Search Engine

This page explains default search configurations to help you search smarter and more precisely.

The new search engine allows for a much more integrated experience and offers users:

• The ability to include wildcards with phrased searches
• The ability to include search operators such as AND, OR, NOT, NEAR, and ONEAR via the Global Search
• Search that is optimized across a variety of file types including PDF, HTML, audio, and video
• An improved process for saved searches
• A foundation for future platform enhancements such as semantic enrichment, smarter recommendations, and concept/entity extraction

Sign up for a free webinar to learn more about the new IEEE Xplore search engine

Search Operators

By default, multiple search terms are searched together with an implicit "AND" operator. For instance, a search for phone haptics will return both phone AND haptics. To search for content containing phone OR haptics, use the "OR" operator. Search operators (AND, OR, NOT, NEAR, and ONEAR) can be used in the global search and search within boxes.

Note:

• Operators must be in ALL CAPS.
• Boolean operators can be combined with proximity searches, for example:
  (A OR B) NEAR/5 (C OR D)
  or
  (Java OR XML) NEAR/3 (Code OR UI)
• Search operators are considered in an order of precedence: ONEAR/NEAR, NOT, AND, OR.
• Operators are not yet supported in Advanced Search fields, but can be included between each field with the drop-down menus. Operators are fully supported in all other search tools, including Basic Search, Command Search, and Search Within Results.

Learn more about using search operators

Field Searching

You can now search data fields in the global search bar. The syntax is as follows:

"Field name":keyword/number

Below are 26 field search examples:

Note: The AND operator is not implicit with data field searching. Be sure to use search operators when searching data fields.

Relevance Ranking

In addition to advanced term / keyword matching, the IEEE Xplore search engine uses four additional weights to influence search results, including phrase boosting, term weighting, distance weight, and field boosting:

1. Phrase Boosting
• Number of terms matched within a phrase will rank higher.
2. Term Weighting
• Considers the date content is inserted and the type of indexed content. This causes paid research content to appear above ephemera content such as front and back matter.
3. Distance Weight
• Considers proximity of the terms to each other. If one document has an instance of "cloud" very near "computing", and another document has the same number of "cloud" and "computing" terms, but they are not very near, then the one with the "cloud" near "computing" will have a higher score.
4. Field Boosting
   • Results are ranked based on which field the match is found in. For example, a match on document title would be ranked higher than a match on index term or abstract text.

Stemming

IEEE Xplore supports stem variations with some exceptions. Entering British or American spellings will search for both variations. Use wildcards for greater precision.

Wildcards

Wildcards can be used to make your search results more accurate. Wildcards are used in search queries to represent one or more other characters. The following is describes how wildcards can be used in IEEE Xplore:

• Asterisk wildcard (*) can be used:
  • for a single character or multiple characters.
  • for zero or more characters.
  • at the end of a word.
  • at the beginning of the word (left truncation).
  • in the middle of a word.
• Maximum wildcards per search: 10
• Minimum characters required: 3
  • Exception: Author Facet (2)
• Supported with proximity operators.
• Supported for full-text searches.
• Supported with phrased searching.
• Supports a question mark (?) for single character wildcard.

Saved Searches and Search History

Saved searches and search histories will carry over to the new system. There may be instances where the number of results returned may be slightly different from expected due to the change in search logic so we recommend that all users review their new results and modify the query, if needed . To expand the number of results returned, you can include an OR operator between multiple term searches.

You will not be able to combine Search History queries that use the proximity operators NEAR and ONEAR at the launch of the new search engine on the Search History Page. However, you can combine proximity searches in the basic search for example:

(IoT NEAR/3 Learning) AND ("Internet of Things" NEAR/3 Computing).

Tips for Expanding the Number of Results Returned

1. Incorporate an OR between multiple terms if the recall is lower than expected. For example: Rather than a search on bitcoin blockchain technology artificial intelligence (which will return matches only for items containing all of these terms), you can update your search to: bitcoin OR blockchain technology OR artificial intelligence.
2. For fielded searches with zero results are returned, you may want to verify that the correct field is indicated. For example: "Document Title" will search against the article title whereas "Publication Title" will search against the title for the journal that the article appears in.
3. Ensure that older searches do not contain a refinement for topic. This field is no longer supported as a refinement on the search results page. For example: Topic: Computing & Processing (Hardware/Software).

Phrased Searching

Phrased searching allows for more precise search results. Here are guidelines for using phrased searching:

• Use quotes (" ") to search for a specific phrase.
• When searching for phrases, stemming will be disabled. For example: "system on chip" will not return 'systems on chip' and "color image" will not return 'colour image'.
• You can use a wildcard to search for stem variations in a phrased search. For example: "comput* program".
• Stop words can be searched against if included in a phrase ("Designing the Digital" will account for the stop word "the").
• Punctuation is ignored in phrased searches (data-center = datacenter).

Additional Search Tips

• Ensure that searches for strings containing an ampersand are enclosed in quotes. For example: "AT&T".
• There is a limit of 40 terms within a search. Operators and field names do not count towards the maximum limit.
• A maximum of 25 terms are allowed within each clause. A clause is any search criteria included between the Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT.