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Basic Search Commands for Full-text News Databases: Factiva, Nexis Uni, Newsbank: Overview

Aggregator news sources

The below chart offers detailed search syntax for five important aggregator born-fulltext new sources:

It also offers detailed search syntax for one digitized and OCR'd fulltext newspaper source:

Search Commands

  Dow Jones Factiva Nexis Uni Newsbank Access World News and Readex historic newspapers ProQuest Historical Newspapers / Ethnic NewsWatch / Alt-Press Watch
   

Default is natural language, system finds phrase, then implied AND, and then implied OR.

The search will recognize any of the below Boolean and proximity operators. See Boolean Searching

Nexis Uni has no retrieval limit.

   
To Find:      
all of these pen AND pencil pen AND pencil (AND is default if two terms entered without a connector). AND (pull down menu)

pen AND pencil

AND (pull down menu)

any of these pen OR pencil pen OR pencil OR (pull down menu)

pen OR pencil

OR (pull down menu)

phrase north star (phrase assumed) north star (phrase assumed) "north star" "north star"
phrase with "and" in it   bread W/1 butter "bread and butter" "bread and butter"
excluding words pen not pencil pen AND NOT pencil (should be used at the end of a search statement) NOT (pull down menu)

pen not pencil

NOT (pull down menu)

stopwords no stopwords, phrase that include and, or, not, near, same, date must be in quotes yes stop words, put phrase containing stopwords in "" no stopwords, system will substitute adj for some words, use "" for phase with the or a no stopwords, phrase that include and, or, not, near, same, date must be in quotes
Proximity:        
within x words of each other and in any order

reality/N3/television

A value for N is required with /Nn/
reality NEAR3 television
n is any number from 1 to 500. If no number is added n defaults to 1.

reality W/3 television
(When W/n connectors have the same number, they operate from left to right. If they have different numbers, the smaller number operates first. The highest value of n is 255)

NEARX

reality NEAR3 television

reality NEAR/3 television

reality N/3 television

NEAR/N or N/n

NEAR (with no /n) defaults to NEAR/4

within x words of each other and in the same order micheal W/n fox
Note: W/1 is assumed if a number is omitted. n is any number from 1 to 10
michael ADJn fox
Note: ADJ1 is assumed if a number is omitted. Use 1-10

PRE/n

michael PRE/3 fox

ADJx

elon ADJ2 musk

PRE/n

P/n

university PRE/2 pennsylvania

same paragraph, any order hershey same cadbury hershey W/p cadbury    
same sentence, any order   culture W/s learning    
same segment   W/seg    
Truncation:        
unlimited characters at end of word environment*
Note: At least 3 characters must be typed before using the * sign, and the * sign must be entered at the end of a word only. No number is allowed following the *
environment!
(do not use in
"natural language" searches)
environment*

environment*

* searches for up to 500 word variations.

specific number of characters at end of word industr$3
Note: At least 3 characters must be typed before using the $ sign, and the $ sign must be entered at the end of a word only. $5 is assumed if a number is omitted. Number can be 1-9
industr***
(do not use in
"natural language" searches)
 

environment[*2]

environment??

[*n] replaces up to n trailing characters (maximum 20). Multiple ? replaces up to the specified number of characters

one internal letter globali?tion
gets globalization and globalisation
globali*tion
gets globalization and globalisation (do not use in
"natural language" searches)

globali?tion
gets globalization and globalisation

g??se gets goose and geese

globali?ation

gets globalization and globalisation

multiple internal letters   bernst**n, use one * for each character replaced av*e gets avenue and average, * works for up to 5 characters

av*e

av????e

av[*4]e

These all get avenue and average. Internal * replaces up to 5 characters

Frequency: atleastn sanders
n is any number between 1 and 50
atleast10(sanders)
atl10(sanders)
   
Words in a specific location or field:

/fn/    global warming/f50/

Retrieves documents where search terms must appear within the first (n) words of the document text. N may be 1-500, inclusive.

     
headline hd=earthquake headline(budget) Headline (in menu) TI (Document title)
headline group (Section, Column and Headline) hl=budget      
lead paragraph(s) lp=budget lead(budget) Lead/First paragraph (in menu)  
headline/lead paragraph(s) hlp=budget hlead(budget)
budget/f50/
   
author/byline

by=hendrickson

Author of articles as provided by the publisher.

au=hendrickson

Author of the article as provided by Factiva.

author(hendrickson) Author/Byline(in menu)  
publication/source name sn=new york times publication(new york times) Source (in menu)  
Geographical location from which story originates sn=new york times dateline(paris)    
Length of article (in words):        
less than wc<500 length<500 word count (pull down menu)  
greater than wc>500 length>500 word count (pull down menu)  
equal to wc=500      
less than or equal to wc<=500      
greater than or equal to wc>=500      
Singular / Plural:        
singular enter singular form singular(teenager)
Note: normally the singular, plural, and possessive of a word are searched automatically
automatic singular/plural  
plural enter plural form plural(jobs)
Note: normally the singular, plural, and possessive of a word are searched automatically
   
Capitals:        
all capital letters   caps(aids)    
no capital letters   nocaps(turkey)    
Dates: Use date range pull down menu

LexisNexis Academic: Specify date under Advanced Options or add to search in one of the below formats. <br><br>

Note: BEF(before), AFT (after), EQU (on that day), GEQ (before including), LEQ (after including)<br><br>


date=1/1/2016
date EQU 1/1/2016


date GEQ 1/1/2016 AND date LEQ 3/31/2016

date(>= 1/1/2016) AND date(<= 3/31/2016)


date AFT 1/1/2016 AND date BEF 4/1/2016

date >= 1/1/2016 AND date <= 4/1/2016


date(=1/2016) OR date(=2/2016) OR date(=3/2016))
 


Nexis Uni - has a date slider option or calendar option.

Choose Date in pull down field menu and see supplied and custom options and format.


 

Use date range filters.
         
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