InfoSkills for Economics and Management

The EconLit front page is the Advanced Search.

❶ Search rules

• Boolean operators
  • Use the Boolean operator AND combine search terms so that each search result contains all of the terms. 
  • Use OR to find any of the terms. 
  • Use NOT to exclude terms so that each search result does not contain any of the terms that follow it.
• Nesting
  For more controlled searching, use parentheses to override the default operator precedence (AND, OR, NOT).
• Phrase searching
  To search for an exact phrase, use quotation marks around your search term: "firm performance".
• Truncation & wildcard symbols
  • The truncation character is the asterisk (*), used to replace one or more characters. The truncation character can be used at the end, or in the middle of a word.
    For example, searching for econom* will find economy, economics, economical, etc..
  • 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 'Select a Field (optional)' which searches the full record (all indexed fields) including the full text. Other search fields can chosen from the pull-down menu such as AU - Author, AB - Abstract, SU - Subject, and SO - Source (journal title).

❷ Published Date 

The Published Date limit defaults to search all dates. 

❸ Other limits: Publication Type, Geographic Region 

Limiting your search by marking any of the limits will run your search to include those limits you selected.

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

❹ Linked Full Text

By selecting Linked Full Text, you can limit your search to only return items with full text. However, publications that are not full-text accessible in EconLit may still be accessible through the TiU library. Therefore, it is wise to not check this limit.