does automatic phrasing - it will only find the words in the order that you have entered them (unless you use proximity searching)
a hyphen is the same as a space
Map Term To Subject Heading may be confused by the use of truncation and wildcards and will not work if you use proximity searching. If you are going to use subject headings in your search you might find it useful to find these through searching for a version of the word or phrase and then doing your keyword searches
an asterisk * will search for any word that starts with the letters you've entered e.g. child* will find child, children, childhood, etc.
a number after the asterisk means that the database will only search for a word with that many letters after the letters you have entered e.g. chemist*1 will find chemist or chemists but not chemistry
A question mark ? will replace 0 or 1 character within a word e.g.wom?n will find women or woman. behavio?r will find both behaviour and behavior
A hashtag # will replace 1 character within a word e.g. wom#n will find women or woman
You cannnot use a wildcard to stand in for a space e.g. health?care will not find healthcare and health care. You will need to search these separately.
The default search in Ovid databases is to find the words you have entered together in the order that you have entered them. If you want to find the words near each other then you need to use proximity searching
The rule is that the number after adj needs to be one more than the number of words that can be in between the phrase
Child* adj1 cancer* will find those two words together in either order (so could find childhood cancer or cancerous children.)
Child* adj2 cancer* will find those two words together in either order and also those two words with another word in between (so could find childhood skin cancers, cancer in children, childhood cancer, etc.)
Child* adj3 cancer* will find those two words together in either order and also those two words with up to two other words in between, etc.
