Search Tips

 Basic Search
 Boolean Commands
 Advanced Search
 Multiple Journal/Subject Search
 Author Search Tip—Use Initial Caps!

 Basic Search
Enter a search term in the first box and select "author" or "title" from the pull-down menu to its left. This will create a search of all journals in all timeframes. Please note that subscribers and non-subscribers alike may search all ACS Journal content across any timeframe. Free access is provided to all abstract pages, but only Web Subscribers may access the full-text version of articles. For a more targeted search, use the Boolean pull-down menu to relate this term to a term entered in the second box.

 Boolean Commands
AND: Requires all of the specified search terms to be present. Functions as "Match All."
OR: Allows any of the specified search terms to be present. Functions as "Match Any."
NOT: Requires that a specified search term not be present. Functions as "Exclude."

 Advanced Search
To further refine your search, add criteria contained within the Advanced Search section. You may search within the journals by journal name or subject group, and/or by timeframe. Note: the search default for timeframe is set to "ASAP Articles" and "Current." For a comprehensive search, be sure to select "All."

 Multiple Journal/Subject Search
To select multiple items, hold control + click (PC) or command + click (Mac). To deselect an item, repeat these commands while clicking the item.

 Author Search Tip—Use Initial Caps!
One way in which the search engine attempts to aid the user is with the word-stem feature. With this function, common word endings such as "ing" are removed from the search term to create the stem.

While useful in full text searches, where any variation of the search term can provide relevant matches, the word-stem feature is less helpful in author searches. In a search for "pauling," for example, the feature would provide results for all variants of the stem "paul," such as paul, Paul, Pauling, and Pauline. However, capitalizing the first letter of the author's name will override this word-stem function, forcing a whole word search. Thus, only articles in which the author is "Pauling" would be returned.