How to create successful and complete search queries that give you an understanding of the scope of your research interest and provide you with all the relevant literature you need for your thesis and/or internship.
You can find a description below on how to use the different operators and wildcards for Web of Science and Google Scholar. We also have some extra tips for Reaxys and search tips for other databases.
Sugars: ADFruc,BDfruct etc. Check the PDF above for all Abbreviated groups.
Substituents
The use of 'exact substituents' in Atom Properties does not work well. Reaxys is aware of the problem and looking into this. Instead, use Smax or Slock on the left menu bar.
Operators
AND, OR & NOT
alcohol NEAR/x abuse both terms are maximum x words apart from each other. This way “The abuse of alcohol…” is included as well, but irrelevant hits, i.e. about general abuse where the word alcohol is mentioned somewhere, are avoided.
Wildcards
* (asterisk): 0 or more characters.
Example: synthe* à gives synthesis, syntheses, synthesize, synthesise, synthetic etc.
? (question mark): 1 character
Example: organi?ation à gives organisation and organization
$ (dollar sign): 0 or 1 character
Example: colo$r à gives color and colour
Remark: minimum of 3 characters necessary! Not se* but sea*.
Quotation marks
“blood stain pattern” à searches for these exact words, in this exact order
Further explanation search operators
Further explanation advanced search
Base Web of Science query
pH:
Acidity OR pH OR pOH OR “hydrogen ion *” OR “hydrogen ion*”
Diastatic power
“Degrees linter” OR “diastatic power” OR “diastatic *” OR diastatic OR alpha-amylase OR beta-amylase OR “Limit Dextrinase” OR Windisch-Kolbach
Mash
Mash OR mashbill OR grainbill OR “grain bill” OR “extract potential” OR efficiency OR effectiveness OR productivity
Boolean operators
AND and OR, no NOT
Instead of OR, the ‘pipe’ | (straight line) can be used, without spaces: virus|viruses, the AND operator is a space in Google.
Converting the Web of Science query into Google
Replace the OR and AND operators with a pipe and a space. Remove any truncation symbols as they do not work in Google.
Acidity|pH|pOH|“hydrogen ion”
“Degrees linter”|“diastatic power”|diastatic|alpha-amylase|beta-amylase|“Limit Dextrinase”|Windisch-Kolbach
Mash|mashbill|”mash bill”|grainbill|“grain bill”|“extract potential”|efficiency|effectiveness|productivity
Example intitle:
Intitle search allows you to only search in the title of the documents you find.
Intitle:Acidity|pH|pOH|“hydrogen ion”
Intitle:“Degrees linter”|“diastatic power”|diastatic|alpha-amylase|beta-amylase|“Limit Dextrinase”|Windisch-Kolbach
Intitle:Mash|mashbill|”mash bill”|grainbill|“grain bill”|“extract potential”|efficiency|effectiveness|productivity
Example around operator
This proximity operator only works 'downstream' of the text you are searching. In the case below diastatic power has to be within 15 words of pH.
pH AROUND/15 “diastatic power” AROUND/15 mash
Example source
Use source to only search in specific journals
diastatic|alpha-amylase|beta-amylase|“Limit Dextrinase” source:chemistry
You can also search for datasets in google
Example dataset
sugar synthesis
You can find more Google field codes in the pdf below.