Advanced Search Guide

Advanced Search Guide (Printable)

Check out our printable Advanced Search Guide.

 

Constructing advanced searches

While basic searching permits you to search for an individual term or phrase within the Informit platform, an Advanced Search lets you string together a more complex query.

To get started, select Advanced Search from the top panel or below the main search bar:

You will be taken to the Advanced Search page where you have the option to break down your search query into multiple search boxes:

At the end of each search box is a drop down menu. This allows you to search for a term within a specific field. As a default, this is set to All Fields, which enables your search to be conducted across all searchable fields. Click the drop down menu to narrow your selection to a specific field.  

In the below example, the search will find results that contain cybersecurity in the article title:  

Adding search terms

The Advanced Search lets you use a Boolean operator in an additional search box. Boolean operators include terms like AND, OR and NOT. They can be used to group or exclude search terms, creating a more complex search query.  

Boolean operators

Let’s look at this in more detail.

Starting with the basics, the following search will find results containing diabetes which is likely to lead to a lot of results, not all of which might be relevant to your research purposes:  

For a more targeted strategy, try searching diabetes AND an additional term, such as prevention:  

  Another strategy is to limit the search to resources where diabetes is featured in the title, by selecting the title field from the drop down menu:  

Need to make any modifications? Search terms can be added using the + button or removed using the x button, both located on the right side of the search box:

 Additional advanced search features

The advanced search has many ways to refine your search.

Limit Search

Below the search box is the Limit Search option.

This option enables you to refine results based on full text availability, open access, and peer review status.

One or more of the following limiters can be applied:

• Full Text – Shows only records where full text content is available directly within Informit.
• Has Full Text – Shows records where full text is available, either in Informit or through an external link.
• Abstract – Shows records that include a summary or citation only. Full text is not available in Informit and may need to be accessed elsewhere.
• Open Access – Shows content that is freely available to all users.
• Peer Reviewed – Shows content that has been evaluated by subject matter experts before publication.

Resource Type

Resource Type can be used to include, combine, or exclude specific types of resources. These include video and sound, journal, report, book, conference or conference proceedings.

Use the drop down option to Match Any, Match All, or Match None of the resource types you choose to select.

In the following example, Match Any has been selected from the drop down menu and below it, the Journal option has been ticked. This action will limit results to only show journal articles. 

To exclude any resource categories, select Match None and then select the resource category you want to eliminate from the search results.

In the following example, Match None and Video and Sound have both been selected to specifically exclude video or sound resources from the results:

Language

If you want to limit results to a specific language, begin typing out the language in the search box provided. Then select the relevant language from the list that appears underneath.

In the following example, English and Spanish have been selected to limit content to those languages.

Publication Date

Publication dates can be defined to limit to a custom date range or to a pre-selected time block.

In the below example, the option for Last 6 months has been selected to limit to content published during that period.

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 Tips for an effective search query  

Combining search terms

• By default, when a multi-word search term is used with a Boolean operator (AND, OR, NOT), Informit treats each word as a separate term connected by AND. In the example below, the search retrieves content containing artificial, intelligence, and education. However, these words are not required to appear together as an exact phrase and may occur in different parts of the source.

• To search for two or more terms as an exact phrase in a record, use double quotation marks:  

•  Use Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT (always typed out in capitals) to combine search terms within a search box: 

•  Using multiple search boxes can make a complex Boolean search easier to manage. For example, use OR to group related terms or synonyms within the same search box. Then use AND to connect different concepts across separate search boxes:  

The above search will retrieve results that contain at least one term from each search box. For example, sources may include artificial intelligence and education, AI and learning, or automation and education and so on.  

•  Additional search boxes are also useful for searching across multiple fields:  

In the above example, artificial intelligence, AI and automation are searched within the titles of sources. Education and learning are searched within the abstracts of sources.  

•  Another way to group search terms and Boolean operators is by using parentheses (…). This creates more precise searches:  

In the above example, the search will locate content containing depression and containing either medication or therapy.  

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Phrase searching

•  Enclose a phrase within double quotation marks for an exact match:  

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Word stemming

• Add an asterisk (*) to a keyword to search for words that contain the same stem: 

In the above example, searching for religio* will bring up word results for religion, religions, religious, religiosity etc.  

• To retrieve all available results within a specific field, enter a*  

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Using wildcards

•  Use a question mark (?) wildcard to represent one character:  

In the above example, wom?n finds content containing both woman and women.  

• Wildcards do not work at the start of a search term or within quotation marks.