Culinary Science

Advanced Search Techniques
for

Food Science Source
and
Food Science & Technology Abstracts
 

 

1. Booleans 2. Phrases 3. Truncation & Wildcards

4. Limits & Sorting 5. Subject Terms & FSTA Codes 6. Cited References

 

 

1. Booleans

The Boolean search operators are and, or and not.  AND is the default for most searches.

• And combines terms so that each search result contains all of the terms. For example, travel AND Europe finds articles that contain both travel and Europe. 
• Or combines terms so that each search result contains any (at least one) of the terms. For example, films OR coatings finds results that contain either films or coatings.
• Not excludes terms so that each search result does not contain any of the terms that follow it. For example, stocks NOT bonds finds results that contain stocks but not bonds.

 

And	Or	Not
Each result contains all search terms.	Each result contains at least one search term.	Results do not contain the specified terms.
search soy AND whey finds items that contain both soy and whey.	search soy OR whey finds items that contain either soy or items that contain whey.	search soy NOT whey finds items that contain soy but do not contain whey.

 

Using Booleans and Parentheses

You can enclose search terms and their operators in parentheses to specify the order in which they are interpreted. Information within parentheses is read first, then information outside parentheses is read next.  For example:

(taste OR flavor) AND consumer, the search engine retrieves results containing the word taste or the word flavor together with the word consumer in the fields searched. 

If there are nested parentheses, the search engine processes the innermost parenthetical expression first, then the next, and so on until the entire query has been interpreted. For example, ((taste OR flavor) AND consumer) OR “sensory analysis”

 

2. Phrase Searches Using Quotation Marks

Search for complete phrases by enclosing them in quotation marks. Words enclosed in quotes will appear together in results exactly as typed. For example: "edible films", “sensory analysis”, “food habits”

 

3. Wildcard and Truncation Symbols

Individual symbols used vary by database.

Use the wildcard and truncation symbols to create searches where there are unknown characters, multiple spellings or various endings.

Truncation

Truncation is represented by an asterisk (*)

The asterisk (*) represents any group of characters, including no character.

To use truncation, enter the root of a search term and replace the ending with an *.

For example, type sens* to find the words senses, sensory or sensation.

Wildcards

The question mark ? wildcard

The question mark ? represents any single character.

To use the ? wildcard, enter your search terms and replace each unknown character with a ?.

For example, type ne?t to find all citations containing neat, nest or next.
 

The hash mark # wildcard

The hash mark # represents an extra chracter.

This is helpful for variant spellings, such as, flavor or flavour.

For example, type flavo#r to find all citations containing flavor or flavour.

 

4. Using Limits to Refine/Narrow Search Results and Sort Options to Organize Results

Examples of Limits:

Source Type e.g. scholarly journals, trade magazines, books

Full Text

Subject terms

Subject Thesaurus for Food Science Source terms

Subjects for FSTA

Publication date

Document type e.g. article, report, patent, review, etc.

Language

Sort By:

Relevance

Date Newest

Date Oldest

Source (Journal name)

Author

 

5. Subject Terms, Keywords, and FSTA Category Codes

Standardized vocabulary terms used to describe and identify articles by the subject content (specific to disciplines and Databases.) These are useful for precise and relevant searching and for evaluating the contents of articles.

Food Science & Technology Abstracts 

Keywords are the subject terms listed in the record

FSTA Sections and Subsections subject categories for specific disciplines or sub-fields of study
They re identified as Category Codes in the record and as Section Codes in the Advanced Search

 

6. Cited References

• Cited References articles cited by your original article
• Related Records articles that have shared references
• Times Cited or Cited By articles that cite your original article

Who Cites Who

• Citations: a Bibliography/References page provide the list of articles read by the authors when conducting their own research. These can be an important source for you, the reader, to discover more articles to use in your own research.

You are reading article X. Y is an article that is cited by X.
X cites Y.
 

• Shared References: a list of articles that have one or more of the same citations in their bibliography as the article you are using.

You are reading article X. W is an article that shares citations with X. 
X and W both cite Y.
 

• Cited By: Some databases provide the number of or a list of the articles that CITE the article that you are reading; articles that have been written since the publication of that article and have cited it. The authors of the new articles read this article when conducting their research and included it in their Bibliography/References. The number of times an article has been cited is useful to understand the influence it has had on subsequent research; this is used to determine a journal’s Impact Factor.

You are reading article X. Z is an article that cites X.
X is cited by Z.

 

These lists of citations serve to place an article in the CONTEXT of scholarly research being conducted and communicated. The threads of research that can be traced in multiple directions are often compared to a WEB, hence Web of Science, Web of Knowledge.