|
Welcome to Scholar Universe, the web's largest and most easily search able collection of active scholarly
authors and academic experts. This document will help you to begin using Scholar Universe to find leading
scholars on your topics of interest.
Contents
On the Scholar Universe homepage, you can login by clicking on the ‘Login’ link in the upper right-hand corner.
This will take you to the Login Page where you can enter your username and password as provided.
Note that you can run a search without logging in; however, your access to information will be limited and key
pieces of scholar information will be blocked.
You may also have access to Scholar Universe based on your IP Address: 38.103.63.57.
If you have cookies enabled, your computer will remember your password each time you visit the Scholar Universe web
site. Please note that there is no need to log out at the end of your session, you can simply close the browser
window.
To change your password at any time, you can do so by clicking on the ‘Change Password’ link at the bottom of the
page. Note that you can't change your username once it is assigned to you.
Back to Top
Scholar Universe welcomes your feedback, suggestions, and comments as you explore and use the service. We ask that
you kindly contact us if you have suggestions for improvement or if you see individuals or information that are
missing from the database that you believe should be included. There are two easy ways to contact Scholar Universe.
To suggest a scholar or to provide additional information on a scholar, please click on the “Suggest a Scholar” link
at the top of the page. This will take you to a page where you can enter additional information about the Scholar.
You can also contact Scholar Universe by emailing:
mailto:info@scholaruniverse.com
Or call us using the information on the Scholar Universe Contact Information page at the website by clicking on the
link at the bottom of the page.
Back to Top
This section covers all aspects of searching in Scholar Universe and will help you to find the best results for
your purposes. This section will cover:
- Basic Search (including search tips)
- Advanced Search
- Search Results
There are two types of searches on Scholar Universe, basic and advanced. Although the basic search should suffice
for the majority of your scholar searches, the advanced search allows for a more refined and filtered search
experience and may provide more precise results for a given query, depending on how narrow your search query is or
the type of person you are seeking.
Back to Top
From either the homepage or the results page, you can enter a search in the search box at the top of the page. The
basic search looks for the matching keyword(s) of your search in the following content fields on each of the
nearly 2 million profiles in the Scholar Universe collection:
- Publication title
- Publication abstract
- Scholar's expertise
- Scholar's name
- Scholar's affiliation
- Scholar's CV page
As a rule, the more general the search topic, the more likely it will be found in all of these fields. For example,
a search on ‘plant’ could return scholars who are doing research on plant biology or those affiliated with a
Department of Plants and Horticulture, or even a person whose last name is Plant, and so forth. Therefore, you may
want to use the Advanced Search (see below) when the topic is more general to ensure you are focusing on people who
are working on your topic of interest as indicated by their publication titles, abstracts, and/or expertise.
Back to Top
The Advanced Search features of Scholar Universe allow you to refine your search and limit results to specific fields,
helping you to tailor your search to view only those Scholars matching your selection criteria..
The Advanced Search page offers the option to include or exclude the following fields from your search: publication
title, abstract, professional interests, Web Page (scholar's homepage and/or publication page that is separate from
a CV page), CV Page, Affiliation, or Scholar Name. As an example, by selecting only title, abstract, expertise, and
CV Page you will eliminate erroneous results such as finding Dr. Robert Plant when running a search on ‘plants’.
Other specific field searching allowed in Advanced Search includes:
- Recent publications searching - you can limit publication search by selecting the option: ‘Only search the title
and abstracts in publications from the past 5 years.’ This option is listed with the other keyword search field
options.
- Name searching - this is the most accurate means for searching for a known person as you can specify first,
middle, and last name, as applicable.
- Email searching - you can search by email to find a person, but you must know the exact email address for the
Scholar you seek.
Back to Top
You can further refine your search results by limiting the results based on several criteria that can be used
independently or in combination.
- Degree - limit results to people with one or more specific degrees. Each time you click on a degree in the
drop-down menu, it will be added to the list of degrees included in your search. (Example: Only show Scholars with
an MD degree).
- Role - limit results by academic role such as associate professor, department chair, and so forth. You can
select multiple roles by selecting each one from the drop-down menu as described above. (Example: Only show Scholars
who are ‘Department Chairpersons’).
- Affiliation - limit your results to Scholars associated with your search who are at a specific affiliation.
