Search Help

On this page:

Quick Search
Using keywords in the Quick Search
Submitting your search
Advanced Search
Entering your search keywords
Boolean search
Targetting your search
Selecting "Title ONLY" or "Title and Summary ONLY"

These tips are simple to use and will help you find what you want more quickly. If you have any queries contact IFST's Web Team: team@IFST.org +44 (0) 20 7603 6316.

Quick search

The 'Quick search' is the small box that appears at the top right hand corner of every web page and searches the whole IFST site for relevant information. REMEMBER: You need to be logged into the members area to be able to search it.

Using keywords in the Quick Search

To enter keywords, type each word into the box with a space separating each one.

For example: food science will find all pages containing all of the keywords, both "food" AND "science".

Finding exact phrases

To group words together as a phrase, put double-quotes around the phrase.

For example: "food and science" will find pages containing the whole phrase "food and science".

Using wildcards

Wildcards use an asterisk * to search for variations on a word.

For example: GM* will find GM, GMOs, GME and GMS.

Submitting your search

When you have entered your search keywords and made your other selections, click Go.

Advanced Search

Don't be afraid of the Advanced Search – it is easy to use and can really help you find what you want. Basically, unlike the Quick Search, it allows you to target or refine your search. You don't have to be a search expert to make it work, simply use it to combine a number of searching criteria.

Entering your search keywords

You have the following four options:

1) All of the words

This will find any information that contains ALL of the keywords. This is the default selection.

For example: food science will find documents containing both "food" and "science".

For example: annual conference will find you documents that contain both "annual" and "conference" but not necessarily as the phrase "annual conference ".

2) Any of the words

For example: food science will find documents containing either "food" or "science".

For example: annual conference will find you documents that contain either "annual " or "conference" or both. This means your results could contain a lot of information that is not relevant to your search.

3)Exact phrase

For example: "food and science" will find documents containg the whole phrase "food and science".

For example: if you select "Exact phrase" in the advanced search, searching for annual conference will find documents containing the whole phrase " annual conference".

4)Boolean search

This allows you to carry out more complex searches, using for example, brackets, AND, OR, NOT and NEAR to build an expression for your search.

For example:

food AND (science or beverage) will find documents containg "food" and either the word "science" or "beverage".

food OR science will find information containing either "food" or "science" plus the whole phrase "food and science".

food AND NOT science will find all information containing "food" but not "science".
You can use the minus sign (-) in place of AND NOT but make sure you don't leave a space after the "-".

(bread OR baking) AND flour -recipe will find all documents mentioning either "bread" or "baking" which also mention "flour", but any documents mentioning "recipe" would be excluded.

food NEAR science will rank documents where the keywords appear close to each other higher than those where they appear in separate sentences.

Targetting your search

Selecting "Title ONLY " or "Title and Summary ONLY "
Usually you'll want to search for your keywords anywhere in the title, summary and full text of the document. However, if you are getting too many results, you can limit the search to look in the "Title ONLY". A search on "Title ONLY" will reduce your results but it may make them more relevant to the keywords you are searching for.

If you have any queries contact IFST: team@ifst.org +44 (0) 20 7603 6316.

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