There are a number of databases that may be used to locate scholarly articles in the field of mathematics. More detailed information may be found at the Help link in each database.

MathSciNet	EBSCO EJS	ERIC
Current Index to Statistics	JStor	WorldCat
Science Direct	Ingenta

MathSciNet

MathSciNet is a comprehensive database covering the world's mathematical literature of the past 61 years. It is  produced by the American Mathematical Society. The information below comes directly from MathSciNet help screens.

Basic Search and Full Search provides searchable fields, listed below.

    Click on MathSciNet and choose Full Search (From this page you can also search the Author or the Journal database)
    From pull-down menu choose a field or anywhere  then enter search term or terms
    Next choose a connector And, Or or Not  and repeat above process

    Then select a time period or
    Entire database

    Then select document type Books, Journals, Proceedings or All
    Click on Search

Some of the Available Fields (* indicates default field) Searches are not case sensitive.

Field Name	What it searches
*Author/Related	Author's name plus editors, translators, etc.
Author	Author's name only in the form: last name, first name (with comma), middle name or initial. May use wildcard*  Example: Kap*sky, I*
*Title	Title of original article but not subtitle
Review Text	Any text in the body of the review. TeX codes for symbols and in names should be omitted.
Journal	Journal name, full or abbreviated from 1980 to present
Institution Code	The code assigned to a specific institution (Codes for UNCW listed below)
Series	Series name
MSC Prim/Sec	Primary or secondary Mathematics Subject Classification
MSC Primary	Primary Mathematics Subject Classification
MR number	Number of item in Mathematical Reviews
Review Text	Any text in the body of the review. TeX codes for symbols and in names should be omitted.
Reviewer	Reviewer's name
*Anywhere	Entire MathSciNet record including headlines, institution codes, and review text.
*Publication year	Publication year of original article available in full search only
Document type	The options are Books, Journals or Proceedings, available in full search only

You can use the Boolean operators and, or, not. (To search for a phrase that contains a Boolean operator, you must place the phrase within quotation marks, e.g. "not locally symmetric.")

These operators may be entered within a field box or selected by using pull down menus between field name boxes. To use a Boolean operator within a box, type the operator between the criteria. For example, in the Author field: "Graham and Luckock" will yield citations of papers co-authored by Graham and Luckock.

Truncation and wildcard searching:
The wildcard character is the asterisk (*) and may be used in all fields except Publication Year, MR Number, MSC Primary, and MSC Primary/Secondary.

Important Note: If no wildcard is used, the search will look for exact word matches and for the plural of the words entered. Adjacency is assumed within a field

Searching for Mathematics (TeX):
MathSciNet search criteria for words and phrases should be stripped of TeX code. In particular, TeX coding should be omitted from names. To search for mathematical symbols omit the initial \ from the TeX code. For example, to search for {\rm P}\sp\infty, enter P sp infty.

Institution Code:
The Institution Code field contains the codes used to identify the author's institution at the time of publication. An institution code or part of a code can be entered. The wildcard (*) may be used.

To search an Institution Codes list, go to www.ams.org/instcode/ Either text, an institution code, or part of a code can be entered. Search results return both the code and institution address (if available).

Examples:

1-NCW-BDS    Department of Production and Decision Sciences 1-NCW-B         Cameron School of Business 1-NCW-C         Department of Computer Science 1-NCW-K         Department of Chemistry 1-NCW-MS      Department of Mathematics and Statistics 1-NCW-P         Department of Physics 1-NCW             Department of Mathematical Sciences 1-NCW*

 

---

Current Index to Statistics
CIS indexes 162 core journals in statistics, selected articles from 1200 other journals, as well as books and proceedings.  

Search by Author/Editor, Book/Article Title, Title Keywords, and/or Journal/Proceedings Title.  
Truncate using the following characters:
    % replaces 0 or more characters
    _ replaces 1 character

Citations retrieved provide only the bibliographic information.  No abstracts or direct links to full text are provided. 

---

ScienceDirect
ScienceDirect offers access to the Elsevier Science journal collection, along with journals from a host of prestigious societies and STM publishers. The full text collection of over 1 million articles from 1995 to present.

The Quick Search on the Home page searches all Full-text sources.  This searches the abstract, article title, author and keyword fields.  Browse titles by Subject Areas is another option on the Home page.  

From the Search page, both Basic and Advance search forms are provided.  

