In basic search you search among the following metadata:
In advanced search, you can combine several different subsearches in different fields to create a more complex search. Please note that you need to choose either AND or OR between all the fields defining your search. You can also combine several terms with OR within a field and then combine that field with another one using AND.
In Advanced Search you can specify which field you are searching:
Be aware of the logical order in which words are connected when using Advanced Search:
(mouse OR rat) AND trap will return articles about mouse traps and rat traps but the search for mouse OR rat AND trap will return articles about mice together with articles about rat traps.
In the simple as well as the advanced search, a number of selections can be made:
A - Search modes
Through the various search settings, the search words are processed in various ways. The default setting is Find all my search terms (AND) which means that all the search terms must be present in the searched fields for the entry to appear in the result list.
If your terms are very specific, you can use Find any of my search terms (OR) to get results on one of the terms.
Proximity search means that the search terms must appear within five word of one another (NEAR 5).
SmartText Searching is used when you don't get any results or if you want to search a larger amount of text. You can copy and paste up to 5000 characters and search for the entire text. An algorithm analyses the text and extracts central terms which it uses as search words. Only EBSCO databases are covered in the search (e.g. MEDLINE and CINAHL).
B - Apply related words
Means that the system maps the search terms with related terms and searches for these as well.
C - Also search within the full text of the articles
With this option you search the full text of articles for which EBSCO has an agreement with the publisher, even in cases when Lund University doeas not have access to the full text. This provides more results as the search terms are not necessarily included in the brief bibliographic entries or in the publisher's information, but may appear exclusively in the article itself (it is then ranked as less relevant than in cases where the word appears in the title or as a subject term).
D - Peer Reviewed
Limits the search to articles which appear in journals that ar classified as peer reviewed.
E - Reviewed Book Title
Limits the search to articles which contain the search term or terms in the title. Please note that this function doeas not work in the way the name indicates.
F - Journal name
Limits the search to the specific journal. Note that this doeas not work for abbreviations.
G - Library Catalogue (LUBcat)
Limit the search to the library catalogue LUBcat. With Location you can limit your search to a specific library within Lund University.
H - Available in Library Collection
Means that you search only among material which is accessible in the libraries' collections, i.e. e-resources which Lund University pays for, material in the library catalogue (LUBcat) or resources available through Open Access. Unselect this option if you want to make more exhaustive searches in the index, i.e. search in the whole of Scopus, MEDLINE, Web of Science etc.
I - Date Published
Limits the search to material from the period entered.
J - Author
Limits the search to the given author.
The Search History allows you to return to previous searches to review them. You can also combine several searches into complex searches. The image below is search 3 (S3) a combination of S1 (findability OR retrievability) and S2 (web OR internet), i.e. a search with two blocks: (findability OR retrievability) AND (web OR internet).
The result list ranks the results according to a calculation of their relevance, but the list can also be sorted by publication date (newest or oldest first).
Relevance is calculated with reference to where and how often the search terms appear
In order of importance:
Exact matches are ranked highest, but the location of the search terms is also taken into account. How often the search terms are present in relation to the length of the text (density) also counts, in particular if they are present in the title, subject word field or abstract.
Other factors which affect the ranking:
Once the relevance has been calculated in the various data sources, all matching results are displayed in a results list. This eliminates the results which appear in more than one data source so that only one article entry appears in the results list, i.e. if the matching works, the entries for a certain article from MEDLINE and CINAHL will not both be shown in the results list, but only one will appear (multiple results are removed). This means that a result from CINAHL in the top of the results list often also represents a result in MEDLINE.
The results list shows a summary of the record:
Click Read Now to proceed to the full text. It is worth noting that the database from which the result and the information originate is shown at the end of the bibliographic information. In the example above, the source is CINAHL Complete.
If you click on a title, you get to the detailed record (which can vary in length):
To the left of the detailed record are links to the full text, PDF Full Text or Full Text Finder (which redirects you to the full text on the origin site). It's the same links used as when you click Read Now in the result list.
To the right of the detailed entry are other functions/tools:
Some of these functions require you to have and EBSCO account (Please note that this is not the same as your student account or Lucat).
Note the function Permalink. Since LUBsearch is session based you can't copy and use the link from the URL field of your browser. If you click Permalink you'll get a link to the record that works properly.
In LUBsearch, limiters and facets work in different ways. Limiters can be placed before the search (under Search Options) and they remain in place until you remove them (or select New Search). Facets are a way of delimiting the results in the results list. Different types of limiters and facets appear to the left of the result list:
Under Current Search you can choose to unselect limiters by unticking the box.
Limit To is a mini-version of the search options applied to your results (see above). If you select Show More the entire window with all available options will appear.
Material Types lists the number of results of each type. This can be limited to one or several types.
Subject is an automatic clustering of the results into partial subjects. The usability varies depending on the composition of the result list.
Publication is the number of results per journal.
Publisher is the publishing house which published the articles/books shown in the result list.
Language shows the number of results in each language.
Location lists the libraries at Lund University where printed material in the result list is located.
Collection shows results from each sub-collection.
Source Databases shows the number of results in each data source (activated sub-databases in addition to the search engine’s basic index).
Phrases are preferably searched for by placing the search terms in quotation marks, e.g. “heart failure”. This works with Find all my search terms and Find any of my search terms (see above). Please note that so called stop words ("in", "of", "the" etc.) are not included in phrases.
Truncation (e. g. heart* to search for the word stem) and wildcards (e.g. S?rensen for Sörensen or Sørensen, or colo#r for color or colour) can be used.