The affiliation can be general, such as San Diego, which would return all people connected with an affiliation with
‘San Diego‘ in the title, or more specific such as Yale University, which would limit the results to a specific
institution.
- Country - limit the Scholars returned by the 31 countries listed in the drop-down menu. You can add additional
countries from the menu following the procedure described above. Note that when selecting United States, Canada,
or Australia, you will launch a corresponding pull-down menu that provides the option of selecting specific
US states, Canadian provinces, or Australian states, respectively.
- Zip Code - enter a zip code of interest and use the corresponding pull-down menu to find people connected
to your keyword within 10, 25, 50, or 100 miles of the zip code entered. This can be a particularly helpful tool
when looking for local experts.
- Community Tree - this feature is covered more fully below; however, you can also use it on the Advanced
Search page to limit your results by selecting communities within Scholar Universe. The small blue arrow to the
left of the community names indicates that there are additional communities underneath the community in question.
Click on the blue arrow beside a Community to expand the tree to see associated sub-communities. Click on the box
to the left of the community name to limit your search to that community. You can select one or more communities.
Back to Top
- Boolean operators - Scholar Universe supports the basic Boolean search operators AND, OR, and NOT.
- Phrase searching - All multiword searches are handled as if the terms form a phrase. For example, in a search
on ‘global warming’ the search will return documents that have both of these words, but they may not be near each
other or in this order. Therefore, for the most precise phrase searching, we recommend that you use quotation marks
around a search (e.g., “global warming”) to find that exact phrase matches in scholar profiles. See also
‘MaxPrecise™’ below.
- Wildcard searching - Wildcard searching is also supported in Scholar Universe to provide the broadest
result set for keywords that may have variable endings. Use the asterisk symbol (*) as the wildcard key and append
it to words that have multiple endings but are relevant to your search. For example a search on creativ* would
return results on creative, creativity, creativeness, creatively. Note that if the base word is not specific enough
you can get unrelated search results. For example a search on ped* when looking for pediatrics-related people would
return pedantic and pedals. Using this same example, it would be better to use ‘pediat*’ to find pediatrician and
pediatrics.
- Synonymous terms and hyphenated terms - Use synonymous terms and format variations to make sure you are getting
the best results possible. If your topic of interest is known by several terms including an abbreviation, you
should enter all those synonymous terms using ‘OR’ between each. For example, a search on ‘stroke OR “cerebral
vascular accident” OR CVA’ will look for scholars who are associated with at least one of these synonymous terms.
Further, if a search term might be presented with or without a hyphen (e.g., multiprocessor vs. multi-processor),
use both search terms with an ‘OR’ to ensure that you are not missing a relevant scholar due to the format of the
keyword.
For more information, see Search Tips
Back to Top
Search results are listed by default in order by relevance based on your search query. Relevance is determined by
matching the keyword(s) in a query against scholar's expertise, linked publication titles, linked publication
abstracts, and the scholar's CV Page. Each of these is assigned a value and total scores are given to a profile and
ordered against total scores from other matching profiles. Essentially, we evaluate where the matching keyword
occurs in addition to taking into consideration how often it occurs in a profile. You can list the results in alpha
order based on the scholars' last name by clicking on the Alpha sorting button just above the results list.
The first page displays the first 10 results and you can use the arrows at the top or bottom of the results list to
progress to the next page of results.
Your search results can be refined by using various tools on the search results page itself, by changing what you
have entered in the search window at the top of the page, using the Community Tree, using the ‘Search in Results’ or
the ‘MaxPrecise™’ features, or a combination of these options.
Back to Top
- Initiating a New Search -
Initiate a new search by simply deleting your current query or modifying it by
using additional terms, Boolean operators, quotations, or any of the other search tools described under Search Tips.
There is no need to return to the Scholar Universe homepage to begin a new search.Navigating with the ‘Community Tree’
The Community Tree will display the distribution of scholars who were returned in the results list across the
disciplines modeled in the Tree. The number in parentheses beside each community indicates the number of Scholars
matching your query contained in that community. The default search setting is to search across all disciplines in
Scholar Universe. You can expand the Community Tree by clicking on the blue arrows to see the specific
sub-communities in which scholars were found in connection to a search query. Note that scholars can be members of
more than one community which is why the numbers in the community tree may not match the results number exactly.