    At the first Term(s) field, enter the search terms which must appear in an article.
    From the within drop-down menu, select the fields or segments in which the search terms must appear.
    You can request a search of the entire Full-text, if desired.  

    If you want to search additional fields and additional terms: Select a connector from the And drop-down menu.
    (A group of words that does not contain a connector is recognized as a phrase. For example: set theory.)
    In the second Term(s) field, enter the additional search terms which must appear in the article.

    From the second within drop-down menu, select the fields or segments in which the search terms must appear.

    From the Source drop-down menu, select the group of journals you want to search. 

    At the Subject list box, scroll down list then highlight Mathematics
    To select more than one subject, hold the Control (Ctrl), Shift and click on each subject, or leave the setting on "All Sciences".

    Select Dates  choose date range from the drop-down menu. OR Select All Years.  


Then click Search

Available Fields   Searches are not case sensitive.

Field Name	What it searches
Abstract, title, keywords*	The abstract, title, author keywords and publisher's index terms for the article.
Abstract	The full text of the article's abstract
Keywords	Author's keywords and the publisher's index terms for the article.
Authors	Names of the authors of the article, including collaborations. Author names appear in our service in a variety of formats, according to the source document.  Click on Search tips for help
Title	English or non-English article title
Journal	Title of the journal.
References	Bibliographic reference list of the article.
ISSN	The ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) of the journal

Special Characters and Formula Searching
When constructing a search request for words, equations, or formulae containing special characters, 
replace any special characters with the standard alpha-numeric characters. The general rules are: 

Search the Greek alphabet by replacing the characters with the English spelling for the character.  
For example: To search for the Greek letter, K, enter: Kappa  

Subscripted and superscripted characters should be entered on the same line with the other characters. 
For example: To search for the chemical notation, H₂O, enter: H2O  

Accented characters should be entered as the same characters without the accent mark (even though the 
accent mark may appear on your keyboard). For example: To search for the name, Fürst, enter: Furst  

Certain non-alpha/numeric special characters (e.g., hyphens, brackets, asterisks, bullets, arrows, daggers, plus signs, minus signs, etc.) are treated as delimiters and are not searchable. For example: To search for the term, high-risk, enter: high risk   

Wildcard Characters  and Truncation
Boolean wildcards and truncation let you easily combine or eliminate search words, making your search simpler.
Use ! to find a root word plus all the words made by adding letters to the end of it. For example: behav! would find behave, behaviour, behavioural (Also note: Using the singular word form will retrieve the singular, plural, and possessive forms of most words.)

Use an asterisk (*) to replace characters anywhere in a word, except the first character.
Use one asterisk for each character you want to replace. For example: wom*n would find woman, women.
Use the asterisk to hold a space for variations in spelling at any point in a word. For example: bernst**n would find both the ei and the ie spelling of the name.

If you use asterisks at the end of a word, they do not all have to be filled, but may find up to the specified number of characters. For example: transplant** would find transplant, transplanted, transplanter. Note: transplant** does not find transplantation or transplanting because only two wildcard characters are used. To find all the variations of transplant, use the ! wildcard character.

Article Display Options
Typically, articles may be viewed in three formats: 

SummaryPlus provides the full citation, abstract, article outline and references.  If the cited references are also in ScienceDirect or MathSciNet, links are provided to the article and/or abstract.  
FullText+Links provides the full text in HTML format, with links to sections of the article from the article outline, links to figures, and links to references.
PDF provides the full image of the article.

It is also possible to search for other articles in ScienceDirect that have cited the article or to set up a Citation Alert.  A Citation Alert will email you when an article is added to ScienceDirect that cites the article you saved.  Free registration is required to use this feature.   

---

EBSCO Electronic Journals Service (EJS)
You can browse journals by title, subject or publisher, or search for articles by citation or words in the text.  In Article Search, your terms can be searched in the Full text, just the Title & Abstract, or just the Title.  
Enter keywords using Boolean and proximity operators.  The Guided Search feature helps designate word proximity and Boolean relationships.  
Within select Article Titles, Abstracts & Full Text

Click Search

Boolean and Proximity Operators
The Proximity operator NEAR, allows you to locate items containing specific words or phrases located near one another. Boolean operators, however, allow you to use the words AND, OR, and NOT to locate items containing specific words. Boolean and proximity operators cannot be searched for since they are considered reserved words by the search engine. In addition, very common words, such as the and is are considered "noise" words by the search engine and are eliminated from the criteria before the search is performed.

