Searching Tips
Boolean operators
To fine tune your search, you can use AND, OR, and NOT logical operators to link your search words together, and/or limit the search to a specific field. These operators will help you narrow or broaden your search to better express the terms you are looking for and to retrieve the exact information you need quickly.
- USING THE “AND” OPERATOR (= intersection): If you have a search term that is too general, you can append several terms together using “AND”. By stringing key terms together, you can further define a specific search and reduce the number of results.
- USING THE “OR” (= union) OPERATOR: In order to broaden a search, you can link terms together by using the “OR” operator. Linked by this operator, your words are searched simultaneously and independently of each other.
- USING THE “NOT” OPERATOR (=exclusion): In order to narrow a search, you can link words together by using the “NOT” operator. This operator will help you to filter out specific topics you do not wish included as part of your search.
Note: In the writing of your query, use the boolean operators in their English form and in capital letters.
Faceted refining
Faceted refining allows to fine tune the results of a first search by using one or more criteria (the facets).
The list of facets appears on the search results page, on the left:
- Full text: To select only INIS records with available access to document by “External link” or “doi” or “IAEA”, check the corresponding box(es).
- Publication Type
- Language
- Subject Primary
- Subject Secondary
- Country of Affiliation
- Country of Publication
- Publication Year
- INIS Volume Year: Number of the computer file of INIS base and of the corresponding year. The number 01 corresponds to the first year of the base. This number is incremented by one unit each year.
- INIS Volume Issue: Four-figure set which represents the number of the INIS base computer file, for the first two figures; the last two ones corresponding to base feeding periods for the year in question.
These facets can be folded or unfolded by clicking on their title.
A click on the selected button at the level of a facet or a filter repeats the same search, to which the filter corresponding to the selected facet is added.
You can select several facets at the same time, with “AND” as logical operator between two selected facets, and “OR” as logical operator for two selected values inside a same facet. For example: “France” OR “Belgium” in the facets “Country of affiliation” or “Country of publication”.
You can sort by alphabetical order or by order of frequency, if the number of results of the faceted search exceeds 10.
For further information, see: Refining the Results by Means of Facets
Bounce search
It is possible to rebound and launch a new search on a different criterion from the display of a record. Just click on a value shown in blue (author, journal title, keywords…).
Query formulation
In the event there are several slightly different spellings for a particular term (for example: organization or organisation), you can use the ? symbol to report the possibility of a variation: organi?ation.
To search for a group of terms precisely enter it between quotes " ".
For example: "high pressure liquid chromatography"
Wildcards
Wildcard searches can be run on individual terms:
using ? to replace a single character
and * to replace zero or more characters.
Multiple ? are possible with one ? for each character.
So bernst??n finds both bernstein and bernstien.
diss*ation give for exemple dissociation or dissemination.
A minimum of three characters are required for a wilcard query, example bio*.
English stemming which is to remove word endings is applied on textual fields and so wildcards are not necessary to search both usual singular and plural forms.
For example: enthalpy give both enthalpy and enthalpies.
Wildcard searches can not be run with exact phrase queries.
"bond diss*ation enthalpy" give zero document.
To overcome this limitation of the Elasticsearch search engine, see: Search by Regular Expressions