Basic Search Commands for
LexisNexis Academic and Factiva (Dow Jones & Reuters)
Below is an overview of the search operators employed to establish relationships between search terms in LexisNexis and Factiva. For more detailed help, see the respective database's help screens. For general search help see the Database Search Strategies guide.
| LexisNexis | Factiva | |
| To find: | ||
| all words (narrows search) | Coke and Pepsi and Royal Crown | |
| either word (broadens search) | IBM or International Business Machines | |
| first word, not the second | Coke and not Pepsi | Coke not Pepsi |
| words near one another: | ||
| any order | market w/3 share
(for market share or share of the market) |
market near3 share (for market share or share of the market) |
| same paragraph, any order | taco bell w/p chihuahua | Taco Bell same chihuahua |
| same sentence, any order | Nader w/s election | Nader/n10/election Nader near10 election |
| order as entered | william pre/3 hearst | william w/3 hearst william adj3 hearst (up to 10 words) |
| word variations: | ||
| multiple endings (unlimited characters) |
industr! (do not use in Power Search "natural language" searches) |
industr* |
| (for industry, industries, industrial, industrialization, etc.) | ||
| multiple endings (specified number of characters) |
industr*** (do not use in Power Search "natural language" searches) |
industr$3 |
| (for industry, industries, industrial only) | ||
| alternate letters | wom*n globali*tion (do not use in Power Search "natural language" searches) |
wom?n globali?tion |
| (for woman or women) (for globalisation or globalization) |
||
| word occurrences: | atleast5(baseball) atl5(baseball) |
atleast5 baseball |
| LexisNexis | Factiva | |
| To find: | ||
| words in a specific field: | ||
| headline/lead paragraph(s) | hlead(earthquake) headline(earthquake) |
earthquake/f50/ hlp=earthquake |
| byline | byline(tina brown) | by=tina brown |
| publication/source name | publication(new york times) | sn=new york times |
| length of article (in words) | ||
| less than | length<5000 | wc<100 |
| more than | length>100 | wc>5000 |
| capitals, plurals, etc. | ||
| AIDS all capital letters, always plural |
allcaps(plural(aids)) | |
| Edward Said proper noun, never plural |
caps(singular(edward said)) | |
| turkey(s) no capital letters |
nocaps(turkey) | |
