Glossary of Terms
A - C | D - N | O - R | S - Z
A - C
Abstract
An abstract is a brief summary of an article that explains the main point of the article. In ProQuest, you can click on the Citations/Abstracts format icon in a results list or marked list if you want to view the article in this format. You can also choose the Citations and Abstracts menu option if you want a keyword search that is limited to only the abstracts, article titles, author, publication title, company names, personal names, geographic names, subject terms, and product names assigned to articles.
Article Type
Article types are used to define articles by the kind of information they contain (biography, recipe) or the way that information is presented (news, editorial). You can use article types to help you find the kind of information you want.
Citation
A citation includes the basic bibliographic information about an article. This includes such information as the title and author. You can conduct a search limited to the citation (indexing and abstract) of an article by choosing the Citations and Abstracts search option. An article can be viewed in this format by clicking on the Citations/Abstracts icon beside the article.
Classification (Class) Codes
Classification codes are numbers used to classify and organize articles by topic, industry, or type of article in business-targeted databases such as ABI/INFORM, Banking Information Source, and ABI/INFORM Dateline. You can use Classification Codes to focus your search.
Controlled term
See Subject term.
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D - N
Date range
The date range is the period of time during which articles were published. You select the date range when determining which articles you want ProQuest to search.
Date restrictor
Date restrictors allow you to search for articles based on when they were published. For more information, see Date Formats.
Full Text
The full text of an article refers to the article's complete text. You can choose the Full Text of Articles search option if you want to search the entire text of articles. In the Full Text viewing format, you can read an article's entire text. To do this, click on Full Text icon beside the article (when available).
Hierarchy
Hierarchies are structures organized by rank. ProQuest topic trees are called hierarchies because they are arranged from the broadest subject to the most narrow.
Most recent
You can sort results by the date in order of the date articles were published, starting with the newest. If you don't choose Most Recent, your results will be sorted by Most Relevant. In single word searches ProQuest ranks articles in which your search word appears most often highest. In other searches, ProQuest compares your search words to the frequency with which they appear in the collections you are searching.
Most relevant
You can sort results in order of how well the articles are likely to address your question. The articles that most likely to be of interest will be listed first. Ranking is indicated with stars on the results list. The more stars a result gets (to a maximum of five stars), the more relevant it's likely to be. In single word searches, the highest ranking articles are those in which your search word appears most often. For all other searches, the highest ranking articles are those where a search word rarely occurs in the collection. (Articles containing an infrequent term are ranked higher in relevance.)
NAICS
NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) codes are 6 digit numbers used to group organizations into industries based on the activities in which they are primarily engaged. The ProQuest interface provides you with Browse NAICS tool that lets you quickly locate and use the NAICS code you need. For more information, see Browse NAICS Codes
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O - R
Operator
Operators are special terms, such as AND and OR, that you can use to connect the words and phrases, focusing your search. For more information, see Operators.
Peer Reviewed
A peer reviewed periodical is an academic journal that contains articles that have been reviewed, edited, and approved by recognized experts in the relevant field of study. This is one of the three publication types available in the ProQuest databases.
Periodicals
A periodical is a magazine or journal that is published periodically instead of daily, like a newspaper.
Preferences
ProQuest helps you focus your search to find just the information you're looking for by allowing you to set preferences for your search. These preferences include a date range for publication dates of articles, and the type of publications to include in your search, as well as whether to include only complete articles in your search and whether to search for terms in the text of articles or only in the citations and abstracts of those articles.
Publication type
For the purpose of performing searches, ProQuest divides publications into two groups: newspapers and periodicals. Periodicals include magazines and journals published at regular intervals.
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S - Z
Search Field
Search fields contain information, such as author, title, and publication date, about each article in the ProQuest Databases. You can search for information in these fields to find the articles you're looking for. For more information, see Search Tips.
Stop Words
Stop Words are common words, such as "the," used in so many articles that ProQuest ignores them when it searches for articles. For more information, see the List of Stop Words.
Subject term
Subject terms are words used to classify articles in a thesaurus for a ProQuest collection. You can use subject terms to run focused searches, or you can select subject terms for your search using Topic Guide.
Thesaurus
A Thesaurus is a controlled vocabulary of subject terms used to classify and organize information contained in a ProQuest database. You can use these subject terms to find articles.
Topic
Topics are areas of interest organized hierarchically from broad subjects to focused areas of interest. At the most highly focused end of the topic are subject terms found in the thesaurus for ProQuest databases.
Truncation Character
The truncation character, *, is used to find articles containing words with the same root. For example, a search for educat* will find articles containing the words "educate," "educator," and "education."
Wildcard
The wildcard character, ?, is used in place of characters in your search terms, when more than one letter is likely to fit that space. For example, a search for wom?n finds articles containing the terms "woman," "women," and "womyn."
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