In addition to searching with search terms, you can filter your results. It is possible to use filtering options with or without also using search terms.
Note that the filtering options that are visible at any time are tied to your current results. For example, the collection you are searching may contain 10 content types. However, if you have searched terms that only appear in two content types, you will only see those two types.
In this section, you can look up the definition of each filter, and find instructions on how to use it. You will also find links to the full list of language codes under the filters related to languages.
Sections are the broad categories of the collection’s content. Each record must be assigned to a single section, even in cases when its interdisciplinary nature crosses boundaries. Therefore, you can select as many sections as are relevant to your search.
Content type can include journal articles, reviews, patents, conference proceedings, books, book chapters, master’s and PhD theses, standards, reports, and legislation.
Journal articles can include articles published in both trade and scholarly journals. If desired, the option to limit results to scholarly peer-reviewed articles is available at the bottom of the filters list.
Keywords are controlled vocabulary terms that have been added to each record in IFIS Collections. Keywords are taken from the subject specific IFIS thesaurus. In a record, they capture the main concepts covered in that source.
The thesaurus is hierarchical, with broad ‘parent’ terms at the top-level. Each of these will have multiple narrower ‘child’ terms, and potentially multiple levels below that.
When you run a search, the keywords you see in the filter list are ‘parent’ terms which have a ‘child’ term that has been used in the records that your search found. For each ‘parent’ term shown, there is at least one ‘child’ term that has been assigned to a record.
Adding a keyword as filter to your search
If you click on the thesaurus term to select it, it becomes a filter and is displayed at the top of the search results page. This automatically reduces the results to only those which either have that keyword assigned to them, or a keyword from the levels ‘below’ that term.
You can add any number of keywords to your filter. But note that they work together. For each keyword filter you add to a search you will only see the results which have all the keywords you have asked for. Adding an additional keyword will always reduce the number of results.
Browsing the keyword tree
It is also possible to browse and explore the keyword hierarchy without modifying a search. If you click on the small arrow beside a keyword term it will open the next layer down in the thesaurus hierarchy for you to view. There may or may not be additional narrower (more specific) terms each time you click on an arrow. When there is no arrow next to a term, then - for these search results - this is the lowest level of the hierarchy.
Exploring the hierarchy can help you understand a topic and help you find relevant search terms.
What do the numbers in parentheses mean?
Sometimes a keyword will have a number in brackets next to it. That shows how many records in your current set of records have been tagged, or indexed, with that keyword. However, some records will have been tagged with a keyword in your list even though no number appears next to that keyword.
How can I use keywords to search?
In the previous section, we talked about using keywords to filter a set of results you already have. You can also use keywords as a primary search tool by selecting terms from the thesaurus hierarchy. Note though that if you select a term at the bottom of the hierarchy (so no terms appear below it) that keyword must appear in the keyword list for all the records returned. If you select a higher-level term (one with an arrow next to it), any of the keywords at a lower level in its hierarchy can might be assigned to records in your results set.
Publication title lists the journals where articles have been published. In the case of standards, patents, reports and legislations, it lists a description of where the source was published.
Note that source or publication title is not a searchable field. If you want to narrow your results to a particular title, you will need to use this filter.
This filter displays all the years that literature fitting your search criteria has been published. It allows you to limit your results to specific date ranges.
You may want to update a previously run search to see if any new material has been added to the collection. To do this, it is generally better to use the Date of Addition filter instead of the Publication Year filter.
These are the languages of summaries present in the source material which are different from the language of the main text of the article.
Language codes
IFIS Collections use the international standard ISO 639-1 for language codes. If you are not sure which language a code stands for, you can find it here. Note that this page allows you to arrange the 639-1 code column by alphabetical order, which makes it much easier to find a specific code.
IFIS Collections have some historic records classified as Sh. Sh stands for Serbo-croat. It is not found on the list above as Serbian and Croatian have been separated in the standard’s latest update.
Source language is the language in which the source is written.
Language codes
IFIS Collections use the international standard ISO 639-1 for language codes. If you are not sure which language a code stands for, you can find it here. Note that this page allows you to arrange the 639-1 code column by alphabetical order, which makes it much easier to find a specific code.
IFIS Collections have some historic records classified as Sh. Sh stands for Serbo-croat. It is not found on the list above as Serbian and Croatian have been separated in the standard’s latest update.
This filter allows you to sort items by their paywall status.
Freely available are mostly patent documents that can be found online. Find guidance on locating the full text of these documents in Getting the Full Text.
Hybrid means that the item has been published in a hybrid journal. Hybrid journals make some articles freely available through open access while some must be purchased. You must check each article to ascertain its status.
Open Access - these articles have been published in open access journals and therefore the full text is available for free to all users.
Subscription - these articles have been published in subscription journals and the full text is available by purchase only.
Ticking the peer review filter will limit results to academic articles that have undergone peer review.
This filter gives you the option to either view results that have been added to the collection in a specified date range, or on a particular date.
Date of Addition is not the same as Date of Publication. Some publishers release material earlier than its stated publication date. When a new publication is added to a collection, older material could be included in the addition.
At the top of your search results, you can see the filter(s) which are currently applied to your search results. To remove a filter, click on the x.