JSTOR search allows you to find terms that are within a set number of words of each other using the tilde (~) symbol. In this example ("debt forgiveness"~10), you will only get results with the terms debt and forgiveness within ten words of each other. You can replace "10" with a different number of words.
You may increase the importance of any term in your search by using the caret (^) symbol followed by a number that represents the rise in relevance. In the example above (cat^7 dog), an occurrence of the word cat in an item is seven times more important than the word dog.
You can narrow search results to a variety of item or journal information. This is possible because JSTOR uses fields for categorization of metadata. Each field is represented in a search by its abbreviation. The example above (au:smith) will find all items for which Smith is listed as an author. Appending ty:fla to a search ("great gatsby" ty:fla) will limit a search to full-length articles, and ty:brv will limit a search to book reviews.
Other frequently used field abbreviations are:
|
Code |
Returns results from: |
Example |
|---|---|---|
|
jo: |
Journal title field |
jo:econometrica |
|
ta: |
Article title field (does not search books title field) |
ta:modernism |
|
ab: |
Item abstract field (please note that only about 10% of articles on JSTOR include abstracts) |
ab:microfinance |
|
ca: |
Illustration caption field |
ca:rembrandt |
|
vo: |
Journal Volume field |
vo:134 |
Other less commonly used field abbreviations include:
cty:(book) = book
cty:pamphlet = pamphlet
rt: title of a reviewed work
so: or jo: journal title
no: issue or number
sn: or in: International Standard Serials Number (ISSN)
JSTOR uses the Library of Congress's three letter MARC language codes in our metadata. You can append these codes to a search to limit the results to content in a specific language. An example: camus la:fre
la:ara = Arabic
la:chi = Chinese
la:dut = Dutch
la:eng = English
la:fre = French
la:ger = German
la:gre = Greek Modern
la:heb = Hebrew
la:ita = Italian
la:jpn = Japanese
la:lat = Latin
la:por = Portuguese
la:rus = Russian
la:spa = Spanish
la:swe = Swedish
la:tur = Turkish