To escape these character use the \ before the character. For example, to search for (1+1):2 use the query:

\(1\+1\)\:2

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