TRIP: Advanced Search Features

The following techniques can be used in TRIP to improve your results:

• Proximity Operators

Proximity searching enables you to search for two or more terms within a set number of words. It is useful technique
to use when you want to find terms that are near to reach other.
The proximity operator in TRIP is ~ followed by the number of words:

• "elderly falls"~3 will return results where the word elderly is within 3 words of falls
• "elderly falls"~5 will return results where the word elderly is within 5 words of falls

• Using parenthesis
• You can also use brackets to combine connectors when searching
• Brackets will control the sequence of combinations
• Combinations within the brackets are made first, then combined with search terms outside
  e.g. ("insulin resist*" OR diabet*) AND hypertens*
• Example search:

Date range

• prostate cancer from:2010 to:2018 finds articles on prostate cancer between 2010 and 2018

Title versus body of text

By default Trip searches all of the document that has been indexed (so this might be an abstract or the full-text,
depending on what the publisher has made freely available) but you can restrict to title only:

• (title:prostate cancer)
• (title: prostate cancer) screening psa

In the latter examples it retrieves articles with ‘prostate cancer’ in the title and ‘screening’ and ‘psa’ anywhere in the body of the text.