A thesaurus is an alphabetical listing of all the subject terms in a single database, used to classify and organize information for that database. The thesaurus shows relationships between terms such as synonyms or related terms, and hierarchical arrangements such as broader terms, or narrower terms. Most ProQuest databases have an associated thesaurus. By adding thesaurus terms to your search, you can broaden or narrow your search, or find related words to further explore your subject of interest.
To use the thesaurus, select the Thesaurus link from the Advanced or Command Line Search, then browse or search for subjects containing the word or beginning with the word. Mark the items that you would like to search and then select the appropriate Boolean operator to combine your items. Click the Add to search button and your terms will be placed into the search form. From there, run your search to include the subject terms. You can also combine terms you find in the thesaurus with your current Advanced or Command Line search.
In addition to the all encompassing subject field, there is also a separate subject field for company/organization, person, and location. These are also included in the searchable fields table to the right.
You can also find additional Thesaurus help from our Thesaurus help file.
ProQuest databases offer up to seven Look ups or browsable indexes, so you can easily find spelling or format variations of, for example, an author's name or a journal title. You can find the Look up links in the advanced search page and they are available for the following searchable fields (dependent on the selected ProQuest database(s)): author, publication, subject, company/organization, person, location, and NAICS. For a description of these fields, please see the searchable fields table to the right.
Note: Look ups are also available from the Command Line search (through the Look up terms link).
To use and locate a Look up or browsable index, select the field from the advanced search pull-down menu. If a Look up is available, under the search row you will see a link to the Look up. Some databases will display their Look ups and browsable indexes above the Source Type field in the advanced search page.
Select the Look up link and then you will see a browsable and alphabetical index for that field. There are some indexes that will not display an alphabetical list before searching for the term, rather you will have to enter a term first, and then the alphabetical list of matches will display.
Once you locate the index term that you would like to add to your search, mark the item, and then click the Add to search button. The index term will now appear in the advanced search form along with the appropriate pull-down menu selection.
An accessible version of the Searchable Fields table is available below.
| Field Name | Label | Search Examples & Explanation |
| Abstract | AB | AB(child welfare worker) The abstract provided by the journal is reproduced with little or no modifications. If no abstract is provided, one is created by the ProQues editorial team, drawing on the article’s text and concepts. Abstracts are available from 1987. |
| Accession Number | AN | AN(356894) Search the unique database ID for articles and documents. |
| Anywhere | (Libor OR Euribor) Enter keyword(s) without a field code label to search the entire record. |
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| Anywhere except full text | ALL | ALL(credit default swaps) Searches for keywords in the citation and abstract. It is a full record search, but does not include a search on the full text. |
| Author | AU | AU(Mossberg Walt) Finds documents written by a particular author. Use the Look Up list to verify the various formats of the same name. |
| Author Affiliation | AF | AF(Paris) Finds documents written with additional author information such as institutional affiliation, location of institution, and if provided, the email address of the author. |
| Cited Author | CAU | CAU(Greenspan) Searches for an author that is part of the Cited References section of a record. |
| Cited Document Title | CTI | CTI(Mortgages) Search for document titles that are part of the Cited References section of a record. |
| Cited Publication Date | CYR | CYR(October 1987) Searches for publication dates that are part of the Cited References section of a record. |
| Cited Publication Title | CPUB | CPUB(economist) Searches for a publication title that is part of the Cited References section of a record. |
| Classification Codes | CC | CC(1120) Classification Codes define business topics. They are a fast way to precisely target a search by topic, industry or market, geographical area, or article type. |
| Company/Organization | ORG | ORG(Ford) Searches for a company or other organizations featured prominently in an article. |
| Digital Object Identifiers | DOI | DOI(10.1007/s00180-010-0212-6) Searches for documents with DOIs using the DOI search. |
| Document Feature | DF | DF(Chart) Searches for features in an article such as charts, diagrams, illustrations or photographs. |
| Document Number | AN | AN(1713554) Searches both the ProQuest document ID (applied to all documents) and the 3rd party document ID (applied to some databases, such as PsycINFO). |
| Document Text | FT | FT(Mortgage backed securities) Searches for keywords in the body of the article. |
| Document Title | TI | TI(BRIC) Locates the occurrence of search words in the title of the article. |
| Document Type | DType | DType(Market Research) Finds specific document types such as article, business case, company profile, market research… |
| Image Caption | CAP | CAP(Obama) Search the brief description usually accompanying an illustration or photograph. |
| International Standard Book Number | ISBN | ISBN(9780549687191) Looks for the 12 and 13 digit International Standard Book Number (ISBN), where available. Hyphens are optional. |
| International Standard Serials Number | ISSN | ISSN(00014788) Looks for the eight digit International Standard Serials Number (ISSN), where available. Hyphens are optional. |
| Issue | ISS | ISS(8368) Searches the issue number of a resource. |
| Language | LA | LA(Spanish) Original language of the document. |
| Location | LOC | LOC(Austin) Specific geographic area or location. |
| MeSH Subject | MESH | MESH(intervention studies) MeSH stands for Medical Subject Heading and is the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus. Any record with MeSH subjects means that the record is indexed in MEDLINE/PubMed. |
| NAICS | NAICS | NAICS(334111) The NAICS code defines the economic activity of a business as defined by the US Census Bureau. |
| Person | PER | PER(Christine Lagarde) Finds articles mentioning a person. |
| Product Name | NP | NP(Kindle) Finds articles mentioning a specific product. |
| Publication date | PD | PD(19871020) Specific publication date. |
| Publication Title | PUB | PUB(financial times) Specific publication or publications. |
| Publisher | PB | PB(Positif Editions) Search for the publisher of the source such as the journal publisher. |
| References | REF | REF(Barnett-Hart, Anna Katherine) Looks for the data in a cited reference. It will search all of the main components of a cited reference (cited author, cited document title, cited publication date, and cited publication title). |
| Source type | SType | STYPE(newspapers) Finds pecific source types such as books, newspapers or scholarly journals. |
| Subject Heading(All) | SU | SU(Accounts) Look for articles about a specific subject. A search for the subject heading “accounts,” will find articles with the subject accounts, health savings accounts or checking accounts. To run an exact subject search where only “accounts” is retrieved and not subject terms that contain additional terms, search using EXACT. SU.EXACT(accounts) |
| Volume | VO | VO(100) Volume of a resource. |