How to Search for an IEEE Conference

To do a basic search, enter some search terms. For example:

• Prague
• Conference
• Sustainability

This will search for documents containing the words Prague, Conference or Sustainability.

Boolean operators allow terms to be combined for more advanced searches. The terms OR, AND, NOT, and +, -  are supported.

The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document. Note, the symbol || can be used in place or the word OR. To search for documents that contain either "sustainable energy" or just "wind energy" use the query:

"sustainable energy" OR "wind energy"

or

"sustainable energy" || "wind energy"

Note: OR is the default search term, so the following search is equivalent to both of the previous examples:

"sustainable energy" "wind energy"

The AND operator matches documents where both terms are in the text of the document. The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND. This is a more restrictive search than an OR search. To search for documents that contain "sustainable energy" and "wind energy" use the query:

"sustainable energy" AND "wind energy"

or

"sustainable energy" && "wind energy"

The NOT operator excludes documents that contain terms after NOT. The ! symbol can be used in place of the word NOT. To search for documents that contain "sustainable energy" but not "wind energy" use the query:

"sustainable energy" NOT "wind energy"

or

"sustainable energy" ! "wind energy"

Note: The NOT operator must be used with multiple terms. For example, the following search will return no results: NOT "wind energy"

The "+" operator tells the search engine that the search term must appear in a document to be a match. To search for documents that must contain "sustainable energy" and may contain "wind energy" use the query:

+"sustainable energy" "wind energy"

The "-" operator excludes documents that contain the term after the "-" symbol. To search for documents that contain "sustainable energy" but not "wind energy" use the query:

"sustainable energy" - "wind energy"

Search terms can be grouped using parentheses for sub queries. For example, to find results about conferences on sustainability in different locations, try the following:

(Prague OR London OR Paris) AND sustainability

Further explanation of the Boolean operatiors OR and AND is noted in the "Boolean Operators" section above.

Wildcard searches permit searches for partial words. The single character wildcard search (?) looks for terms that match that with the single character replaced. For example, to search for "text" or "test" use the search:

te?t

Multiple character wildcard searches (*) looks for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for test, tests or tester, use the search:

test*

Wildcard searches can also be used in the middle of a term.

te*t

Note: * or ? symbols cannot be used as the first character of a search.

Fuzzy searches return results that match both the exact term searched and results that are close to the term searched. Add a tilde (~) to your search term to execute a fuzzy search. For example:

foam~

This search will return results for "foam" and also terms like "foamm" and "roams".

Proximity searches find words that are close to each other. For example, to find results for "sustainable" and "energy" when they are within 5 words of each other search:  
"sustainable energy"~5

Boosting a search term gives it more weight in the result list. For example, a search for "sustainable energy" might yield results about sustainable technology and energy but not necessarily sustainable energy. To weight the word "energy" more heavily use the following searches:

sustainable energy^4

To weight the entire phrase "sustainable energy" (not just the word "energy" as shown above) use quotes as follows:

"sustainable energy"^4 wind

Any number can be used to boost the term -- the higher the number the higher the boosting. For example, if the query above still returns too many results, consider increasing the boost value as follows:

"sustainable energy"^6 wind

There are a number of special characters that are part of the query syntax. The current list of special characters are + - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \ To escape these characters use the \ before the character. For example to search for (1+1):2 use the query: \(1\+1\)\:2