MathSciNet
Starting
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Access MathSciNet. You will need an OUCU to use this service.
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The opening screen is a search page, which offers an electronic 'form'
with drop-down menus to provide a framework for your search.
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If you are looking for material on a particular subject then choose
'Anywhere' from the drop-down menu to the left of the first search box
(the default for this box is 'Author') and then type in a word or phrase
that describes your subject. Click on 'Search'.
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You can also choose to restrict your search by time frame or publication
type by using the buttons under the search form.
Truncation ('any word beginning...')
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Use * to truncate; e.g. formula* will find formula, formulas,
formulation etc.
AND, OR, NOT
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AND - the full search form defaults to 'and', so type your words in
separate boxes. If you type two words in a single box the database will
look for both your words as a phrase e.g. banach space
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OR - use the drop-down menu in the 'and' box to select 'or' and then
type your words in separate boxes, for example Mandelbrot OR julia
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NOT - use the drop-down menu in the 'and' box to select 'not' and then
type your words in separate boxes, for example fractals NOT
Mandelbrot.
Phrase searching
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If you type two words in the same box the database will look for your
words as a phrase. You can also allow for intervening words using an
adjacency operator. For example, prime adj2 decomposition will find
the phrase 'prime decomposition' and any phrase where the two words
are separated by one other word e.g. prime tree decomposition.
Viewing Search Results
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To view the full bibliographic record, with review if available, click on the
bold, underlined number e.g. 2000k:05006
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To view the full text of the article click on the 'Article' or 'Journal' box. If
no full text is available these will be in grey and there may be a red 'Doc
Del' link which goes to a commercial document delivery service. Ordering
via this link requires personal registration and payment.
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The 'PDF' link displays the bibliographic record in pdf format.
Assembling, printing and saving a set of references
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You can assemble a set of references by clicking on the 'clipboard' link
under the reference you want. When you have completed your search
click on 'Clipboard' in the top right of the screen.
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You can select the format for the references using the drop-down menu
(ASCII is plain text) and use your browser to save or print the set of
references.
Citation Searching
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MathSciNet now also offers citation searching, by author or by journal.
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Clicking the 'Author Citations' tab on the home screen presents you with
a search box for an author name. After entering an author name you will
see a list of the most-cited articles by that author, with the number of
citations on the left. By clicking on the link to the article (the bold,
underlined number e.g. 2000k:05006 ) you can then see the full
bibliographic reference for that article. To the right there is also a link to
the articles that have cited it (in the format "From references: 3").
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Clicking on the 'Journal Citations' tab on the home screen presents you
with a search box for a journal name. The results are presented
graphically and list the number of articles in the publication and how many
times the publication has had articles cited, by year. The numbers giving
the amount of articles published and amount of citations can be clicked to
show full details of these.
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Currently the citation facility covers publications and articles back to
2000. For further information on citation searching, please see the
MathSciNet Citation Help Page.
Other Hints
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MathSciNet has comprehensive online Help. Look in the 'About’ section
for ‘What’s New’.