Limiting Features
How ERIC reads your search terms
The database allows you to decide how its search tool "parses" your search terms. These choices include:
- Boolean Phrase
- Search using AND, OR, NOT / exact phrase searching. Learn more from EBSCO's Advanced Search help page
- Find all my search terms
- Puts "and" between all of your search terms and looks for results that contain all of your terms
- Find any of my search terms
- Puts "or" between all of your search and retrieves results that contain any of your search terms
- SmartText Seaching
- Allows you enter/paste large chunks of text to search
- Apply Related Words
- Searches for alternate word endings and search term synonyms
- Also search within the full text of the articles
- Looks at full text of articles (instead of title and abstract) to find your search terms)
Options for filtering your results before searching
Commonly used limiting features from the "Limit Your Results" options include:
- Full Text
- Limits to results that have the entire text available for viewing or download
- Scholarly (Peer Reviewed Journals)
- Limits your search to those publications that use a Peer Review process or are considered scholarly
- PDF Full Text
- Limits your search results to only documents that are available for download as PDF files (no HTML Full Text)
- References Available
- Limits your search results to documents that include a bibliography
- Published Date
- Only displays results within the date range that you specify
- Publication Type
- Limits your results to the publication type (newspapers, periodicals, etc.) that you select
Further options for limiting results
Other limiting features from the "Limit Your Results" options include
- Publication
- Limits your results to only those published in a specified journal or newspaper
- Document Type
- Limits your results to the document type (Abstract, Article, etc.) that you specify
- Image Quick View
- View the figures, charts, or images from an article
- Number of Pages
- Limits your results to include documents that have greater than, fewer than, or equal to the number of pages you specify
- Cover Story
- Limits your results to only cover stories
- Image Quick View Types
- View specific image formats
How can I narrow a search after it's been placed?
Applying filters after you've done a search
When your search results display, you can further narrow your search by clicking boxes in the left column to add more search criteria. This is sometimes called refiningyour results.
Refine Your Results
- Full Text
- View articles online from this database
- References Available
- Finds articles that contain a reference list or bibliography
- Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals
- Finds articles which have been approved by a panel of experts before publication
- Publication Date
- Narrow the range of dates included by clicking and dragging the date sliders, which are circled below
- Source Types
- This allows you to limit to certain types of publications. A popular choice is limit to Academic Journals
- Subject
- The "Subject" and "Subject Thesauraus Terms" filters both work by limiting your source results to specific topics, as determined by "official" subjects assigned by the database
Applying filters after you've searched
To locate the search filters on your search results page, look in the left column of the page, or consult the screen shot shown below.
(Click image to view full size)
Locating the Limiting Features
To locate the limiting features on the advanced search page of Academic search premier, look below the search box. This part of the screen is highlighted in the image below.