You can limit your results to one or more communities by either clicking on the linked community name (when limiting
to one community) or clicking in the box to the left of a community name to select several communities.
After making the selection of communities view your results by clicking on the ‘Refine Search’ link at the top of
the Community Tree box, or by clicking on the Search button, or simply by pressing the Enter key on your keyboard.
You can deselect communities by clicking on the boxes to remove the checks, or by clicking on the ‘Select All’ link
at the top of the Community Tree box and then clicking on the ‘Unselect All’ link (the command switches as the
state of the tree switches) to clear checks in all the boxes.
Back to Top
- Searching in Results - The ‘Search in Results’ radio button next to the default New Search
radio button under the search box, allows you to refine your results by launching a new search within the current
results set. When you click on this button, your last search query will be placed above the search window and you
will be able to enter a new query to view results only from within the set of results you already have created.
- ‘MaxPrecise™’ - Multi-term search queries can be refined on the results page by enabling the
‘MaxPrecise™’ feature which will automatically appear next to ‘Search in Results’ option when your search
includes more than one term. This feature will treat your search term as if it is an unquoted phrase but will
apply a requirement that all search terms found in your query occur in close proximity to one another, thereby
increasing the accuracy of your results. For more information on what this feature is and how it can improve your
search results, see MaxPrecise™.
Back to Top
You can view a Scholar Profile by clicking on the scholar's name in the search results. Scholar Profiles will
display biographic and current professional contact information at the top of the page followed by more information
associated with the scholar such as publications, web content, and co-authors. You can move between each of these
content areas by clicking on the tabs. Publications are display in order of relevance to your search query, but
there are several options for the display of publications on the profile. You can view by date (most recent to
oldest), limit publications display to those published in either the last 5 years or 10 years, or limit the
publications based on type of publication (articles, books, dissertations, grants).
Back to Top
Users who have Export privileges will be able to use this feature to create customized mailing or e-mailing lists
based on their search results. Creating the best mailing lists begins with using the search features described
above to refine your search query using the search tips and advanced search options.
Before selecting the export option, we recommend that you browse through the search results, including the very end
of the list, to ensure that your search query did not generate any inaccurate results. The Advanced Search page is
a recommended starting place for searches that will be exported because of the controls and limits that you can
exercise on the search.
To export either to a mailing list or email list, click on the Export List link just under the Search button on the
results page. This will take you to the Export page where you will have the option of selecting either a traditional
mailing list or an e-mail list. For both list types you will see your search query repeated, the original query
count (the number of scholars in the results list), the Export query count (the number of exportable scholars from
the list), and the output options.
The Export query count number is typically lower than the search results count due to the fact that exportable names
are limited for the following reasons:
- Only United States and Canada mailing addresses are exported because of validated format requirements.
- A Scholar must have a valid mailing address or email address.
- We exclude Scholars whose only roles are either Emeritus or Adjunct because our tests have shown that these
affiliations do not always support delivery to these members.
You can view the exportable list by clicking on the ‘View Exportable Results’ link to the right of the Export query
count for a final review.
After selecting the output option for the list, select the export button. This will take you to the List Export
Request page which will be automatically populated with your information, with the exception of your telephone
number which is required to process the request. Upon completion of the form, click on the Export List link to send
a list request to Scholar Universe for approval. Lists are approved and sent to your email address within one
business day.
Mailing addresses include the following fields:
- First name
- Middle Name
- Last name
- Full name (first, middle, last name in one field)
- Honorific (such as Dr., Sir)
- Address lines (including building, street, and P.O. Box)
- City, State, Zip Code
- Country
E-mail addresses include the following fields:
- First name
- Middle name
- Last name
- Full name
- Email address
Note that use of an e-mail list must comply with all applicable laws including the “CAN-Spam Act of 2003”
and European Union anti-spam laws. Please see our Terms and Conditions
regarding mailing list and e-mail list usage.
Back to Top
For help with account access, error messages, or other technical issues, please contact our technical support
team:
Phone: 800-214-2462 (in USA and Canada) or +1-301-941-2524 (Business Days, 8AM - 5PM Eastern Time)
For inquiries regarding trials, subscription rates, or other product information, please see Scholar Universe Contact Information
Back to Top
|