Put quotation marks around keywords if you want the search engine to take them literally.

Special Characters

You can enter special characters (such as umlauted characters) into your search criteria by using codes surrounded by square brackets, as follows:

Character	Code
Ä	[Auml]
ä	[auml]
Ë	[Euml]
ë	[euml]
Ï	[Iuml]
ï	[iuml]
Ö	[Ouml]
ö	[ouml]
Ü	[Uuml]
ü	[uuml]

---

JSTOR
Provides access to 17 Mathematics journals and 13 Statistics in full text format, back to the first issue of each.  Mathematical and statistical topics may also be searched in other subject categories in JStor.  You must select a discipline category or a specific journal to search.  

To search, click the Search button on the toolbar.  You can do a Basic Search or Advanced Search.  

    Enter keyword(s),  then select the field from pull-down menu, e.g, full text.
    Multiple words on the same line are interpreted as a phrase.

    Select the Discipline or journals to be searched.  
    
   You also have the option to limit by publication type, e.g., article, opinion, book review and/or publication dates.  
  
   Sort results defaults to highest scoring (most relevant) but can be changed to  Most recent  or Oldest 

   
Searching for an Author

To find all instances of an author in the author field, with or without the author's middle name or initial, enter an author's first name and last name on the same line, and select the author field. The search will find the author's name without a middle name or initial, and will also find the author's name with any middle name or initial. If you search using the author's middle name or initial, the search results will only include the author's name with the middle name or initial.

Truncation

Since neither stemming nor truncation is currently implemented (with the exception of plurals, use +), the search engine is extremely literal. Therefore, you must search "statistic or statistical" to find variants of the stem "statistic". Also, use variant spelling of words (e.g., "color" or "colour") and also try spelling out acronyms (e.g., "AMS" or "American Mathematical Society).

Viewing & Printing

To view the articles retrieved, click on the title link.  To print the entire article, use the Print link within the JStor window, not the print icon on your browser toolbar.  

Ingenta

Ingenta provides indexing for nearly 29,000 journals, some of which are available in full-text (called online articles).  To search the entire database, run the search in both online articles and fax/ariel modes.  (Fax/ariel refers to their document delivery service, for which there is a charge.  Randall Library provides free interlibrary loan through its ILLiad service as an alternative.)  

Searching
Boolean search operators AND, OR and NOT can be entered in your search.
If you enter both AND and OR in a search string, nest the terms to be OR'ed inside parentheses.
To search phrases, use quotation marks.
For truncation, use an asterisk.
    Example:  ("population dynamics" or "population models") and diffusi*

Viewing & Printing/Emailing
Each record has a Mark, Summary and Full Text button.  If the full-text button gives a price instead of the article, use Randall Library's ILLiad service to obtain it at no charge.  Mark allows you to select references from the list to print or email.  

---

ERIC (CSA)

For articles and reports on teaching mathematics and statistics, use the ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) database.  Available from Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (linked above) and EbscoHost  with links to library holdings.  ERIC is also available free at www.eric.ed.gov . 

Searching
Use the online thesaurus to identify the most appropriate terms for your search. 
The CSA interface assumes phrases are searched as exact phrases, but you can select "Any of the words" (OR relationship) or "All of the words" (AND relationship). 
For truncation, use an asterisk at the end of a character string or a ? to mask a character.

Viewing & Printing/Emailing
Click the "View Record" button to see the full record (citation, abstract, descriptors).  Click once in the box (upper left corner) to mark the record for printing/emailing. 
Click on "Check Your Library" to see if the library has the item.  Or, if the "Full Text" link appears, click on it to retrieve the text.  If the item is not available in Randall Library, click "Send Request to UNCW ILLiad" to request the item through Interlibrary Loan.

---

WorldCat

WorldCat is the union catalog of approximately 46,000 libraries.  As with the other databases, you can use Boolean search operators, AND, OR, and NOT, as well as truncate words with an asterisk.  You can search by keyword or select the field to search. 

Results are displayed in order by the number of libraries holding an item (click "Libraries Worldwide" to see which libraries own a copy.  UNCW is noted beside the link if Randall Library owns a copy.)  A link to ILLiad is also given to request the item on Interlibrary Loan.  
Last Update: December 12, 2005

Return to Top