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Guide to using SAGE Journals

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Boolean Operators

Operator Example Finds articles with...
AND (also + or &) badgers AND tuberculosis both the word badgers and the word tuberculosis
(also -) badgers  AND  (tuberculosis OR TB) either the word tuberculosis or the word tb and the word badgers
NOT badgers AND (tuberculosis OR tb) NOT vaccination  the word badgers and the word tuberculosis but not the word vaccination

When your search query includes multiple Boolean operators, use brackets " ( )" to help the search engine group them in a way that is relevant for your research.

"badgers" OR "meles meles" AND tuberculosis finds all documents in which the phrase "meles meles" AND the word tuberculosis are both present as well as all documents in which the word badgers  is present.

 (badgers OR "meles meles") AND tuberculosis will only find documents that include the word tuberculosis in addition to either the word badgers  or the phrase "meles meles".

 

Phrase Searching

Use quotation marks around words to find articles where your search words appear together.

  • Bacterium bovis finds documents with the word bacterium and the word bovis.
  • "Bacterium bovis" finds documents with bacterium bovis in that exact order.

 

Other search operators

Operator Example Finds articles with...
~ (stemming) dostoevsky~

dostoevsky, dostoievski, dostoevsky, dostoyevski, dostoevskii, dostoevski,

 

Stemming allows you to search for keywords with similar beginnings but different endings

.Warning: searches a huge number of words. Limiting the search to a specific field, for example the title field is recommended.
? (wildcard)

wom?n

organi?ation

woman, women

organisation, organization

The ? wildcard replaces a single character in a word
* (wildcard) vaccin*

vaccine, vaccinated, vaccines

The * wildcard replaces zero or multiple characters in a word
("keywords")~ (n) (proximity) "badger tuberculosis"~5 

The word badger and the word tuberculosis within 5 words of each other

Put quotation marks around your keywords, followed by ~ and a number to indicate the maximum number of words apart the keywords can be.
^ (importance) badgers^5 tuberculosis finding the word badgers in a document is five times more important than the word tuberculosis