What are the search fields in the Knovel database?

You can create a Quick search query by selecting the following individual fields from the drop-down:

• All Fields
• Subject/Title/Abstract
• Abstract
• Author
• Title
• ISBN
• Publisher
• Source title
• Subject area

Refer to the descriptions in the sections below for further information about these individual fields.

This field contains a brief summary of the entire document. To search for an exact phrase in this field, enclose it in braces or double quotation marks.

Knovel contains alphanumeric accession numbers that are 10 characters in length.

The ‘All’ field is a composite field that contains all the other fields in this FAQ (except those listed in the bullets below) as its components. Therefore, using this field in a search query retrieves results from all the other fields listed in this FAQ except for the following:

• Document type
• Year

You may use the ‘All’ field in Expert search as shown in the examples below.

Author names are cited as they appear in the original document. Surnames appear first and the remainder of the name as it appears in the original document.

When an author's initials are not known, you can use an asterisk (*) as the truncation symbol to create your search query. However, be aware that this strategy may yield false positives because many authors share the same last name and first initial.

When records are displayed, author names are linked. Click an author link to retrieve records by that author from the entire date range of the database.

If a single word surname is entered as the author's last name, all the forms of that name will be retrieved.

Note that only authors whose names are presented in the format as the search query will be retrieved. The number of initials for an author's name may vary. For example, searching Smith, A. B. will not retrieve articles in which the author is cited as Smith, A.

If you perform an exact author search to further refine your search, only records that match the entire name will be returned.

Periods and commas are ignored by the search engine, but hyphens are significant in exact searches.

Exact search queries are the default search for implicit author links.

The Author field may contain schools, societies, and company names as well surnames.

In some names in older records, a suffix may be included, e.g., Jr. or III.

The controlled term/subject area vocabulary is a list of subject terms used to describe the content of a document in the most specific and consistent way possible. These subject area terms are also linked on the record page. Clicking any of these links retrieves records spanning the database's default time period.

This field contains the item type (e.g., book [bk], conference proceedings [ca], erratum [er], book chapter [ch], etc.) of the document. You may also search the document type via the ‘Document type’ dropdown filter on the Document results page after conducting a Quick search query.  

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a formerly 10-digit, and now a 13-digit number that uniquely identifies a specific title and edition of a book or book series. The number can be used to find chapters from the same book or papers from the same conference. The ISBN appears on the record page.

Search for the language of the document via this field. You may also search the language of a document via the ‘Language’ dropdown filter on the Document results list after running a Quick search. However, currently, Knovel only contains English language documents.

Search this field to identify publishers or find the journals published by a particular publisher.

In Expert search, use the code PN to search this field:

This combined field retrieves results from any of the following fields:

• Abstract
• Controlled term/Subject area
• Title

Title searches for words that appear in the title of the article. This is very useful if you are looking for articles on a very broad topic. Words in a title are often an indication of the importance of those terms to the article.

For example, "Water Treatment" in the title likely yields articles where water treatment is an important aspect.

You can restrict your document search to a specific publication year. You can also restrict your publication year searches via the ‘Add year range’ dropdown filter on the Quick search page and the ‘Date’ dropdown filter on the Expert search page.

See also Expert search fields and field codes for brief descriptions of these searchable fields and ‘How can I limit searches by database’ for additional information about restricting your searches.