Search Tips

Search Help

TO SEARCH NOW CLICK ON THE MAGNIFYING GLASS SYMBOL AT THE TOP RIGHT OF THE PAGE


The search facilities on this website are fast and very comprehensive.  They will return a large number of references although if you search on a very common word they may not return all references.  It is possible, however, that references will perhaps be without enough context for you to determine whether a particular reference is helpful.  In a long paper once you have it open the reference may still be difficult to locate.  Note however that when you have the article open you may search again for the word by clicking on the magnifying glass symbol immediately above the text and entering the search phrase.

An alternative approach, provided you have purchased a subscription, is for you to click on the link "Download this PDF file" just above the text on the right.  All our PDFs are word searchable so once you have downloaded the PDF you can open it using Adobe Reader and right click over the content, selecting "Find" to enter your search phrase.

Users' searching experience will be much enhanced if the 600 or so papers in this archive all had abstracts summarising in a few lines the contents of the paper.  If you would be prepared to assist with this process please contact our webmaster at [email protected]

 Additional Search Tips:

  • Search terms are case-insensitive
  • Common words are ignored
  • By default only articles containing all terms in the query are returned (i.e., AND is implied)
  • Combine multiple words with OR to find articles containing either term; e.g., education OR research
  • Use parentheses to create more complex queries; e.g., archive ((journal OR conference) NOT theses)
  • Search for an exact phrase by putting it in quotes; e.g., "open access publishing"
  • Exclude a word by prefixing it with - or NOT; e.g. online -politics or online NOT politics
  • Use * in a term as a wildcard to match any sequence of characters; e.g., soci* morality would match documents containing "sociological" or "societal"