This doc describes how to use Boolean search to retrieve records from EuropePMC via Application Program Interface (API).

EuropePMC combines results from the following databases:

• PubMed and PMC,
• The Agricola agricultural library,
• Preprints from 24 different life-sciences-related preprint databases.

Boolean Operators can be used to specify the structure of your search.

When entering your search terms of interest, use:

• AND/OR/NOT to separate terms,
• quotation marks to search for an exact term (which also turns off Automatic Term Mapping), and
• parenthesis to dictate groupings and priority order

to narrow in on publications of interest. For example,

stroke AND (trevo OR solitaire) AND “modified Rankin Scale”

will retrieve all EuropePMC-indexed publications that contain all of the following in their title, abstract, or keywords:

• The word stroke
• The word trevo or the word solitaire
• The exact phrase “modified Rankin Scale.”

If you want to specify how a term will be interpreted by EuropePMC, specify the field in the following manner: (FIELD)term, using one of EuropePMC's pre-specified fields (or filters), which will narrow how that specific term is interpreted. See the full set of fields/filters enabled on EuropePMC on page 57 here.

Use of MeSH in EuropePMC…

EuropePMC enables you to specify whether one of your terms is:

• Author, by searching for (AUTH)name,
• Journal, by searching for (JOUR)name,

EuropePMC enables searches to be narrowed by the following study characteristics:

• Publication type, by searching for one of EuropePMC's supportedpublication types using, for example, (PUB_TYPE:review);
• Full Text available, by appending full text[SB];
• Publication date, by searching for FIRST_PDATE:[2020-01-01 TO 2022-01-01] (only the Year is required for the filter to function);
• Language, by searching for the language[LANGUAGE];
• And others (see full list here)

(JOURNAL:“ss”) AND (AUTH:“ss”) AND (FIRST_PDATE:[2020-01-01 TO 2022-01-01])

You can also narrow the section of the publication in question that your term will be searched within by specifying:

• Title only, (TITLE:“ss”)

See also our guidance on the following search creation tips, which match across PubMed and EuropePMC:

• PICO
• Expanding or Narrowing?
• How many records is "enough," and When to stop?