AccessAsia Quick Search Help

The AccessAsia Quick Search allows users to search for keywords across all fields of a specialist's listing including: Specialist Name, Current Position(s), Contact Information, Country of Residence, Expertise (geographic and research areas), Language(s), Educational Background, Past Positions, Publications, and Current Research.

Quick Search Option 1

For Option 1, users enter their own keywords. Terms should be separated with a space (example: Kazakhstan oil).

Weighted Results

When the weighted results option is selected, the database will attempt to place best matches toward the top of the results list. Best matches are determined by several factors, including the number of occurrences of a search term in a listing and the term's location in a listing (for example, when terms are found in expertise fields, they are weighed more heavily than when found in other fields).

By default, a weighted search matches all valid terms (a "valid term" here is defined as a word indexed in the database). Thus in the example:

India Pakistan nuclear

"India" "Pakistan" and "nuclear" would all need to be present in a listing for that listing to be displayed. When the "match all terms" option is disabled, the database will also display records that contain some, but not all, valid terms. This option is particularly useful when your criteria contain a mix of general and specific terms. For example, when the "match all terms" option is disabled for the following search:

Indonesia politics Suharto

the records at the top of the list will contain all three terms, while subsequent records will, in most cases, contain only the first two, more general, terms.

When the weighted search is selected, the database will find only exact word matches. For the search term "Japan," for example, the database will find only those instances where "Japan" occurs as a distinct word, and will ignore instances of "Japanese."  To search with wildcards, please see "alphabetical results" option (below) or use the advanced search. 

Alphabetical Results

When the alphabetical results option is selected, the database returns specialist listings in alphabetical order by last name.

In addition, the alphabetical results search, unlike the weighted results search, will automatically surround each term with wildcards. Thus, in an alphabetical results search the search term "econ" will find "economy," "economic," "econometrics," "economist," etc.

Quick Search Option 2

For Option 2 users select AccessAsia keywords. Multiple geographic and research areas can be selected by holding down the Control key. Option 2 always displays weighted results, and always matches all valid terms.

Note: Boolean searches are not valid in AccessAsia Quick Search.  To perform Boolean searches, use AccessAsia Advanced Search.