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Nursing: Evidence-Informed Practice Search Module - Basic

Using wildcards in Scopus

USING WILDCARDS IN SCOPUS

Wildcards are shortcut characters which can help to include spelling variations and derivatives of your key word without having to type each individually. Here are the ones you can use in Scopus, but be aware that this may vary for individual databases.

ASTERISK

Use before, within or after word or string to replace multiple characters (note: do not separate a * from a word with a hyphen as then * will be dropped: eg. *-attack will be searched as attack, but *attack will find heart-attack etc.)

e.g. computer* retrieves  computer,  computerscomputerised,  etc.

question mark

QUESTION MARK

Depending on database, use before, within or after word or string to replace zero or one character

e.g. colo?r retrieves  colorcolour

"

DOUBLE QUOTES

Use to find loose phrases

e.g TITLE-ABS-KEY( "heart attack") searches for documents where heart attack appear together in the title, abstract, or keywords, with out without a hyphen in between. Without the quotes this would search for heart and attack together or separately in the title , abstract or keywords.

{}

BRACES

To find documents that contain an exact phrase, enclose the phrase in braces.

e.g. {heart-attack} and {heart attack} will return different results because the dash is included.

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