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Quick Reference User Guide

General Rules for Searching | Building a Search Query | Downloading and Printing



I. General Rules of Searching

  1. If you are unsure what field to search in, use the Full Text search box. This will search for the terms you enter across the text fields (Title, Abstract, etc.) in each record.
  2. To select multiple terms from any picklist, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard (the Apple key for Mac users) and click on the terms you want to select.
  3. Use Boolean Operators to combine terms within and between fields. The default operator is and for text fields and or for picklists.
    • Example: pediatric AIDS treatment -- searches for records containing "pediatric" and "AIDS" and "treatment" (i.e., all the terms must be present).
    • Example: cancer or oncology -- searches for records containing either "cancer" or "oncology."
    • Example: pediatric not AIDS -- searches for records which contain "pediatric" but not "AIDS."
  4. Use Truncation (Asterisk), Proximity Operators (pre/#, w/#), Exact Phrase Searching (Double Quotes), and Precedence (Parentheses) to give your search more flexibility.
    • Example: (gene* w/2 mouse) or "mouse genome" -- searches for the root word "gene" (this will include "genes," "genetics," etc.) within 2 words of "mouse" or for the exact phrase "mouse genome."
  5. Searches are case-insensitive. Using either upper or lower case letters will yield the same result set.
  6. With the exception of the hyphen, do not use punctuation marks (slashes, commas, periods, colons, etc.). Punctuation marks in most cases will retrieve erroneous results.
  7. Do not use the articles a, an, or the. The search software does not search for these words or other common stop words.
  8. For more information: see the section on Rules for Searching.



II. Building Your Search

Search Steps Example
1. Formulate a search question: "What projects are there on cataract treatment using laser technology?"
2. Identify the key terms from your question: cataract ; laser
3. Identify any synonyms or related terms to include, and terms or ideas you want to exclude from your search: include: eye disease, lens
4. Choose which date range(s) [if applicable] you want to search: Press Ctrl + Alt keys and click with mouse to select multiple ranges.
5. Identify what fields you want to put your terms into (Hint: use truncation to include plurals or alternate spellings): Full Text: laser* and (lens or cataract* or "eye disease*")
Recent Grants Only?: Yes
6. Examine your search results and refine or broaden your query as necessary.
Use the Refining Your Query link to narrow your search, or
use the 'Back' button on your Web browser to return to your original search query to broaden or modify your search.


III. Downloading and Printing

The Citation Manager offers the following options:

  • Download:
    Download or print results of your choosing (by clicking in the check box to the left of each patent title), or select all the results in the current results page.
    Note: You can check and download records across multiple pages of results.

  • Format:
    • HTML (Display Only) - Use this to display results on your browser in an easy to read, table format for viewing or printing. You can also save results to disk in HTML format by using the 'save' functions in your browser.
    • ASCII Text - This is a standard field-tagged text format that can be read by most word processing software and some citation management packages.

  • Content:
    Choose what information you want to download or display:
    • Full Record to download all of the information that the records contain.
    • Standard Citation Fields to output basic Bibliographic fields as available.
    • Select the fields you want to include in your download, choosing them from the picklist display (hold down the Ctrl key [or Apple key for Mac users] to select more than one field).


Steps to Download (Save) Your Results:

Note: The following instructions may vary using different hardware and software systems. Instructions based on Windows 95 system using Netscape Navigator 4.04.
  1. Select the records you want to download.
  2. Select the format and record content you wish to download.
  3. Click on the 'Download' button to begin the download process.
  4. If you chose the HTML display format, the records you selected will be displayed on your browser. See next section for printing instructions.
  5. If you chose the ASCII format, a 'Save As...' dialog box should appear on your screen.
  6. Choose a file name that you will remember and select a location to save the results to.


Steps to Display and Print Out Your Results:

Note: The following instructions may vary using different hardware and software systems. Instructions based on Windows 95 system using Netscape Navigator 4.04.
  1. Select the records you want to print.
  2. Select the HTML format and record content you wish to print.
  3. Click on the 'Download' button to display the records chosen.
  4. Use the 'Print' button usually located at the top of your Web browser window to send the displayed results to your printer.
For more information: see the downloading and printing section of the help documentation.


For additional questions, please see our detailed Help documentation, or, contact our help desk.


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Page Created: 5/99 ; Last Updated: 6/99 ; URL : http://fundedresearch.cos.com/helpdocs/userguide.shtml
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