Simple words (AND, OR, NOT) used to find information in a database.
The practice of using a symbol to tell the database the find all forms of that word. The symbol is usually an asterisk but can vary by database.
The use of quotation marks to find an exact phrase.
Most databases allow you to search specific areas or fields in their records. Field searching can help you focus your search and refine your search results.
Useful tags in PubMed:
See a database’s help pages to learn more about field searching.
Nesting is the use of parentheses to group together similar concepts. Nesting is also used when grouping together two or more operators in a single search statement.
Characters used to replace another character in a term. Wildcards help find results with variant spellings; they vary by database. Not applicable to PubMed.
Characters used to tell a database how close a word must be to another word. These characters vary by database - see the database’s help pages for more information. You cannot perform proximity searches in PubMed.
EBSCO databases (CINAHL, PsycINFO, …)
Ovid
Embase
Scopus
Searching Google? Try the following operators to refine a Google search.