Subjects Covered
Astronomy, Atmospheric Science, Biology, Botany, Chemistry, Conservation,
Earth Science, Environment, Food, Genetics, Health, Mathematics, Medicine,
Microbiology, Nutrition, Oceanography, Physics, Physiology, Zoology
General Science Abstracts, produced by The
H.W. Wilson Company, is a bibliographic database that indexes and
abstracts articles of at least one column in length from English-language
periodicals published in the United States and Great Britain. Periodical
coverage includes popular science magazines as well as professional
journals. General Science Abstracts also covers The New York Times Science
Section (published weekly on Tuesday). Abstracting coverage begins with
periodicals published in March 1993. Abstracts range from 50 to 300 words
and describe the content and scope of the source articles.
Contents
Fields
Document Types List
Physical Description List
Journal List
Using Limit Fields
Sample Searches
Stopwords
Fields
Highlighted fields are limit fields.
The Citation (CITN)
consists of the TI, OT, AU, SO, AB, and DE fields.
Fields
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AB Abstract
respiratory in ab
The AB field contains a summary of the
document. You can search any word or phrase in the abstract.
Fields
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AN Accession
Number
(a
limit field)
199401770100 in an
an=199401770100
The AN field contains a unique 12-digit
code that identifies the document.
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AU Personal Author
rubin allan m in au
rubin in au
rubin-a* in au
The AU field identifies the person(s)
responsible for the intellectual content of the document.
Author's names can be searched with or
without hyphens. When searching without hyphens, type last name followed
by first name or first name followed by last name. The order of the words
does not matter. Do not type a comma.
When searching an author's name with
hyphens, type the last name first and hyphenate all names and initials.
Use truncation (*) if your are not sure about spelling.
You can search author names by last name,
using the AUT Author Name Index in Browse (Index).
Fields
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AUT Author Name
(a limit field)
The AUT field identifies the person(s)
responsible for for the intellectual content of the document. Use Browse
to search for the author by last name in this Author Name index. The AUT
field is for searching only; it does not display in the record.
Fields
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CA Corporate Author
international conference on nutrition
and fitness in ca
The CA field identifies the institution,
association, conference, corporation, or government agency that is the
author of a book.You can search any word or phrase in this field.
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DE Descriptors
pollution in de
air-pollution-control in de
The DE field lists the controlled
vocabulary terms that describe the document. This field can include
personal names, uniform titles, topical terms, organization names, and
geographic names.
You can search terms in the DE field with
or without hyphens. In the example above, pollution in de retrieves
records containing any descriptor with the word pollution, such as indoor-air-pollution
or air-pollution-detection-and-monitoring. The search air-pollution-control
in de retrieves just that specific descriptor.
You can search for Descriptors using the SU
Subject index in Browse (Index).
Fields
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DT Document Type
(a limit field)
product-evaluation in dt
dt=biography
The Document Type field describes the
contents of the original document. Use the DT field to limit your search
to records of a particular document, such as biography or interview. Use
hyphens to search for multi-word document types.
Fields
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IS ISSN
(a limit field)
0022-0892 in is
is=0022-0892
The IS field lists the International
Standard Serial Number (ISSN). Include hyphens when searching for an ISSN.
Fields
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JI Journal Issue
(a limit field)
The JI Journal Issue field lists the issues
of journals included in the database. You can search for a specific issue
of a journal using the JI Index in the Browse (Index).
Fields
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JN Journal Name
(a limit field)
The JN Journal Name field lists the names
of the journals included in the database. You can search for a specific
journal using the JN Index in the Browse (Index).
Fields
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LA Language of Document
(a limit field)
english in la
la=english
The Language of Document field lists the
language of the original document. When searching, use the full language
name. Most articles in this database are in English.
For most records in this database, this
field contains the language of the original article. For Book Review
records, this field contains the word "undetermined" since this
database does not provide the language of the book being reviewed.
Fields
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OT Other Titles
review in ot
The OT field provides additional title
access. It may include descriptive words added by indexers to augment the
title. You can search any word or phrase in this field.
Fields
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PD Physical Description
(a limit field)
il in pd
pd=il
The PD field indicates whether illustrative
or graphic material appears in the original document. The PD field
contains one or more codes that describe the accompanying material. The
following is a list of codes and the physical description each represents:
| Code |
Physical Description |
| bibl |
bibliography |
| il |
illustrations |
| map(s) |
map(s) |
| por(s) |
portrait(s) |
Fields
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PEI Peer Reviewed Journal
(a limit field)
The PEI field indicates whether the
document is from a peer-reviewed journal. The field contains a y if
the journal is peer-reviewed.
Fields
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PY Publication Year
(a limit field)
1993 in py
py=1993
The PY field lists the year in which the
original document was published. This field is range searchable.
Fields
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SO Source
environmental health in so
issues "in" science* in so
The Source field indicates the
bibliographic source of the entry including the journal name, volume
number, publication date, and page numbers. You can search for any word
orphrase in this field.
If a search operator (OR, AND, NOT, IN,
WITH, or NEAR) appears in the title for which you are
searching, enclose it within quotes, as shown in the example.
