How do you teach or explain Boolean operators to students or novice researchers?

2 OR operator

The OR operator is used to connect two or more terms that can appear in the results. For example, if you are looking for articles on climate change or global warming, you can use the OR operator to combine these terms: climate change OR global warming. This will return all the results that mention either term, or both of them. The OR operator is useful when you want to expand your search and include synonyms, variations, or related terms of your topic.

3 NOT operator

The NOT operator is used to exclude a term from the results. For example, if you are looking for articles on climate change, but not on its effects on agriculture, you can use the NOT operator to exclude this term: climate change NOT agriculture. This will return only the results that mention climate change, and exclude those that mention agriculture. The NOT operator is useful when you want to eliminate irrelevant or unwanted results from your search.

4 Parentheses and order of operations

When you use more than one Boolean operator in a search, you need to use parentheses to group the terms and indicate the order of operations. For example, if you are looking for articles on climate change and either biodiversity or ecosystems, you can use parentheses to group the terms: (climate change AND (biodiversity OR ecosystems)). This will return only the results that mention climate change and either biodiversity or ecosystems, and exclude those that mention only biodiversity or ecosystems, or none of them. The order of operations follows the same logic as in mathematics: the terms within parentheses are processed first, then the terms outside parentheses are processed.

5 How to teach or explain Boolean operators

One way to teach or explain Boolean operators is to use visual aids, such as diagrams, charts, or tables, that show how the operators affect the results. For example, you can use Venn diagrams to illustrate how the operators combine or exclude sets of results. Another way to teach or explain Boolean operators is to use examples, scenarios, or exercises, that demonstrate how the operators can help refine or broaden a search. For example, you can ask students or novice researchers to formulate a research question, identify the keywords and phrases, and apply the operators to construct a search strategy.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?