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Help

• Basic Search
• Advanced Search
• Search Results
• Selecting, Exporting and Printing Results
• Summary of All Results
• Spelling Suggestion
• Search Tips

Try our Basic Search

• Just type in your key word(s), like "global warming", and select .
• You'll get results ranked by relevance. The higher the number of stars, the more relevant the document is to your query.
• You will also see Clusters of results on the left side of the screen.
• Unlike many search engines, our results are retrieved in real time. So as results start to come in, you may want to select "Add" to update. You may work with your results while we continue searching.

Want a more Targeted Search? Try our Advanced Search

• You can customize your search by checking selected collections.
• You can search Full Record, Title, and PI/Contact.
  
  
  • Full Record will search the entire content of a document, when available.
  • You may . This is another way to customize your search.
    • ALL is the default, and finds results with terms occurring in all fields where you have entered a search term.
    • ANY finds results with terms occurring in any of the fields where you have entered a search term.
  • When searching by PI/Contact, using the last name of a single PI/Contact will yield the best results. Your results may not be ranked, depending on the information provided by the source.

• runs the search.

Search Results

Your ranked results will appear, in order of relevance, in the middle section of your screen. Clustered results will appear at the left, grouped into topics related to your search term.

Clusters

• Clustering can help guide you to needed results by grouping result documents into meaningful sets.
• Just select one of the topics, and you will see those results, also relevancy-ranked.
• Clusters are also offered by PI/Contact. PI/Contact information is not consistently available from all sources, so these clusters will not always appear.
  
  
• You may
  
  

• You may set Session Preferences on the navigation bar after performing your first search.
  
  
  
  
• Once you initiate your search, you may see this dialogue box. You may choose Include to get more results or Do not include to return to your original search list.
  
  
  
  
• You can narrow the search by searching within the results of your original query. Enter a term in the box for Refine Results and select the Refine Results button.
  
  
  
• You can also initiate a new search from the results page. Enter your search in the box for new search and select .

Selecting, Exporting and Printing Results

These links, directly above your results, allow you to view and edit your selected results, email results to friends and colleagues, and print your results.

Your Selections and Clear Selections

Checking the box next to any result will add it to Your Selections. These will be available for viewing on Your Selections page during your entire browser session, unless you deselect them, or choose Clear Selections. From the Your Selections page, select to return to your original result list.

Exporting Results

Available result export options include emailing results, citations export and printing. If you use a bibliographic reader such as EndNote, RefWorks or Bib Tex, you may download the selected results into your citation manager via an RIS formatted download. Your citation manager should automatically display the results downloaded.

Email Results

• The Email Results link allows you to email a set of results to yourself, friends, or colleagues.
• Select Email Results, and enter the required information, indicated by red asterisk:

• You may select the number and format of the emailed results.
• This function is also available from the "Your Selections" page, where you can email specific, selected results.
• If you do not receive your email results in a few minutes, check your spam filter.

Citations - Export results into a citation manager

• The Citations link only appears on the Your Selections page.
• If you use a bibliographic reader such as EndNote, RefWorks or Bib Tex, you may download the selected results into your citation manager via an RIS formatted download.
• Your citation manager should automatically display the results downloaded.

Print Results

The Print Page option allows you to print directly from your main results, or from Your Selections. Only the main result list will be printed.

Summary of All Results

The Summary of All Results link will present a dialog log showing the responsiveness of each separate source. The indicates that the search at that particular source completed successfully; the indicates that the source was unresponsive. The number in the Ranked column indicates the number of results returned for Federal R&D. The Available column shows how many additional results are available from that source.

Spelling Suggestion

We will suggest words and phrases when a misspelling is detected. You'll see this in the upper left corner of the results page. Simply select the suggested term and a new search will be performed with the corrected query information.

Search Tips

Queries can include:

• Multiple terms (AND is the default)

Example: A search on frogs toads will return results on both frogs and toads

• Expressions using logical operators AND, OR or NOT

Example: A search on frogs AND toads will return results where both frogs and toads appear; frogs OR toads will return results where either frogs or toads appear; frogs NOT toads will return results with frogs and without toads.

• Phrases, contained in double quotation marks

Example: a search on "nitrate cycling" will return results where the term nitrate is immediately followed by the term cycling.

• Parentheses, requiring the expression within to be evaluated first
• Wildcards
• Use * to search for the term with 0 or more additional characters

Example: nucle* will return results with the terms nuclear, nucleus, nucleoprotein, etc.

• Use ? to search for the term with only 1 additional character (characters include numbers, letters and punctuation)

Example: DO? will return results with the terms DOE, DOI, DOT, DOG, etc.

• Searches are not case-sensitive

Example: RAIN, Rain and rain will produce the same results

Our searches are powered by Distributed Explorit from Deep Web Technologies. Our results may include full text, bibliographic citations, and other types of material from federal agencies.