Research Guides: Mathematics: Graduate Student Library Orientation: Finding Articles

Searching MathSciNet

MathSciNet is a subscription service. In order to get the most out of UHM's subscription, it is important to log into MathSciNet through the library's proxy so that it recognizes that you are a UHM student.

1. Go to the library's website (library.manoa.hawaii.edu) and click on the Online Databases/Indexes link.

Screenshot of main library page

2. From this screen, there are three ways to find MathSciNet. (You can also search Voyager for MathSciNet and follow the link there.)

Three ways to get to MathSciNet

3. Whichever way you choose, you should end up on this page. (If you plan to use MathSciNet regularly, this is the page you should bookmark.)

MathSciNet proxy page

4. You may be asked to log in with your UH username and password (the username and password you use to access your UH email) and then you will be redirected to the MathSciNet website.

MathSciNet has four kinds of searches:

MathSciNet search screen

Publications allows you to enter search terms in a variety of fields to find articles, books, and conference proceedings.
Authors allows you to search by the author's name or MR Author ID.
Journals allows you to search for a journal using its title, part of its title, abbreviation, or ISSN.
Citations tells you how many times an author or journal has been cited. You can also see the most cited articles in a particular subject or during a particular year.

These are the search fields available in MathSciNet. Click on the name of the field for more information.

Field	Searches...
Author	Author's name only
Author/Related	Author's name plus editors, translators etc.
Title	Title of original article
Review Text	Any text in the body of the review
Journal	Journal name
Institution Code	The code assigned to a specific institution
Series	Series name
MSC Primary/Secondary	Primary or secondary Mathematics Subject Classification
MSC Primary	Primary Mathematics Subject Classification
MR Number	Number of item in MathSciNet
Reviewer	Reviewer's name
Anywhere	All of the bibliographic, classification, and review information
References	All reference lists

If you plan to include the author's name as part of your search, the best way to do this is to use the Authors search. Authors sometimes publish papers using variations of their name. The easiest way to search all their name variations is to use the Authors search.

Author's search tab

When searching by author anywhere on MathSciNet, make sure to use the format Last Name, First Name (or Initial). Don't forget the comma!

Good Searches:

Rudin (will find authors with "Rudin" in their last name)
Rudin, W*
Rudin, Walter

Bad Searches:

Walter Rudin
Rudin Walter
That one analysis guy

Once you find the right record, click on it for more information and options. Here is an example of an author's record:

An exmaple of an author's record

To add all variations of the author's name to your search, click on Refine Search.

Adding the author to your search

This will take you back to the Publications search page with the author field pre-filled for you.

Search with author pre-filled

You can add more search terms if you wish, and click "Search."

The Journals Search lets you get the full name of a journal from its abbreviation or ISSN. You can also browse specific issues of journals and get access to the articles of some titles. To get there, click on the Journals tab.

Searching journals

Suppose you found a citation for an article you would like to read in something called Ann. Pure Appl. Logic. You can type that into the search box:

Journal search example

Here is the result of the search:

Journal search results

When you are browsing the contents of an issue, some articles will be available for viewing. If the Article link is not grayed out, you can click on it to access the article. (Click image for bigger version.)

The citations search can tell you how often an author or journal has been cited and where they were cited. Citations can give you clues about how influential an author or journal is, and can provide good suggestions for further reading on your topic of research.

To search for citations, click on the Citations tab.

Citations tab

You will see a new search screen with new tabs to choose from:

Citations search screen

Author Citations tells you how often a particular author has been cited.
Journal Citations tells you how often a particular journal has been cited.
Search by Subject tells you the most-cited articles in a particular subject.
Search by Year tells you the most-cited articles in a particular year.
Top 10 Lists tells you generate a top 10 list for a given year and category.

MathSciNet Search Tips

The wildcard character is an asterisk ( * ).

algebra* will find algebra, algebras, algebraic, algebraically, etc.

To prevent the search from automatically including the plural (or singular) form, use a bang ( ! ):

topology! will search for topology but not topologies
groups! will search for groups but not group

The Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT are recognized. Use parentheses if necessary.

Quotation marks ( " ) are unnecessary because search terms are assumed to be phrases.

TeX code is optional and do not affect search results

More information about searching can be found here.

Mathematics: Graduate Student Library Orientation: Finding Articles

Introduction to Math Databases

Searching MathSciNet

MathSciNet Search Tips