Fields
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SU Subject
(a limit field)
The SU field lists the controlled
vocabulary terms that describe the document. The field can include
personal names, topical names, organization names, geographic names, and
uniform titles. This field is for browsing subject headings (descriptors)
using the SU Subject index in Browse (Index). The SU field does not
display in the record. Subject headings display in the DE Descriptor
field.
Fields
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TI Title
pollutants in ti
The TI field contains the full title of the
article. You can search for any word or phrase in the title.
Fields
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UD Update Code
(a limit field)
19980203 in ud
ud=19900101
The UD field indicates the year, month, and
day in which the record was added to the database in the format yyyymmdd.
You can search for a single date using in or =, as shown
above. In addition, you can search for a range of dates using the
following operators:
< less than,
such as ud<19940802
> greater than,
such as ud>19940802
<= less than or equal to,
such as ud<=19940802
>= greater than or equal to,
such as ud>=19940802
- within a range,
such as ud=19990801-19990901
Fields
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URL2 Web Sites
The URL2 Web Sites field lists the URLs of
web sites chosen by the author of the article. These related internet
links provide additional information on subjects discussed in the
document.
Fields
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UT Uniform Title
pharmacological basis of therapeutics
in ut
The Uniform Title field contains the
distinctive title for a work that has appeared under varying titles or in
various versions. Uniform titles include items such as legislative acts
and treaties and names of periodicals.
Fields
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ZA All Authors
rubin in za
The All Authors field includes the Personal
Author (AU) and Corporate Author (CA) fields.
Fields
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ZT All Titles
therapeutics in zt
The All Titles field includes the Title
(TI), Other Titles (OT), and Uniform Title (UT) fields.
Fields
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Citation
The Citation (CITN) consists of the
following fields:
Title (TI)
Other Titles (OT)
Personal Author (AU)
Source (SO)
Abstract (AB)
Descriptors (DE)
The Citation displays or prints just those
fields needed to locate the original document in a library.
Fields
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Document Types List
The Document
Type (DT) field contains keywords that characterize the article contents.
Use these words to limit your search to a particular kind of article.
Autobiography
Bibliography
Biography
Book-Excerpt
Book-Review
Do-It-Yourself-Work
Exhibit
Feature-Article
Interview
Obituary
Product-Evaluation
Recipe
Speech
Symposium
Fields
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Physical
Description List
The Physical Description (PD) field
indicates whether illustrative or graphic material appears in the original
document. The PD field contains one or more codes that describe the
accompanying material. The following is a list of codes and the physical
description each represents:
| Code |
Physical Description |
| bibl |
bibliography |
| il |
illustrations |
| map(s) |
map(s) |
| por(s) |
portrait(s) |
Fields
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Journal List
View the most current Journal
List.
Fields
Contents
Using Limit Fields
Limit fields, when combined with other
search terms, are particularly useful for focusing or limiting a search.
To search a limit field, use the in or = operators with the
field abbreviation, such as bibl in pd or pd=bibl. Omitting
the field label retrieves information from free text (non-limit) fields
only.
You can search limit fields using
field-specific indexes in Browse (Index).
For limit fields containing numeric data,
you can also use other special operators:
< less
than,
such as py<1993
> greater
than,
such as py>1991
<= less
than or equal to,
such as py<=1990
>= greater
than or equal to,
such as py>=1988
- indicates
a range,
such as py=1988-1990
Fields
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Sample Searches
Below are several examples of the types of
searches you can use to retrieve information from this database.
Searching for an Author
Using the (Browse) Index
Authors' names appear in the Personal
Author (AU) or Corporate Author (CA) fields.
To see all personal authors with the same
last name or to see variations of an author's name, use the Browse
(Index). You can search for authors' names using the AUT Author Name index
in Browse (Index). For example, to look for articles by Allan M. Rubin:
1. Go to Browse (Index).
2. Select the AUT Author Name index.
3.Type rubin.
Searching Using Descriptors
pollution in de
air-pollution-control in de
scientists- in de
The Descriptors (DE) field lists the
controlled vocabulary terms that describe the document. This field can
include personal names, uniform titles, topical terms, organization names,
and geographic names.
You can search in the DE field with or
without hyphens. Searching a single term (for example, pollution in de)
retrieves records containing any descriptor with the word pollution,
such as indoor air pollution, marine pollution, or air pollution
detection and monitoring. The search air-pollution-control in de
retrieves just that specific descriptor.
With hyphens, the terms must be an exact
match in the Descriptor. Search for scientists- if you want only
those records indexed with the single descriptor scientists.
You can search for Descriptors using the SU
Subject index in Browse (Index).
Searching Using Truncation
Searching with truncation lets you retrieve
records containing variations of your term. For example, let's search for
records about energy conservation.
1. First conduct a search for the term conserv*.
The asterisk (truncation symbol) searches for all terms beginning with the
root conserv, such as conserve, conservation, and so
on.
2. Next, search for and energy.
Beginning a search statement with an operator (AND) automatically
combines the results with your previous search statement.
Fields
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Stopwords
Certain words of little intrinsic meaning
appear too frequently to be useful in searching text. Information systems
call these "stopwords." You will not be able to search for the
following words alone in the database. They can be included within a
phrase, but they will be ignored.
an
and
are
for
from
in
of
or
that
the
was
were
which
with
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