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Effective database searching

A guide to using databases, and effective search techniques.

This section describes some important methods you can use to search efficiently and effectively. It gives you guidance on:

  • using symbols to search for alternative word endings and spellings
  • searching for phrases
  • performing more specific searches
  • combining your concepts in a search statement

Widening your search: truncation and wildcards


    africa* will find africa, african, africans, africaans
    agricultur* will find agriculture, agricultural, agriculturalist

  • A wildcard symbol (?) replaces a single letter. It's useful for retrieving alternate spelling spellings (i.e. British vs. American English) and simple plurals
    wom?n will find woman or women
    behavio?r will find behaviour or behavior

Hint: Not all databases use the ? and * symbols, so check the online help screens before you start.

Watch our video on literature searching tips and tricks


If you are unable to view this video on YouTube it is also available on Stream - view the Literature searching tips and tricks video on Stream (University username and password required)

Combining your terms: search operators


There are three main operators:

  • AND - for combining your concepts giving more specific results e.g. women AND africa

Watch our video on literature searching tips and tricks

This video covers a variety of techniques for creating a comprehensive search including using 'AND' and 'OR' to build a search statement.


women OR female


This will give you a broader range of results.


  • (cat OR kitten OR feline)
  • (women OR female)








Being more specific: phrase and proximity searching


  • "agricultural development"
  • "foot and mouth"

Your search will only bring back items containing these exact phrases. 


On Scopus to search for an exact phrase use { } e.g. {agricultural development}. Using quotes on Scopus will find your words in the same field (e.g. title) but not necessarily next to one another.



Each database has its own way of proximity searching, so it's important to check the online help before you start. Here are some examples of the variety of possible searches:


Bringing it all together: creating search statements

On most databases you can type in a search statement (or search string), which involves combining your search words using search operators. When creating a search statement you must use brackets to ensure correct processing of the search. The database will read your search from left to right, but will perform bracketed terms first (the same way bracketed terms are dealt with first in mathematics). 

  • Words representing the same concept should be bracketed e.g. (women OR gender)
  • Groups of bracketed terms can then be linked with AND or NOT

This is an example search statement bringing together our three concepts using the techniques described above. Each concept is separated by AND.

(wom?n OR gender) AND "agricultural development" AND africa*

Try using the generator below to come up with your own search statement.

Many databases also allow you to create rows for each concept, the database takes care of the brackets and inserts AND between the rows. 

Give it a go: creating a search