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CIRRIE Guide to Searching

The CIRRIE Database collects citations from all areas of rehabilitation and compiles them into one central source. In addition to indexing from mainstream journals and internet sites, CIRRIE also includes citations to resources not readily available to U.S. researchers. Over 5000 journals are represented in the Database and abstracts are available for most citations. A list of journals is now available. There are over 145,000 citations currently indexed with citations added monthly. The database includes citations from 1990 to the present.

• General Search Guidelines
• Title/Keyword Search
• Subject Heading Search
  • Thesaurus
  • Rotated Thesaurus
• Author Search
• Journal Search
• Search Limits
  • Geographic Area
  • Publication Year
  • Language
• Record Viewer
  • Author Information
  • Journal Information
• Saving and downloading searches
  • Saving citations
  • Downloading citations
• Universal design sub-database

General Search Guidelines

• The search fields are not case sensitive: polio and Polio are the same
• Multi-word phrases must be encased within quotation marks
  • "Alzheimer's disease"
  • "Daily living"

  (Searching for Daily living without quotations will instead search Daily AND living and may produce unintended results)

• The menu to the right of the search box allows you to choose which field you would like to search: title keyword, subject heading, author or journal. For more information about these specifically, consult their sections of the guide
• To search by multiple fields, select "Add another term." A new search box will appear, allowing you to repeat the above process up to four more times. These additional fields can be joined to previous searches by ANDing or ORing them together
• ANDing terms takes a higher precedence in the order of operations: polio OR child AND development OR "daily living" will search polio OR (child AND development) OR "daily living"
• Search for non-English words by removing all accents and diacritical marks: senor instead of señor

Title/Keyword Search

• Use quotation marks for phrases: Daily living will search Daily AND living. While it will match all articles that "Daily living" will, it may also give false positives
• The title search also functions as a keyword search. It will not, however, search the abstracts of the articles
• Remember that the CIRRIE database is international in nature and to account for differences in American and British spelling (behavior, behaviour)

Subject Heading Search

• CIRRIE uses a controlled vocabulary for its subject searches: if your search terms are not in the CIRRIE Thesaurus, you will not get any results
  • polio
  • poliomyelitis

  (The first example will return no results as polio is not an approved subject heading. Additionally, some terms may have different meanings: medicine refers to the practice and not medication)

• It is also possible to search the Thesaurus. A phrase can be searched in the term only or in both the term and scope note. You may also limit results to authorized terms only
• Only enter one subject heading per search box: if you would like to search for multiple subjects, select "Add another term" and an additional search field will appear
• It may also be useful to consult the CIRRIE Rotated Thesaurus. It groups terms alphabetically by their key term, so that Transportation, Air transportation, Public transportation, Rail transportation and Transportation accessibility — which ordinarily would be listed under four pages alphabetically — are listed sequentially under Transportation

Author Search

• To search by author, enter all or the start of an author's last name. If using more than the last name, include no punctuation or spaces
  • johnson ma
  • johnson
  • johns
• To search for an exact author — johnson m and not johnson ma — place quotes around the author's name
• The database searches the first four authors of an article; if an author was listed fifth or later, they will not be included in the results
• To see the most prolific authors in the CIRRIE database on a subject, use our Subject Specialists tool. It is possible to limit the results to articles published in the past five years and to only return authors with contact information, to identify potential collaborators.
• For instructions on retriving information about authors, consult the Record Viewer section of the guide

Journal Search

• To search by journal, enter words or phrases from the journal title
• It is not necessary to know the exact journal title; leaving off words such as "the" and "and" is acceptable (but not required)
• To search for an exact journal title — Nursing Review and not International Nursing Review — place quotes around the entire phrase, even if it is one word
  • Heart
  • "Heart"

  The first search will match Heart Disease and Heart and Lung, while the second will only provide results from the journal with the exact title Heart

• To search for phrases and single words, place the phrase in quotations: "journal of" cancer will match The European Journal of Cancer Care
• For an alphabetical listing of journals, consult the Journal List
• For instructions on retrieving more information about a journal, consult the Record Viewer section of the guide

Search Limits

To further limit your search, you can select one or more of the following fields

Geographic Area

• Select an area from the drop down box to limit the results to research conducted in that area. The area can be a country, such as India, or a broader region, such as Asia
• By default, all regions outside the United States are searched. The CIRRIE database only contains research conducted in non-U.S. areas; for research conducted within the U.S., search NARIC's REHABDATA Literature Database

Publication Year

• Choose the start year and end year of your search, inclusively, from the two drop down boxes. If no selection is made, all years will be included in your search
• The CIRRIE database only contains articles published in 1990 and beyond. Also, while it is possible to search for articles published in the most recent year, there may not be any results as more recent articles are still being indexed for inclusion

Language

• Limit your search to articles published in English or non English by selecting from the drop down menu. If no selection is made, all languages will be included in your search
• All citations contain English translations of titles regardless of the language of publication

Record Viewer

• The full record of an article contains more information: the institution of the primary author (at the time of writing), the language of the article, the subject headings it is indexed under, the geographic areas where the research was conducted and an abstract, if one is available
• The year, subject headings and geographic areas are links: following each link will search the database for articles published in that year, with that subject heading or in that geographic area, respectively
• The author and journal are also links: following them will take you to the detailed information pages described below

Author Information

• If the author has been listed first on at least one article in the CIRRIE database, their most recent institutional affiliation will be listed. Please note that this may not be their current information, and is taken from the most recent article in the database where they are the first author
• The five most recent articles written by the author, or all of the articles if the number is less than five, will be listed and linked to. Be advised that if you follow these links, your "Return to search results" links will no longer function and you will have to use your browser's "Back" button to return to the search results
• By selecting the "Bookmarkable version of this page" link, your search history will be removed from the URL for a cleaner link to bookmark. Note that this will not bookmark the page for you; you must do that yourself

Journal Information

• If the CIRRIE database has the information, a journal's information page will contain a link to its website, its address, a link to search it in the CIRRIE database and indication of whether or not it is indexed in Medline, available in full text and owned by the University at Buffalo
• Journal information is still being added to the database, and it is not yet comprehensive
• The five subject headings most often given to articles indexed from that journal are also listed. Following each linked term will search the database for articles in that journal with the term selected
• By selecting the "Bookmarkable version of this page" link, your search history will be removed from the URL for a cleaner link to bookmark. Note that this will not bookmark the page for you; you must do that yourself

Saving and downloading searches

Saving citations

• Saving searches requires javascript be enabled and the use of a modern browser
• To mark a citation for saving/downloading, select the checkbox next to it
• Saved articles will persist through viewing records and multiple searches. You can also close your browser and come back later: articles are saved forever, until you manually delete them
• Searching the CIRRIE database from another computer, or with a different browser on the same computer (Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, for instance) will not transfer your saved articles

Downloading citations

• To download citations, view the download citations page
• Citations can be downloaded in Endnote format or in plain text (if you would like an option not currently available, please email Dan Conley)
• An Endnote import filter is available for use with our exported citations (place the cirrie.enf file in the Endnote filters directory: C:\Program Files\Endnote\Filters or Applications:Endnote:Filters)
• To delete saved citations, choose the "Permanently delete saved articles" option

Universal design sub-database

• The universal design sub-database functions exactly as the main CIRRIE database does. Search queries can be constructed in the same way as described above
• In addition to non-U.S. journal articles, this section contains citations in all formats and from all countries
• To browse the citations by format or subject heading, use the citation list

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