1. Advanced Search
   1. Drop-Down-Menu AND/OR/NOT
2. Search fields and their content
3. Search tips
   1. Truncation
   2. Phrase search
   3. Combining search terms - Boolean Operators
4. Results list
   1. Sort according to...
   2. Export formats
   3. Duplikate
   4. Pay for use vs. Free of charge content
   5. Refining your search
   6. Continued search

To begin searching, simply enter individual or multiple search terms into the search mask and click on “Search” or hit return.

Advanced search enables you to refine the search query. This allows specification with respect to the type of information in the search results, databases to be searched and language of the individual references.

• Information type: Up to six different information types can be selected by marking the corresponding check boxes, the results returned will then be comprised of these types. Example:  You are searching for a specific conference. Check only the “Events” box to reduce the hits to an amount suitable to your needs.

• Database: Should you only wish to search a particular set of databases, utilize the limiters available in the area “Databases.” Example:  You are searching for a specific book from the library of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (Foundation). Check only the “FES” box to correspondingly limit the amount of hits.

• Language: To include/exclude literature of various languages in your search, the tools are found under “Language.” Example: To search for a particular English language book (or German, other, etc…) check only the “English” box to correspondingly limit the amount of hits.

NOTE: The choice of language corresponds to the language of the original publication, not that of the bibliographic entry or abstract.

 

Advanced Search also offers the opportunity to separately select the individual fields in the search mask and differentially combine them with one another.

Drop-Down-Menü AND/OR/NOT

In addition, use the Drop Down Menu at the left edge of the search mask to select the operators AND, OR, NOT. This enables a logical combination of the individual search fields.

• AND:  Combining two or more search fields with the operator AND yields a results list comprised only of documents containing all search terms of all combined search fields.

• OR: Combining two or more search fields with the operator OR yields a results list comprised of documents containing either one or the other of the search terms from the combined search fields.

• NOT: Combining two or more search fields with the operator NOT yields a results list comprised solely of documents containing the search terms of one field but excludes terms from the other field.

Note:  Please be aware that checking “All Words” enables the logical combination of each term in a field with all other terms in all other fields.

• All databases contained within SOWIPORT can be searched simultaneously with the basic search. Have a look at the individual pre-defined Search fields and the “All Words” box as well.

All Fields

All Fields searches the following information:

Original title including subtitle as well as (when applicable) the translation in German, short description of the content (abstracts, annotations), keywords, source info, year, as well as names of persons. Searches in the research database SOFIS (formerly FORIS) yield additional information on publications and/or working papers, on methodological procedures and on data acquisition.

Keywords

Keywords represent topic and content or (if applicable) geographic or historical reference of a publication or research work.

The keywords used for the databases SOLIS and SOFIS stem from the IZ Social Science Thesaurus, the keywords used for the database DZI SoLit stem from the DZI SoLit thesaurus on Social work/ Social pedagogy. So-called cross concordances exist between all databases contained in SOWIPORT, i.e. keywords with same or similar meaning are linked with the appropriate keywords of the other thesaurus and automatically translated in the combined search.

The keywords used ion the databases (individual words or word sequences) can be looked up in the alphabetical listing of the thesaurus.

Title

When searching in this field all words from the original titles including subtitles and (if applicable) their translation into German are included in the search.

Persons

When searching for authors or editors of publications as well as for researchers, project directors and/or supervisors in the Persons field, “First Name Last Name” as well as “Last name, First Name,” or Last Name First name may all be entered.

Note on SOLIS:

By using au="First Name Last Name" the search can be limited to authors , using ed="First name Last name” the search can be limited to the editors. As of 1995 the table of contents including the names of the authors were included as part of the abstract for collected editions. It is therefore recommended to search parts of the name in the form of “First Name Last Name” also in the field Broad search; for this the mask for the advanced search should be used employing an OR operator between the fields Persons and Broad search.

Place

An entry in this field allows searching for the country or city of publication in the literature databases. The research project database SOFIS contains both the country and city of the project institution. The specialized information guide SocioGuide allows both searching for location information for the institution and events and for the country or city of publication of the journals. For collected editions, the place of publication is listed and for networks, the participating countries.

Institutions

This field of the literature databases refers to the copyright owner of the publication, for example, the editor. In SOFIS this field contains the university and non-university institutions carrying out the project as well as commissioning agency and underwriters/funding source. The field can be searched with segments of names (for instance “Hamburg AND Politi*”).

Year

In the literature databases, the field Year contains the year of publication, and in SOFIS it relates to the year the research project was either accepted into the database initially or in its updated version. In the specialized information guide SocioGuide the field Year contains the event date within “Events.” The individual year can be searched (for example: 2003) or time frames (for example: 2002-2004); numerical operators a can also be used (for example: >2001 or >=2002 or <=1990 or <1995).

NOTE: Make sure, depending on the search query to deactivate the check box:  “Search only the last 4 years.”

The following will help in further refining the search results and improve precision of the search as well as offer a short explanation of the basic rules of a search in SOWIPORT.

• SOWIPORT searches are not case sensitive. Example:  A search query using the term “Police” yields the same result as “police” or “pOLice.”

• SOWIPORT searches do not require umlauts or the double s (ß). Example:  A search query with the terms “Fußball” and “Köln” yields the same results as “Fussball” and “Koeln” or “fussball” and “kÖLn.”

Truncation

Should you wish to abbreviate search terms in SOWIPORT to vary your search results or because you do not know the exact search terms, it is necessary to use truncation. Use the asterisk for this (*).

