figshare help

How to use Advanced search in Figshare

All entities on Figshare are fully searchable using either simple search (basic) or advanced (detailed below), in field search. The content can be ordered and filtered by the users.

Data can be ordered on public pages like Figshare browse, portal and sub-portals, search page or category page by different dates, with the default as 'posted date'. This default order allows users to see the most recent items first, the order can be changed to allow seeing the oldest entities first.

Users can also choose to order based on the date the entity was first displayed online, publication date or by the acceptance date.  

The filters available on the portal, browse and search page are currently licence and type.

If needed the content can be grouped by categories. Note: categories will only appear available for browsing if there are public items with the category assigned.

Advanced in field search

Figshare allows also advanced, in field search, where users can deliberately decide in which fields they want to search a term. All search boxes, on private and public pages support advanced search, but there is a difference when it comes to the operators that can be used in the two contexts.

While some operators are available on both public and private pages, some of them only make sense in a private context.

More technical documentation can be found here https://docs.figshare.com/#search

Search operators

Figshare supports a predefined set of operators and specific characters for advanced in field searches.

Priority for operators

An advanced search string can combine multiple expressions. An expression is made of an identifier (:title:) and a value. Expressions can be chained with the AND / OR operators and can be grouped with (), in the same way as in Algebra .

If no grouping is used, operators are used in their normal ordering (see precedence).

Advanced Search keys based on context

The advance search keys work differently based on the context.

Depending on the context, the search will work on private data saved on the entity (item/ collection/project) or on their private state. There are several context displayed in the table below.

There is a generic identifier that can be used for all keys :search_term: that searches in all the metadata which is indexed and can be combined with any of the below identifiers.

Users of institutional portals can also take advantage of the latest feature added to the search functionality: custom field special identifiers. These work exactly the same as the regular identifiers detailed below, and queries must adhere to the following syntax: :custom_field_name: custom_field_value. Currently, the custom field special identifiers are only available in the context of public pages (institutional and group portal search pages).

Public pages

This context includes public pages like the browse page, figshare home, portal and sub-portal pages, public category pages and the search page. This context includes also the add items to collection from the public side.

Private items

This context includes all the areas listing private items such as: my data, items in project, search items in collection from my data and search items on the collection private page.

Confidential or embargoed files can be searched by their extension or name only on My data and not on the other context where the content can belong to others.  

Private collections

Search collections on your own account on the collections listing by metadata that belongs to collections.

Private projects

Search projects on your own account in the project listing by metadata that belongs to projects.

Private request

Search items/ request in the curation pool of request.

Submissions (applicable only for preprints)

Search existing and future submissions in the My submissions list but also in the admin area where you can see all submissions that were sent to journals.  

Search examples

For examples of how this works please see Search examples.

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