JSTOR: Database Guide to Using JSTOR: Searching

The Basic Search form appears on the main page of JSTOR and also at the top of most content pages on the site. You can type any search terms into the Basic Search box and JSTOR will search for those terms across all of the content licensed or purchased by the library.

Here are a few things you can do to easily improve your search results:

• Place words within quotation marks to search for exact phrases (“to be or not to be”).
• Use Boolean operators to search for alternate terms (microcredit OR microfinance).
• Use ti: to search for the title of an article or book (ti:"body ritual among the nacirema")

While we call the simple search form a "Basic Search," you can perform fairly complex queries with it using special codes and Boolean operators. These options are explained in more detail below.

You may combine search terms and fields using AND, OR, and NOT (Boolean logic).

• AND: When you combine search terms with AND in a full-text search, your results contain everything in which both terms appear. Combining search terms makes your search results more precise. You can explicitly denote AND in the following ways: cat AND dog, cat && dog, +cat +dog, (cat dog)
• OR: Using OR between search terms allows to you find all items that contain either term. Using OR will search for items that contain either the word "cat", the word "dog", or both. For example: cat OR dog
• NOT: Searches using NOT will only find items that do not contain the search term following it. NOT must be capitalized. To find all items with the word cat that do not contain the word dog, search for: cat NOT dog, cat -dog (Be sure to include a space before the dash, but not after). 

Grouping Combined Search Terms

Parentheses allow you to determine the order in which terms are combined. The search "currency reform" AND (russia OR "soviet union") will search for items that contain the phrase currency reform and that contain either russia or soviet union. Without grouping parentheses, the search is interpreted as "currency reform" AND russia OR "soviet union," which returns items containing either both currency reform and russia or containing soviet union. By using parentheses, you may control the grouping of search terms.

Additional examples:

• (finch OR sparrow) AND exotic will search for items that contain the word exotic and either the word finch or the word sparrow
• (birds OR butterflies) NOT sparrow will search for items that contain either the word birds or butterflies and do not contain the word sparrow
• birds NOT (sparrow AND robin) will search for items that contain the word birds but do not contain both the words sparrow and robin
• birds NOT (sparrow OR robin) will search for items that contain the word birds but do not contain either the word sparrow or the word robin

Limiting a Search to a Specific Field

Use the drop-down boxes to limit search terms to the title, author, abstract, or caption text. Important to know:

• If you limit your search to the abstract field, you will search only a subset of the journal content on JSTOR. JSTOR doesn't create abstracts for content that was published without them; abstracts exist for only about 10% of the articles.  Abstracts tend to be more common in certain disciplines (social sciences, sciences) and in more recently published content.
• Captions are searchable for much, but not all of the image content on JSTOR. Some images do not contain captions.

Combining Search Terms

Use the drop-down boxes to combine search terms using the Boolean operators, AND/OR/NOT and NEAR 5/10/25. The NEAR operator looks for the combinations of keywords within 5, 10, or 25 words places of each other. Important to know: ​​the NEAR operator only works when searching for single keyword combinations. For example, you may search for cat NEAR 5 dog, but not "domesticated cat" NEAR 5 dog.

Narrowing a Search

Use the “Narrow by” options to search only articles, include/exclude book reviews, search for content published during a particular time frame, or in a particular language.

Limit an Article Search to a Specific Discipline(s)

You can focus an article search in specific disciplines and titles using the checkboxes in the discipline list under the "Journal Filter" section. 

If you want to include more than one term in a field search, use parentheses () to enclose your search terms, or quotation marks (" ") to search for an exact phrase. The example above ("american revolution") searches for the exact phrase "american revolution" rather than treating it as a keyword search (american AND revolution).

Some other examples:

• ti:cat dog will find the word cat in the item title field and the word dog in any field  
• ti:(cat dog) will find the words cat and dog in the item title field in any order 
• ti:"color purple" will find the exact phrase color purple in the item title field
• ti:(peacekeeping AND "united nations") will find the word peacekeeping and the phrase united nations in the item title field

Using the tilde symbol: You can find words with spellings similar to your search term by using the tilde (~) symbol at the end of a search term. For example, ti:dostoyevsky~ helps find items with dostoyevsky in the item title field, as well as variant spellings like dostoevsky, dostoievski, dostoevsky, dostoyevski, dostoevskii, dostoevski, etc. Note: This way of searching encompasses a very large number of words. Narrowing this kind of search to the item title or another field is recommended. The first letter always remains the same.

Wildcards: Wildcards take the place of one or more characters in a search term. A question mark is used for single character searching. An asterisk is used for multiple character searching. Wildcards are used to search for alternate spellings and variations on a root word. Wildcard characters cannot be used in place of the first letter of a word or within an exact phrase search. For example:

wom?n finds the words woman, women, womyn,
bird* finds bird, birding, birdman, birds, and other words that start with bird
organi?ation finds organization or organisation
behavior* searches for behavior, behavioral, behaviorist, behaviorism, or behaviorally

You can combine search terms containing wild cards (wom?n AND "science education") and they may be used in a field search: au:sm?th or ti:shakespeare*