• Right truncation: Using the asterisk(*) to the right of a word or word fragment replaces any number of following letters. Example: Entering the word “tele*” searches also terms like telephone, teleconferencing television, etc.

• Left truncation: Using the asterisk(*) to the left of a word or word fragment replaces any number of preceding letters. Example:  Entering the word:  “*spieler” searches also terms like Fußballspieler, Eishockeyspieler, Mitspieler, Falschspieler, etc (Choose from IZ thesaurus).

• Double sided truncation: Using a combination of both types of truncation, meaning placing an asterisk(*) on the left and right of a word or word fragment replaces any number of preceding or following letters, at the beginning or end of a word. Example: Entering the word:  “*spieler*” searches also terms like Fußballspieler, Falschspieler, etc., in addition to Spielerfrau, Spielergebnis, etc. as well as Fußballspielergebnis, Glückspielertrag, etc.

Note:  Truncating a keyword for the search will eliminate its cross concordances, in an effort to reduce inaccuracies. Meaning that possibly a search with a truncated keyword will yield fewer hits than searches with non-truncated

Phrase search

Compound terms, phrases, word sequences, such as "social acceptance," need to be searched encased in quotes.

Combining search terms - Boolean Operators

When using several search terms they must be entered separated by a space. For advanced search the following should be observed:

• If the box “All Words” has been checked, the search terms are combined with a logical AND. Meaning that only documents are found that contain all the words.

• If the box “All Words” has not been checked, the search terms are combined with a logical OR meaning that only documents are found containing at least one of the entered terms.

In other words, within a field all entered search terms are combined with a logical AND if the box “All Words” has been checked. Not selecting “All Words” means that all entered search terms are being combined by a logical OR.

Once the results list has been displayed there is the possibility to further refine the search.

Sort according to...

The list of research results can be sorted according to different criteria. The following search criteria can be selected via the Drop Down Menu:

• Relevance (by title) – The title is attributed the highest relevance in terms of internal relevance ranking, i.e. the results list will place those references first whose titles correspond most highly with the search terms entered.
• Title – The results list is sorted alphabetically according to title (no ranking).
• Year (ascending) –The results list is sorted according to year in ascending order (no ranking).
• Year (descending) –The results list is sorted according to year in descending order (no ranking).
• Relevance according to keyword – The keyword is attributed the highest value in the internal relevance ranking, i.e. the hit list places those references first whose keywords correspond most highly with the search terms entered.
• Relevance according to author – The  author name is attributed the highest value in the internal relevance ranking, i.e. the hit list places those references first in which the author name corresponds most highly with the search terms entered.

.

Export formats

• EndNote: The search results can be displayed in the EndNote format for direct export into the literature administrations program.

• BibTeX: This standard literature information format allows easy further utilization of research results.

• RefWorks: References returned can be imported into the web based RefWorks database for quick and easy usage.

• E-Mail: Results of your search can be sent to a specified email address.

.

Duplicates

Documents may appear in more than one database, however since the individual database providers differ in the way that they record the documents, the metadata of the documents may vary from one database to another. For this reason all documents are always displayed and are marked accordingly as duplicates.

Kostenpflichtige vs freie Inhalte

Jeder Nutzer kann kostenlos in allen SOWIPORT-Datenbanken recherchieren und sich eine vollständige Ergebnisliste mit Metainformationen wie Dokumenttitel, Autor/Herausgeber, Erscheinungsjahr und Publikationsjahr anzeigen lassen. Doch ausgewählte Angebote sind in einigen Datenbanken kostenpflichtig. 

• Detailansicht/Vollanzeige: Mit einem Klick auf den Titel des Dokumentnachweises öffnet sich bei kostenfreien Datenbanken die Vollanzeige als ausführliche Informationsliste zu jedem Dokument. Bei einigen kostenpflichtigen Datenbanken ENTFÄLLT dieser Service ohne entsprechendes Abonnement!

• Verlinkung zu externen Systemen: Unter der Mehrheit der Datenbanknachweise kann über spezielle Icons auf externe Verweissysteme zugegriffen werden. Diese Icons werden nur registrierten Abonnenten angezeigt.

Refining your search

At the right of the search results page there is a list of navigators to aid in refining the search. Navigators limit the current hits list strictly to the chosen term.

• Person:  Persons listed here have significantly published within the area of the search query. The number in parentheses represents the corresponding number of documents found. Clicking a particular name will display all hits from the current hit list containing the selected name as author or as editor.

• Database:  This category indicates the database containing the relevant documents for your search query. The number in parentheses represents the corresponding number of documents found. Clicking the database name displays the list of hits from that particular database.

• Keyword:  This category displays those keywords most frequently appearing in the references of your search. The number in parentheses represents the corresponding number of documents found. Clicking a keyword displays all hits containing the selected keyword.

NOTE: Only the first five entries of a category are displayed, for this reason there may be deviations between the total amount of hits and the number of documents displayed in parentheses. The German Umlauts are always resolved to standard letter spellings; i.e. ü = ue, etc.

Continued search

SOWIPORT offers the possibility to start a so-called “continued search.” After receiving the list of search results, there is the opportunity to begin a new search for more publications by the author by selecting the author of the document. Likewise, for keywords, in the full display of a document a click on one of the marked keywords starts a new search for documents containing the selected keyword. There is also the possibility to click the selected database from which a reference comes to get more detailed information on that particular database. This will take you immediately to the full display in the product catalogue containing all relevant information on the respective database.

We wish you success in your searches!

For further questions please go to: info(at)sowiport.de.