Search documentation

Type in the word(s) you are looking for.

Things to remember:

• The words are matched from the start: Naturwissenschaft will be found when looking for Natur but NOT for wissenschaft. Note: you can match words from anywhere in the word using the special character *, see Advanced search.
• All the words you type in will be present in each of the search results. For more refined results, see the section “Advanced search”.
• The search is case insensitive.

The filters allow you to refine the results: by language, subweb, or type of content, document or webpage (“Content”). The results can also be ordered either by relevance or date.
If you want to restrict the search to full words, tick the corresponding checkbox.

Multiple words

When searching multiple words, the results will contain all the words of the query.

Example: Schmidt Jensen will retrieve all content containing both Schmidt and Jensen, anywhere on the page. The words will not necessarily be close to one another.
To find an exact set of words (phrase), add double quotes, e.g. ”transparent and comprehensive".

Note: do not use AND and OR keywords in this mode. If they are necessary, use the advanced research mode.

When selecting the option “Extended search parameters” from the “Search mode” field, you can define the request more precisely.
In this mode, the default is that at least one word of the request must appear in the results.

Example: Meier Müller will retrieve all content containing either Meier, Müller, or both.

Keyword OR

The default behavior of this mode is to retrieve results with any of the words, making the keyword OR in practice optional.
The keyword OR is to be used when any of the 2 words must be present.

Example: Meier OR Müller is equivalent to Meier Müller and will retrieve all content containing either Meier, Müller, or both.

To force several words to be in the results, separate them with the keyword AND (must be uppercase). In this case, both words will be in the results. Alternatively, it is possible to prepend the words with a + sign (no space): the next word is then required.

Example: Meier AND proton gives the same results as +Meier +proton: pages containing both words.

It is possible to retrieve results that do not contain certain words. If a word should not be in the results, add the word NOT in front of it (must be uppercase). Alternatively prepend the word with a - sign (no space).

Example: Meier NOT proton gives the same results as Meier -proton: pages containing the word Meier and nowhere the word proton.

For more complex queries, you can use parentheses.

Example: if you look for the words Schmidt or Jensen, but always associated with proton, then use (Schmidt OR Jensen) AND proton. Note that the query Schmidt OR (Jensen AND proton) will give different results. We recommend to always use parentheses when performing more complex queries.

If you need to add flexibility to a query, you can use the special characters ? and *.
? will match any one character.

Example: Jörgen, Jørgen and Jorgen will be found when querying J?rgen, but Joergen will not (oe is two characters-long).

* will match any number of characters. For example, *wissenschaft will match Naturwissenschaft, Umweltwissenschaft, Ingenieurwissenschaft, as well as wissenschaft, whatever the number of characters replacing *.
Note that the words are matched from the beginning in this mode as well. * can be useful to query for parts of words that are not at the beginning of the word, such as the wissenschaft example.
The special character can also be used inside a word: J*rgen will match Jörgen, Jorgen and Joergen, but Julsbergen will also be a match.