Develop with Derby: Finding and Evaluating Sources of Information

With all of the words

This is effectively the default search mode in Google Scholar: an article must contain all of the words in this box. A search for dogs cats mice would find anything that mentioned all three animals somewhere in the text, but if an article only mentioned dogs and cats (no mice) it shouldn't be included in the results.

This style of searching is what's called implicit AND because it's searching for articles that contain dogs and cats and mice.

With the exact phrase

In the previous search, our search terms could appear anywhere in the document. With this option they have to appear as written. A search in this box for ah good the sea would return only one of the following snippets (all of which would be returned by the previous search):

This is what you'll see in the search box once you've run the search.

You can perform this kind of search without using the "Advanced search" form by just putting your exact phrase in "double quotes like this". This technique is called phrase searching and the double quotes are what we'd call an operator: something which when used in a search box performs a specific special task.

With at least one of the words

This box will return items that mention any of the entered words. A search in this box for dolphin orca will find items where at least one of those words appears:

Once you've run the search, you'll see the below in your search box — your terms joined with the OR operator.

The same operator works in a normal Google search, and in many other search engines and databases.

You can use this technique to search for synonyms and alternate ways of expressing your main concepts (see the Finding information: where to search? section).

Without the words

Documents that mention the words you put in this box will be excluded from your results. If you had leonardo in any of the first boxes and dicaprio in this box you will get matches for any document mentioning leonardo so long as it doesn't also mention dicaprio:

Leonardo DiCaprio image CC BY-SA Christopher William Adach.

Once you've run the search, you'll get the below in the search box.

Here the minus sign - in front of "dicaprio" is serving as what we might call a NOT operator: leonardo NOT dicaprio. Most databases will actually use the word NOT for this, rather than the minus sign, but the minus sign remains common in internet search engines like Google.

The rest of the options are generally ways in which you can limit your search.

Where my words occur

Google Scholar is often able to search the full text of an article, but that can mean you get an awful lot of results. You might therefore want to limit the target of your searching to just the title of an article. Article titles are usually very descriptive so this can be a good way of making sure the article has your search terms as its focus. But obviously there are risks to this approach: a smaller target is harder to hit, and not all titles will be as descriptive as you'd like.

Return articles authored by

Maybe you're interested in a specific author. You can use this box to search for authors by name, and by combining this field with other boxes on the 'Advanced search' screen you can even search within a particular author's body of work.

Return articles published in

It may be that you're only interested in articles published in a specific journal, or in a journal with particular words in the title. If that's the case then this is the box for you!

Return articles dated between

Sometimes you'll only be interested in articles from a specific period in time — perhaps you just want recent articles, or perhaps you're after articles from a particular point in the past. In these boxes you can set a date range for your search.