Creating A Search Profile

RefAware allows you to create and save up to 30 Search Profiles.  Each search profile is displayed as its own tab within RefAware.

When you first create your account and log in to RefAware, you are immediately brought into the Create Search Profile area.  After you have saved your first search profile and you want to create additional search profiles, simply click on the Create Search Profile button in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

A search profile can be a combination of:

• a Term(s)

• an Author(s)

• a Source(s)

You can use any number or combination of these terms to create search profiles ranging from simple to extremely complex, depending on your needs.

To Create a Search Profile:

1. Click on Create Search Profile.

2. Type in the Profile Name.

3. Determine which disciplines and custom source sets your search profile should search.  Selected disciplines determine which sources are searched.  By default, the disciplines selected in your Preferences are checked, including any Custom Source Sets you have created.  You can modify your discipline and custom source set selections for each search profile.  A complete list of sources and disciplines is available by clicking here.

4. Select the first criterion (Term, Author or Source) that you want to include in your search profile by clicking on the Search Criteria drop-down.  

5. After selecting the criterion, enter the information in the text box.  You may include “Boolean Operators” of AND, OR, NOT by simply typing them in.  For example, you may enter “Gaucher NOT Treatment” to get articles about Gaucher Disease that do not include the word “Treatment”.  After typing your entry, click on Add Search Criteria.  Your criteria will be displayed in the Criteria List.

6. Continue to add additional criteria by making a new selection in the Search Criteria drop-down. Each line is separated by a logical “OR”; in other words, the results of your search profile will include all articles that meet ANY of the criteria on individual lines of your search profile.

7. When you have completed your search profile, click the Save or Save & View Results button.

Note:  Each criterion has separate guidelines that must be considered when entering the information in your search profile.  See below for guideline details.

Search Profile Guidelines:

Searching using Author names:

• Multiple Authors must be separated with ';'.  If you include more than one author on a line, both authors must be included in a paper for the reference to be retrieved.

• 'and' and 'or' are treated as part of the name, not as Boolean operator

• An author preceded by 'not' is excluded

• If authors must be OR-ed together, they must be entered as separate criteria  

• SomeName = any author with this last name and any first name and/or initial

• SomeName, I = any author with this last name and full first name starting with 'I' or first initial 'I' or first name initial 'I' followed by middle name

• SomeName, I. = any author with this last name and first initial 'I' or first name initial 'I' followed by middle name

• "Anything in quotes" = exact match

• SomeName* = any author whose last name starts with SomeName followed by any first name and/or initial

• SomeName,* = any author with this last name and any first name and/or initial

• A '?' can be used to substitute any single character

• A '*' can be used to substitute zero or more characters

• '?' and '*' cannot be followed by ','

• '?' and '*' should not be inside quotes

For example:  Entering Smith in the Search Criteria will give you results with Smith, A.B.; Smith, A. Bob; Smith, Adam; Smith, Bob;.

Entering Smith, A will yield Smith, A.B.; Smith, A. Robert; Smith, Adam;  

Smith, A. will give you all results with an abbreviated first name beginning with A and followed by a period -- Smith, A.; Smith, A.B.; Smith, A. Robert;

"Smith & Johns" results in Smith & Johns – only (quotes equals exact match).

Johns* yields Johns, A.; Johnson, B.; Johns, Adam; Johnson, A. B; (any author last name with "Johns" as part of it)

Smith,* results in all authors with the last name Smith but any combination of first and/or middle name and initial -- Smith, A.B.; Smith, A. Bob; Smith, Adam; Smith, Bob;

Smith; NOT Smith, A.; NOT Smith, B. will retrieve all articles by anyone with the last name of Smith EXCEPT Smiths whose first name begin with the letters A or B.

Searching using Terms:

• Cannot start or end with 'and', 'or' or 'not'

• All words are AND-ed together if not specified otherwise.

• Separate criteria are OR-ed together

• You can exclude a term by using NOT, however, it must be presented in this way: Fish NOT Ocean.  Single terms cannot be excluded (i.e., entering "NOT Ocean" is not allowed -- see the first bullet point above).

• Stop words (e.g. a, the, it) are excluded from your search. For list of English stop-words visit http://snowball.tartarus.org/algorithms/english/stop.txt

• RefAware stems terms when searching.  This will produce broader search results.  For example, the term "consist" could return results with the words consisted, consistency, consistent, consistently, consisting and consists in addition to the term word consist used in your search strategy.  For more information on how RefAware stems English words, visit http://snowball.tartarus.org/algorithms/english/stemmer.html.

• Stemming can be averted by putting your term in quote marks (" ").

• "A quoted string" is treated as is, ignoring only ". , ! ? : ;". Case insensitive  

Source Criteria:

By default, RefAware will search all sources available to RefAware unless your strategy includes specific sources to exclude or you select a Custom Source Set that you have created in your Personal Profile to include specific sources to search.

You can also include sources to be searched in the Search Criteria text box.  Remember, when you enter a source in the Search Criteria area, you will receive all information from that specific source -- this is in addition to any terms or authors you have also included in your search criteria.  If you want to search for terms and/or authors in specific sources, you must create a Custom Source Set and select it either as a default in your Preferences area, or select it on the Create Search Profile page.  

Criteria for including Sources in your search profile:

• Cannot have quotes

• Should not have wild cards. They are treated as part of the name

• Is treated as exact match

• Cannot have multiple source names per criteria. (E.g. Science and Nature will be treated as "Science and Nature" not as "Science" and "Nature").  Enter specific sources separately

• Should be selected from the drop-down menu for better results

To exclude Sources in your search profile:

1. Click on the Exclude Sources link at the bottom of the Search Profile Page.

2. Begin typing the name of the source you wish to exclude.  The Source Assistant will display options for you to select.  Locate the name of the source you wish to exclude and click on it.  

3. Click on the Add Source button to add the source to the exclusion list.

4. Repeat Steps 1-3 until your exclusion list is complete.

5. Click Save or Save & View Results to save the exclusions.  

You can also exclude a source while viewing the search results.  When a record is displayed in the main viewing pane, you will see an Exclude Results From [Source name] button which is automatically populated with the name of the source for the record currently displayed. Click on the Exclude Results From [Source name] button to add that source to your exceptions list.