Using Advanced Search on eScholarship

Modified on Tue, 04 Jan 2022 at 06:48 AM

You can run a Boolean search on eScholarship using advanced search field specifiers and Boolean operators to conduct searches. 

Refine your search by prefixing each search term or phrase with one or more given field types:

  • author:
  • title:
  • keyword:

Example: A search for title:health psychology will find all items with the word health and psychology in the title, but not necessarily in that order.

Here are some other ways you can construct your searches:

  • Quoted searches: For an exact phrase, enclose the phrase in quotation marks. For example: type title:"health psychology"
    Note: eScholarship search only supports standard, straight quotation marks ("). Other software or websites may use special symbols that our system does not recognize. Curly quotation marks (“), also known as smart quotes or typographer's quotes, are not supported.
    In order to optimize overall site performance, stop words such as "by", "in", "with", etc. aren't used.
  • OR searches: Type the word OR (capital letters) to see results that include one or more items in a list. This typically broadens your search results. For example, keyword:epidermal OR keyword:skin
  • AND searches: Type the word AND (capital letters) to see results that include all items in a list. This typically limits your search results. For example, author:Elias PM AND keyword:epidermal
    Note: If searching for multiple terms in a given field, you don't need to use AND. For instance  title:health psychology is an easier way of saying: title:health AND title:psychology
  • NOT searches: Type the word NOT (capital letters) immediately before a search term to exclude it from your search results. This typically limits your search results. For example, title:cows AND NOT keyword:farming
  • Parenthetical searches: To do a complex search, you can combine terms using parentheses. For example, to find author Julia Gelfland's publications containing word ‘Editorial’ or ‘Literature’, type author:Gelfand, Julia AND (title:Editorial OR title:Literature)

When handling searches, the overall order to precedence is:

  • Quotes [""]
  • Parentheses [()]
  • NOT
  • AND
  • OR

Additional notes:

  • The + and - operators are not supported by eScholarship. Instead, use AND in place of a + and NOT in place of a - 

  • When using NOT, AND, or OR operators, you must type them in uppercase letters.

  • We do not currently support wildcard "*" searches.