Tell a colleagueHow to search this site
There are several ways to search the pages on this site:
Author Search - If you have the name of the author of an article, or even if you can't remember the author's full name, you use this drop-down menu to search through all the authors published in the journal. The authors are listed by family name (e.g. Bloggs, John). By clicking in the drop-down menu you can skip to an author, for example 'Eade' by typing in 'E' to go directly to all authors whose name begins with this letter. All of the articles by this author that have been published in Development in Practice will appear in the search results.
Keyword Search - All published articles have been given standard keywords for this website. Each article has approximately three or four keywords describing its main content or focus. By selecting a keyword from the drop-down menu and pressing 'GO' all articles labelled by that keyword will appear in the search results.
Free Text Search - This can be used to search the website for any information which you think may be described by a particular word or set of words. This search can be useful to combine the previous two options in order to narrow your search results, by combining several keywords together, as well as for example a geographical region/country or author name. The following text explains how words can be combined in order to narrow or widen your search, much the same as how large Internet search engines work. For example:
- Keyword Search - AID returns 19 pages of articles about AID
- Free Text Search - AID, CIVIL SOCIETY, CONFLICT AND RECONSTRUCTION, combining keywords (Match All) narrows the search and results in 47 articles
- Free Text Search - South Africa, AID, CIVIL SOCIETY, CONFLICT AND RECONSTRUCTION, combining keywords and a country name (Match All) narrows the search and results in only 6 matched articles
By following the tips on this page, you can expand the focus of your query to give you more complete results. The following three options appear in the drop-down menu when you conduct a Free Text search.
Match All words
This will attempt to find documents that contain all of the words that you specify, each separated by a comma. This can help to narrow things down, but don’t overdo it - otherwise you may find that there are no matches for your query.
Example
Community, Action - search for pages mentioning Community Action (not just referring in passing to communities)
Match Any words
This will attempt to find documents that contain any one or more of the words that you specify. Try not to use common words, or too many words, or you are likely to end up with a huge number of matching pages to trawl through.
Example
Conservation, Environment, Ecology - search for anything Green
Match Boolean words
This allows you to use the words ‘and’ and ‘or’ (using brackets if necessary) in order to build up a more complex search. This option is only worth using if you need to use a combination of ‘and’ and ‘or’.
Example
(welfare or (equal and opportunities)) and officer- search for any page mentioning either the Welfare Officer or the Equal Opportunities Officer
Other variations allow you to broaden or narrow the focus of your search according to your needs.
Look for words with the same prefix by placing an * after the search term.
Example
key* - will find key, keying, keyhole, keyboard, etc
Search for all forms of a word by adding **.
Example
sink** will find sink, sinking, sank, and sunk.
Search with NEAR for words close to each other. For instance, ‘ngo and development’ and ‘ngo near development’ both look for the words ngo and development on the same page. But ‘ngo NEAR development’ will rank the pages according to how close together the words are.
Refine your search with NOT to exclude certain text. For example, if you want to find all instances of ‘surfing’ but not in relation to the Internet, write ‘surfing NOT the Net’.
OR to find all instances of either one word or another. For example ‘Abbott OR Costello’ will find all pages that mention Abbott or Costello or both.
Put double quotation marks around your search items if you want these to be taken literally. For instance, if you use “ngo near development” the system will search for the complete phrase ngo near development. But if you type the same query without the quotation marks, the system searches all documents for the words ngo and development.
‘In a field characterised by so little time to ponder what we do, Development in Practice is an oasis at which to discover new meaning in our work, alalyse what can be improved, profit from similar experiences in different settings, while sharing our own reflections and discoveries. I'm enriched by every issue .’
Miguel Pickard, CIEPAC, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas
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