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Preparing your literature research

Basic operators

Most bibliographic databases offer the following basic functions :

  • Boolean operators
    • AND, OR, NOT
  • Parentheses ( )
    • Used to prioritize part of a query
  • Truncation *
  • Quotation marks '' ''

The table below highlights other features of certain databases.

Bibliographic databases (articles)

Database Keywords Boolean operators Proximity operators Phrases Truncation
ABI/INFORM Collection
and all other ProQuest databses		 Thesaurus AND
OR
NOT		 NEAR/x, N/x
PRE/x, P/x		 " " *

Business Source Complete,
and all other EBSCO databases

 Subject Authority AND
OR
NOT		 Nx
Wx		 " " *
Cairn   ET
OU
SAUF		 W/x " " *
Economist Historical Archive (The)   AND
OR
NOT		 Nx " " *
Eureka   ET
OU
SANS		 %x
$x		 " " *
Factiva   AND
OR
NOT		 W/x - *
IEEE_Xplore   AND
OR
NOT
NEAR
ONEAR		 Near/x " " *
JSTOR   AND
OR
NOT		 ~X " " *
Kluwer Law Online   AND
OR
NOT		 W/x " " *
MathSciNet   AND
OR
NOT		 ADJ# " " *
Nexis Uni   AND
OR
AND NOT
(ex.: Rico AND NOT Puerto)		 w/x " " -

PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO (American Psychological Association - APA)

 Thesaurus AND
OR
NOT		 NEAR/x " " *
Repère   ET
OU
SAUF		 ~x " " *
Sage Journals Online   AND
OR
NOT		 ~x " " *
SpringerLink   AND
OR
NOT
NEAR
ONEAR		 NEAR/x " " *
TaxFind : Faster and Better Tax Solutions   AND
OR
NOT		 NEARx " " *
Web of Science  

SAME
NOT
AND
OR

NEAR/x

NEAR (15 mots)

 " "

at the beginning or end of the word

*  : 0 +
$  : 0 ou 1
? : 1