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1. Cautions
2. Searching
3. Search Examples

Cautions

• Date fields will not be searched as date values. Use Fielded Search for proper date searching.
• Search words are case-insensitive, except for search operator words which must be all upper case.
• Note! The previous version of the Profiles site used the Verity search engine to handle user queries. The search engine has been replaced with a new search engine that does not support the old Verity formatted queries. Therefore any previously saved search queries strings will unlikely produce the expected results.

Searching

Special Note: The query string (labelled Your Search Query:) found on a Search Results page, may be copied and pasted into the Search field. (without the quotes). The query string may be edited then Search selected to perform a new search.

Synonyms

Medical terms can be difficult to remember, and often there are many names for a single concept (e.g., cancer of the colon, colonic neoplasm, colon cancer, etc.). Thus, Profiles in Science adds words related to those you entered automatically. This may increase the number of documents retrieved.

Example: When using the phrase heart attack in a search, the related phrase myocardial infarction will be added.

Search Operators

Operator	Definition	Example
AND	Retrieved documents contain all words or phrases (and synonyms) connected by the AND operator	leukemia AND chemotherapy
OR	Retrieved documents contain either word or phrase (and synonyms) connected by the OR operator	aspirin OR ibuprofen
NOT	Retrieved documents do not contain the word or phrase (and synonyms) following the NOT operator	Immunodeficiency NOT AIDS
" "	Retrieved documents contain the exact words as specified between the quotes (and synonyms)	"heart attack"

Notes on Operators

• Profiles in Science interprets commas (',') in search statements as AND operators. For example, the search strategy diabetes, st. louis, missouri is identical to diabetes AND st. louis AND missouri.
• By default, Profiles in Science retrieves documents that contain all words entered, regardless of order. To ensure that words are searched in a particular order, use the multi-word operator. Example: heart attack retrieves all studies that contain both the word heart and the word attack whereas "heart attack" retrieves documents containing the phrase, heart attack.

Search Examples