Publication Search Help
Setting the Search Criteria
Categories
Publications in the database you're searching may be categorized according to a particular organization or subject
with which they're affiliated. If you are interested only in publications that are the product of one of the
listed organizations or subjects, select that category from the appropriate drop-down list.
Leave the drop-down list at its default setting if you want to search through all publications, regardless of category.
Keyword, Author, or Title Search
You can search for publications based on their author, their title, or both.
You may also be able to search based on keywords relevant to the topic of the publication.
You can decide how strictly the search should adhere to your search terms separately for each field.
Choose one of these options from each drop-down list:
- At least one word - This uses the "or" operator among words; that is, your results will include
citations with any one or more of the names or words you enter. Do not use punctuation.
- For authors, it is best to search for last names. First and sometimes middle initials are also stored in the database,
but searching for a single letter will find any author with that letter anywhere in their name. For example,
searching for "B" would find "Miller BA", but also "Abraham LA".
- All words - This uses the "and" operator among words; that is, your results will include only citations
that contain all of the names or words you enter. The order of the words is not important. Do not use punctuation.
- Exact match - Publications will be found only if their citations contain text that exactly matches what you typed,
including order of names/words, punctuation, etc.
It is not necessary to enter a complete title or list of authors. For example, searching for
"Miller" in the Author field will return any publications for which an author named Miller is credited, even if
the publication has several other authors as well.
Date Published
You may limit your search to include publications from a certain data range.
Publications will be found only if they were published on or after the start date you enter (if any) and on or before
the end date you enter (if any). For each date, type the year in the indicated field, then select a month from the
drop-down list.
Searching on Multiple Fields
When you enter search criteria in more than one field (for example, if you enter an author, a title, and a date range),
you can choose whether to require that the search must find citations meeting all of those criteria, or at least one of
those criteria. As with the Author, Title, or Keyword Search above, you are choosing whether to use the "and"
operator or the "or" operator between fields. Search fields that you leave blank are ignored.
- All fields must match the search criteria - The "and" operator is used. Citations will be found only if
they match all of the fields in which you entered search criteria.
- At least one field must match search criteria - The "or" operator is used. Citations will be found as long
as they match at least one of the fields in which you entered search criteria.
For example, suppose you search for publications with "Miller" as an Author and "1996" as a Start Year.
- If you choose All fields must match the search criteria, only publications that were published in or after 1996
by an author named Miller will be returned.
- If you choose At least one field must match
search criteria, the search will return all publications by an author
named Miller, regardless of year, and all publications since 1996, regardless of author. Publications that
meet both criteria; i.e., that were published by Miller since 1996, will only be listed once in the results.
Display Options
You may edit a number of settings that affect how your results are displayed.
- # Entries to Display - This setting imposes a limit on the number of citations to be displayed.
Your search will find only as many citations as you indicate, regardless of how many matching records actually exist
in the database. 50 is the default. Choose All to remove this limitation.
- Sort by - This setting determines the order in which your search results are listed.
- Date, First Author - Citations will be ordered primarily by year of publication, with the most recent
year at the top of the list. Publications with the same year will be ordered by the last name of the first
author credited.
- First Author - Citations will be listed in alphabetical order according to the last name of the
first author credited.
- Title - Citations will be listed in alphabetical order according to the first word of the title.
- Display abstracts (if available) - When this option is marked, the text of each publication's abstract, if
it is in the database, will be displayed along with the citation.
- When searching on title, also search the abstract field - When this option is marked,
publications' abstracts, if they are in the database,
will also be searched for the text you entered in the Title field, if any. Matching publications
will be displayed in the results, but their abstracts will not be displayed unless you also mark the
Display abstracts (if available) option.
Results
The results page includes a listing of the search criteria you entered, the number of articles
matching those criteria, options for viewing and downloading the results, and the
bibliographic information for the matching articles.
Links to the PubMed entry, the abstract, and a full-text version of each article will be provided,
when available.
View Results
Click this link to skip past the download and report options to the list of matching publications.
Download RefMan File
Click this link to download a file in Reference Manager's (RefMan's) RIS format that contains
all of the displayed citations.
To import this file into RefMan:
- Click (or right-click) on the link and save the file to your computer.
- Open RefMan and go to Import Text File under the References tab.
- For the filter, choose the RIS format, and browse to the file that you just saved.
- Click Import to complete the process.
Generate a Printable Report
You can create a text-only version of your search results in one of two formats. Select the with Abstracts
option to view the citations and their abstracts as they appear on the results page, but without the graphics and
interface controls. Select the in Bibliography format option to view the citations only, listed in a standard
bibliography style, without field names. Both of these formats are suitable for printing,
or for copying text to paste into another application.
Only the citations that you specify will be included in this report. To include all of the displayed citations,
mark the box labeled Check this box to add all publications to the report. To include only some of the
citations, scroll through the list and mark the Add to Report List box by each citation of interest. When
you have indicated all of the citations that you want to include, click one of the Create Report buttons
at the top and bottom of the page.
Show Search Controls (click the + or - to expand or contract)
|