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Basic Search on JSTOR

  • Place words within quotation marks to search for exact phrases (“to be or not to be”).
  • Use Boolean operators to construct a better search (“tea trade” AND china).

 

Find what you need quickly on JSTOR

Learn how to use the search results page to effectively expand and narrow your searches. (7 minutes)

Advanced Searching on JSTOR

  • Use the drop-down boxes to limit search terms to the title, author, abstract, or caption text.

  • Use the drop-down boxes to combine search terms using the Boolean operators, AND/OR/NOT and NEAR 5/10/25. The NEAR operator looks for the combinations of keywords within 5, 10, or 25 words places of each other. The NEAR operator only works when searching for single keyword combinations. For example, you may search for cat NEAR 5 dog, but not "domesticated cat" NEAR 5 dog.

  • Use the “Narrow by” options to search only articles, include/exclude book reviews, search for content published during a particular time frame, or in a particular language.

  • Focus an article search in specific disciplines and titles using checkboxes. [NOTE: discipline searching is currently only available for searching journal content. Selecting this option will exclude ebooks from the search.

 

Advanced search on JSTOR

A quick guide to using subject, title, and item type searches to find the content you need. (8 minutes)

Peer Reviewed Content on JSTOR

“Is all the content on JSTOR Peer Reviewed?”

This is a common question from researchers using JSTOR. While nearly all of the journals collected in JSTOR are peer-reviewed publications, the archives also contain primary sources and content that is much older than today's standard peer-review process. However, all content on JSTOR is considered scholarly content.

In the following section we'll look at the peer review process, the definition of scholarly content, and how that relates to content on JSTOR.