BIOL 4950 - Marine/Organismal Biology: Search Tips

If you’re coming up with too few or too many results, try these tips!

Broaden your search

• Shorten a word to its root (truncate it) and add an asterisk (*)
   ◦ A search for pollut* would include the words pollute, pollution, pollutant, pollutants...
• Use OR instead of AND between keywords

Narrow your search

• Use AND between keywords
• Use NOT to exclude keywords

AND only returns search results that contain both keywords

OR returns results that include either keyword

NOT excludes one or more of your keywords

ASFA: Aquatic Sciences & Fisheries Abstracts has a lot of features to make narrowing your search and finding similar documents easier for you.  Here are a few of them:

 Under "Search Options" on the main search page

• Limit results to "peer-reviewed"
• Adjust the publication date

 On the results page

• On the right side of the screen, narrow your results by DOCUMENT TYPE, SUBJECT, etc.
• Use the "Search within" option to add another term

 On an individual record page

• Click on "See Similar Documents"
• Click on "Cited by" to find articles that cited the article of interest

*And remember: You can save marked records and email them to yourself or upload them directly to Endnote or Zotero*