Search Tips

Use the Boolean operator AND to find results that contain all your keywords

Examples:

• Climate change AND Australia
• Depression AND social media

This is useful when your research contains two or more key concepts.

Note:

• If you combine a Boolean operator (AND, OR, or NOT) with a multi-word search term (e.g. climate change), Informit automatically inserts AND between the words.
  
  For example, a search for global warming OR climate change is automatically processed as global AND warming OR climate AND change.

Use the Boolean operator OR to find results with similar terms

Examples:

• Teachers OR educators
• Artificial intelligence OR AI
  
  This is useful when searching for alternative words or similar concepts to broaden your search.

Use the Boolean operator NOT to exclude irrelevant results

Examples:

• Diabetes NOT Gestational
• Christianity NOT Catholicism
  
  This is useful when a search term has more than one meaning.

Use double quotation marks “ ” to search for an exact phrase

Examples:

• “Voice referendum”
• “Shrine of Remembrance”
  
  Using quotation marks ensures that the search retrieves results containing the exact terms in the specified order.

Use parentheses ( ) to group search terms

Examples:

• Body image AND (teenagers OR adolescents)
  
  This finds results about mental health that also mention either teenagers or adolescents.

Use an asterisk * to find word variations

Example:

• Religio*

This may return:

• Religion
• Religions
• Religious
• Religiously
• Religiosity

Note:

• To find all records in a field, enter a*

Use a question mark ? to replace a single letter

Example:

• Wom?n

This may find:

• Woman
• Women

Note:

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

Use Match Any, Match All, and Match None

Use these selectors to include or exclude Resource Types and Media Genres (if available) from your search results.

Match Any

Finds results that contain at least one of the selected terms or filters.

Example:

• Under Resource Type, select Match Any and then select Journal and Conference Proceedings.
  
  This returns results that are either Journal articles or Conference proceedings.

Match All

Finds results that contain all of the selected terms or filters.

Example:

• Under Resource Type, select Match All and then select Conference and Conference Proceedings.
  
  This returns only results that are both Conference and Conference Proceedings.

Match None

Excludes results that the contain any of the selected terms or filters.

Example:

• Under Resource Type, select Match None and then select Video and Sound.
  
  This excludes all Video or Sound resources from your results.

Still Need Help? 

If you have further questions on search tips, please reach out to us at support.informit@rmit.edu.au