The faceted search uses a probabilistic search engine. Terms entered are reduced to their root words. Stop words (meaningless words) are being filtered. Searches are made using the journal or series title, name of the publisher, ISO abbreviation of the title or JDB ID as well as Community & Collection.

The faceted search is integrated in the form of a simple search slot on all JDB pages in the header. Please enter one or more search terms. Example: "European". For several terms entered, the Boolean AND operation is automatically used. Example: "European Heart Journal".

While entering the search term, an auto-complete function is activated from the 3rd character onwards, which provides you with the best possible result suggestions; the journal title and the publisher are being displayed in the suggestion list. In the title display you will see the search terms highlighted. Press the Enter key or the "Search" button to start the search. If you click on one of the items in the suggestion list, a search for all terms of the selected title will be initiated (Google-like).

Facets are quite similar to the search and subsequent restriction by means of filters of Google or Google Scholar.

In the JDB, facets limit the search result to certain metadata. Filters here are selected criteria such as Publisher, Type (journal/series or publisher), Accepted Manuscript (according to publisher's terms), Published PDF (according to publisher's terms), DOAJ (is the title registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals?), Contract (is there a Read&Publish contract?), Refereed (is the title refereed?) and Communities & Collections. Each newly selected facet leads to a new search query with the chosen filter criterion. The expected number of hits is displayed in brackets next to the individual filter characteristics.

The status bar allows you to re-sort the displayed results, to export the results of the search (maximum 1000 records at once) or to set the length of the result list to 10, 50 or 100 hits. In between, status information is displayed.

Title, ISO abbreviation (if available), ISSNs and publisher are displayed for each hit.

Operator	Description	Examples
AND	standard, can also be omitted	European AND Heart
OR		schweizerische OR suisse
NOT		Psychology NOT Frontiers
()	Combination with brackets	Medi* AND (suisse OR schweizerisch*)

Terms in inverted commas are searched for exactly as they are written and in the order in which they appear.

Example: "European Heart Journal"

Placeholder	Description	Examples
*	0 or more characters	Pro*in
?	Exactly one character	Prot?in, Pro??in

Individual fields can be searched directly with the following field abbreviation:

Field abbreviation (ALIAS)	Description	Examples
CC	Community & Collection	CC:"Soziologisches Institut"
EPID	Eprint ID (single or range)	EPID:10000, EPID:10000-12000, EPID:10000-, EPID:-12000
ISSN	International Standard Serial Number	ISSN:0925-2738
JT	Journal Title	JT:"BMC Microbiology"
PB	Publisher	PB:"BioMed Central"
TY	Typ: Journal/Series or Publisher	TY:"Publisher"

Search with ...	Meaning
JT:Frontiers AND PB:Frontiers	All journals published by Frontiers where the word "Frontiers" also appears in the journal title.
ISSN: 0019-2805	Journal with the ISSN 0019-2805