The truncation symbol in ScienceDirect
is the exclamation point (!), and can be used to find variant spellings.
For example, the command behav! will search
for and find behave, behaving, behavior, behaviour, behavioural, and behavioral.
In ScienceDirect use the asterisk to hold a space for variations
in spelling at any point in a word.
So, for example, bernst**n would find both the "ei" and the "ie" spelling of the name, and
wom*n! will find woman, womans, woman's, women, women's, and womanish.
Two Boolean operators that are important in finding information
are AND and OR.
The AND is used to connect two different concepts
and the OR is best used between concepts that are synonymous.
It is critical to put parentheses around a search expression that contains an OR.
Here is an example to illustrate some of these points:
(food! OR eat!) AND (wom! or girl!)
This should find the terms "food," "foods," or "eating" with terms
"woman," "womans," "women," "womens," "girl," or "girls."
This might be a useful search for someone researching females and eating disorders.
