InfoSkills for Economics and Management

The Advanced Search is EconLit’s entry point, allowing users to conduct targeted searches using multiple fields and filters.

❶ Search rules

• Boolean operators
  • Use the Boolean operator AND to combine search terms so that results include all of them.
  • Use OR to retrieve results that include any of the terms. 
  • Use NOT to exclude terms so that results do not contain them.
• Phrase searching
  To search for an exact phrase, enclose your terms in quotation marks, for example: “firm performance”.
• Nesting
  Use parentheses to override the default order of AND, OR, and NOT, giving you more control over your search results, e.g., "climate change" AND ("renewable energy" OR sustainability). This search retrieves records that discuss climate change in conjunction with either renewable energy or sustainability.
• Truncation & wildcard symbols
  • The truncation character is the asterisk (*), which replaces one or more characters in a word. It can be used at the end or in the middle of a word. For example, a search for econom*will retrieve records containing economy, economics, economist, ....
  • The wildcard is represented by a ? or a pound sign #.
    • To use the ? wildcard, enter your search terms and replace each unknown character with a ? EconLit finds all citations of that word with the ? replaced by a letter. For example, type ne?t to find all documents containing neat, nest or next. Note that EconLit does not find net because the wildcard replaces a single character.
    • To use the # wildcard, enter your search terms, adding the # in places where an alternate spelling may contain an extra character. EconLit finds all documents in which the word appears with or without the extra character. For example, type colo#r to find all citations containing color or colour.
• Field searching
  When running a search, the search default is set to All fields, which searches the full record (all indexed fields but NOT the full text). Other search fields, such as All Text, Author, Abstract, Subject, and Source (e.g., journal title), can be chosen from the pull-down menu.

❷ Publication Date 

The Publication Date filter defaults to search All time. Choose Custom range to filter your results to a specific date range. 

❸ Other filters: Publication Type, Geographic Region

• The Publication Type filter includes Book, Book Review, Collective Volume Article (e.g., book chapter), Dissertation, Journal Article, and Working Paper. 
• The Geographic Region filter can be used to restrict your search to documents about specific regions such as Asia, Northern America, or Europe. 

❹ Linked Full Text

Selecting Linked Full Text limits your search to items with full text available in EconLit. However, some publications not accessible in full text within EconLit may still be available through the TiU Library. For this reason, it is usually best to leave this filter unchecked.