For some searches, it may be necessary to use more advanced search techniques to refine your searches. In this libguide, we provide an introduction to these techniques and how to use them in various databases.
Below, we describe the use of proximity operators, field searching, wildcards, etc. If you are loooking for our guide on the basics of literature searching and using the primary Boolean operators: AND, OR, and NOT, it can be found by clicking this link.
Proximity operators can be used to define how close your search terms should be to each other in the text. With proximity operators, you specify the maximum number of words that can be between your search terms. In this way, the operators give you more control over your search results.
For example, a search for digital NEAR/5 well-being will include results where the two search terms digital and well-being appears within five words of earch other. So it will include search results where digital well-being appears, but it could also include results with the phrases digital mental well-being or well-being in the digital era.
In that example, it was specified that there should be a maximum of 5 words between the search terms, but it is possible to choose any number. The number that provides the most relevant results will vary from search to search, so you will have to experiment a bit, to find out what works best.
Not all databases support proximity operators, and it also varies from database to database how you should write the operators. Some places, it is written as NEAR/x, in others simply N/x, W/x or something else. See our list of how to write proximity operators in the most commonly used databases on this link.
Proximity operators are thus more specific and get you fewer results than using AND, but they are less specific and give you more results than using a phrase search. We have tried to illustrate this in the figure above.
In some databases it is possible to use a proximity operator where you define the order of the search terms. For example, if you only want the results where digital appears a maximum of five words before well-being, you could use this operator. Example: digital PRE/5 well-being.
If you are searching for words with multiple accepted spellings, you can ensure they are all included in your search by using wildcards. Wildcards involves using a symbol, usually a question mark, as a placeholder for a letter in your search. For example, if you are interested in searching for organization, which can be spelled both as organization and organisation, then a wildcard can help. A search for organi?ation will give you results with both spellings.
It is possible to combine multiple wildcards, an example could be searching for theater, which can also be spelled as theatre, then a search for theat?? will return results with both spellings.
Some databases uses other symbols for wildcards, see our overview of the most commonly used databases by clicking this link.
Truncation is when you use an asterisk (*) to search for all endings of a word. A search of organization* could give you results like the following:
organization
organizations
organizational
organizationally
organizational...
Similarly it is possible in some databases to use truncation in the middle of words and before words. So if you want to find search results the include different spellings of behaviour, which can also be spelled as behavior, you can search for behavi*r to capture both spellings. This is similiar to using wildcards, but whereas a wildcard counts as one character per wildcard, a truncation can include any number of characters, including zero.
In some databases, it is possible to use truncation multiple times in the same search term and it is also possible to combine them with wildcards. So a search for *organi?ation* will yield even more variations like the following:
organization
organisational
reorganisation
disorganizational
You may have noticed in your searches that different databases includes language variations, plural forms and other modifications to your search terms. As an example, searching for behavior will often return results containing words like behaviour or behaviors.
These expanders are often helpful in your searches, but the extend to which your search is expanded can vary from database to database. It is a good idea to be aware of language variations and inflections, to check what expanders are active in your chosen database, and if using techniques like wildcards or truncation will give more results.
When doing a phrase search using quotation marks (" "), you will only be getting results for an exact phrase, thereby disabling the expanders mentioned above. Thus, a search for "behaviour" will only retrive results with that specific spelling. This is true for most databases, although in some databases (incl. soeg.kb.dk), quotation marks are treated as a loose phrase, meaning that some of the expanders still aply. Click here to see our overview of what applies in the most commonly used databases here.
It can be useful to search in specific parts of the material you are looking for. For example, by only searching in titles, an article's abstract, or the author's name. This is possible in most databases by using field codes as part of the search. A search with a field code for searching in the title could look like: TI=(behaviour).
The specific field codes vary from database to database, you can often find a list of the codes on the individual database's website.