[Eril-l] Phrase searching in ScienceDirect

[Mandi Schwarz]

Good morning, fellow e-resource enthusiasts,

Two weeks ago, one of our librarians found a frustrating issue with phrase searching in ScienceDirect. When searching for "environmental politics" AND forestry, two of the top four results do not contain the phrase "environmental politics" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934116300971 and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934116300971); additionally, the fifth result contains it only in the citations (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652614001644).

I opened a ticket with Elsevier, and received this response:

The search engine treats all variants of the words as the same word. i.e., it treats environment, environmental as the same word. Similarly, it treats politics and political as the same word.
In the articles https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934116300971  and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652614001644  the variants of the words environment and politics appear together.

The new search engine does not support exact phrase match

I can understand and appreciate the introduction of word variant functionality, but the loss of phrase searching is unacceptable in my opinion. I suspect that this is a very recent change; our librarian found a searching tutorial that includes phrase searching with an updated date from May this year. We're currently gathering feedback from our librarians, and will be escalating this with our licensing consortia and Elsevier.

We were successful in demonstrating to Gale that a recent change was unacceptable; if you are also unimpressed by this recent change in ScienceDirect, please let them know.

Thanks!
Mandi


Mandi Schwarz
Library Technical Assistant - Electronic Resources | 250-960-6455 | Mandi.Schwarz at unbc.ca<mailto:Mandi.Schwarz at unbc.ca>
University of Northern British Columbia | 3333 University Way; Prince George, BC; V2N4Z9
Gratefully acknowledging that we live and work in the unceded traditional territory of the Lheidli T'enneh.


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