Cochrane Library查詢tips

Tip No. 1:


Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT can be selected from the pulldown selection boxes or entered directly within the search text boxes. Use parentheses to separate components when entering complex search directly in text box with mixed Boolean operators.



Example: (colchicine AND liver) AND (fibrosis OR cirrhosis)





Tip No. 2:

The AND operator is used by default between search terms. The string brain stem will match records where both words are included in any order or proximity. Search for exact phrases by enclosing a string in quotation marks.



Example: "clodronate therapy" matches that exact term





Tip No. 3:

Search for accented characters (within all fields except Author) by using both the accented and unaccented versions of a term or by using wildcard (multiple: *) or (single: ?) characters.



Example: meniere* or ménière*



Example: m?ni?re*



Both examples match Meniere's or Ménière's





Tip No. 4:

Within the Author field, both the accented forms of a name (such as Muller and Müller) are matched when either form of the name is entered in the text search text box.





Tip No. 5:

You can use an asterisk (*) as a wildcard character. Please note that autopluralization and singularization are active.



Example: aid matches aid, aids, aidings, aided





Tip No. 6:

As a shortcut for OR, you can use a comma ",".



Example: gene, therapy matches gene OR therapy





Tip No. 7:

All searches are case insensitive.



Example: ph matches pH, ph, PH, and Ph.





Tip No. 8:

Use NEXT to find adjacent terms. Use NEAR/ with a number to indicate proximity. The default proximity value for the operator when no number is entered is 6.



Example: endocrine NEAR/5 therapy matches endocrine within 5 words of therapy.





Tip No. 9:

It is not necessary to search for hyphenated terms separately.



Example: (high NEXT risk NEXT pregnancy) matches high-risk pregnancy and high risk pregnancy





Tip No. 10:

Use the wildcard character (*) at the end of a term to search for diseases that could appear in the text with different endings, such as the Down Syndrome.



Example: down* syndrome