Phrase Searching
Phrase searching tells the database that you want a specific series of words to be found in that order.
Search = Crime and Punishment
Searching for Crime and Punishment, without quotes, will result in many articles about criminal justice.
Search = "Crime and Punishment"
Searching for "Crime and Punishment", with quotes, will result in many articles about the book Crime and Punishment .
Wild Cards
Wildcards allow you to search for multiple words or versions of a word using only word.
- * (Asterisk)
- The database will find all version of a word after the stem you provide. For example, a search for Therap* will result in the following words being found:
- Therapy
- Therapies
- ? (Question Mark)
- The database will replace the question mark with every letter of the alphabet. For example, a search for B?ttle will result in the following words being found:
- Battle
- Bottle
- # (Hashtag)
- The database will replace the hashtag (aka pound sign) with every letter of the alphabet, including no letter. For example, a search for Colo#r will result in the following words being found:
- Color
- Colour
Grouping & Nesting
Nesting (also known as grouping) is a means to create a sophisticated search that combines multiple search words and booleans and is based on PEMDAS from math class. Let's explore this concept through a search.
Searching without Nesting
Lets say I'm researching ankle sprains and fractures.
- Here are my search terms:
- Ankle, sprains, and fractures.
- Lets truncate the words so I can find other variants of the words.
- Ankle*, sprain*, and fractur*.
- Now to use booleans to connect the words together. Remember I want to find articles about ankle fractures or ankle sprains.
- ankle* AND sprain* OR fractur*
This will come back with articles that talk about:
- Ankle sprains
- Resulting from the ankle* AND sprain* part my search
- Any article that mentions fractures, regardless of the location of the fracture
This doesn't help me since I'm looking for ankle sprains or ankle fractures.
Adding in Nesting
I communicate this to the search more clearly by using nesting (wrapping my terms and booleans using parentheses).
ankle* AND (sprain* OR fracture*)
With this search, this is what the search engine does:
- Find all the articles that mention either the term sprains or fractures
- From that list, find all the articles that mention the word ankle
- Present results
Applying Search Strategies
The following is an example of refining my search in an attempt to find research on the keto diet.
| Search Terms | Limiters | Results | Thoughts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diet | No Limiters | 31,065 | Starting broad |
| Ketogenic | No Limiters | 128 | Trying narrow but its too narrow. I'm possibly excluding some words that I would want. |
| Keto* | No Limiters | 917 | Stepping back by truncating keto* so I can find Ketogenic & Ketosis. |
| Keto* NOT ketorolac | No Limiters | 807 | Removed unrelated drug. |
| Keto* NOT ketorolac | Peer reviewed and past 5 years | 192 | Narrow to recently published, peer-reviewed studies. |
| (keto* AND health*) NOT ketorolac | Peer reviewed and past 5 years | 72 | Narrowing to articles that mention any form of health. |
| (keto* AND health*) NOT (ketorolac OR "ketone salts") | Peer reviewed and past 5 years | 69 | Now exluding articles mentioning the phrase "ketone salts". |
Scholarly Communication
You can use Scholarly Communication to your advantage when search for information by looking at past articles through reference mining and looking for articles since published by citation tracking.
Reference Mining
When you find an article on your topic, that article will have multiple references to similar articles in their reference list. This is a useful way to find more relevant articles.
Additionally, if you were to search for your topic including either:
- "meta-analysis", or
- "systematic review"
you'll find research articles that have distilled the current research about that topic at the time of its publication. This is another useful way to find more relevant articles.
Citation Tracking
Like Reference Mining where you find works cited within an article, citation tracking finds the articles that cite the article you have in hand.
Web of Science is a great resource for citation tracking.
- Navigate to Web of Science
- Search for and click on your article
- On the right hand side with the heading of "Citation Network," you'll find a number with "Times Cited" underneath. This number indicates the number of times that article was cited in other works
- If you click on the number (giving it is not 0), Web of Science will present you a list of articles that cited your original article.