Search Help

The search engine for OnePetro is now Google. It should look familiar and behave as you expect based on prior use of Google. Results will not match exactly those from Google Scholar or general Google (www.google.com), but they should be similar.

The main search box will also provide suggestions as you type, just like you see with a Google search.

To use Advanced Search:  

1. From the OnePetro Home page, click the Advanced Search link.
2. On the Advanced Search page, enter search terms in the first Find field.

3. Select a search field from the optional Anywhere in Article drop-down list (for example, select "Title" from the dropdown to search in only the Title field).
4. Repeat step 2 for the second set of Find fields if needed.
5. Select a Boolean operator (AND, OR, NOT) to combine the two Find field entries.
6. Another Boolean operator, keyword, and search field can be entered in the third set of fields if needed.
7. Select from the other available search options to narrow the search:
• Search Parameters - A search filter can also be applied by selecting a specific Journal and Journal Citation.
• Limit Results By - Apply limiters by Date Range and Publisher.  
• Sort Results By - Arrange results from "newest to oldest" or "oldest to newest".    

8. Click the Search button. The Search Results page displays.

Boolean Operators

And - combines search terms so that each search result contains all of the terms. For example, porosity and permeability finds articles that contain both terms.

Or - combines search terms so that each search result contains at least one of the terms. For example, porosity or permeability finds results that contain either term.

Not - excludes terms so that each search result does not contain any of the terms that follow it. For example, porosity not permeability finds results that contain the term perosity but not the term permeability. 

Also see Booleans

Specific Field Search

In an advanced search, terms can be searched by specific fields such as “Abstract”, “Article Title”, and “Author”. Below is a full list of available search field options.

• Anywhere in Article - the full text of the article, along with all the following fields.
• Title & Abstract - text in the title or abstract of the article.
• Title - words (and their stem-related cognates) in the article title only.
• Abstract - words (and their stem-related cognates) in the article abstract only.
• Author - last name (and, optionally, initials or first name) of the article's author. A search in this field will not find authors cited in the article. For more on author-name searches, see below.
• Affiliation - the author's employer (affiliation). Note: not all documents have information on the author's employer.
• Conference - either the full name, or a portion of the name where the paper was presented.

Quotation Marks

To get an exact match on the title, try using quotation marks (e.g., "corrosion rate prediction"). If you aren't certain you have the words exactly right or in the right order, enter your search without quotes and you will get variations that may help locate the right paper.

Author Names

Remember that an author might be listed in a variety of ways (e.g., Ramey, H.J.; Ramey Jr., H.J., H.J. Ramey Jr.; Hank Ramey; Ramey, Jr., Harold). If the author has an unusual last name, just input the last name. For an author with a common last name, you may have to perform your search by entering multiple options using the AND operator.

Note:   When you input an author name, the search engine can only look for authors with that name and assume all are similarly relevant to your query. In some cases, company names are included in the same field as author, your search may return some documents not by that author.

To search for an author formatted last name first, you do not have to put the entry in quotes (e.g., Smith, G.E.; Jones, Carl), but you can do so.

In an author search using initials, spaces matter. G.E. and G. E. are not seen as the same to the Google search. [SPE's style is not to put a space between initials, but some exceptions may creep in, and other societies in OnePetro may not have the same style.] So if you are having difficulty with an author search, consider trying both with and without the spaces for initials or search for alternate forms of the author's name.

Affiliation

The author's employer (affiliation) is not always available. The search engine will return results based on the documents that have information on the author's employer, but a document count would be incomplete because of documents that do not have that information. Many of the older documents from WPC and others do not include the author's employer.

For older papers, the word "and" is likely to be spelled out rather than as "&" (e.g., "Texas A and M", Arco R and D). You may need to try your search both ways.

Journal

If you are looking for papers in a specific journal, select it from the dropdown. If you know the specific volume and issue, you can use those fields, but they are not required. The journal field can be combined with a title or author search in the fields above. It will assume that you are looking for documents with the terms indicated, but only in that specific journal.

Year

Year search will return papers for only the years you specify. You can enter single years, ranges (2000-2005), or before/after (<1990, >2000). More information about coverage

Limit Your Search By Organization

The default is to complete your search across all of OnePetro. If you want to limit your search to one or more publishers, you can use Ctrl-click to select one or more publishers from the list.

Stemming

Stemming of root words will apply in the basic search or in a search that covers "Anywhere in Article" but does not apply to a search by title, author, etc. [Stemming is the process of reducing a word to its root form then searching for that root and all possible endings. For example, when stemming is on, searching for the word stemming would also find stem and stemmed as well as stemming.

Boolean logic is used to define logical relationships between search terms. Boolean searches combine words and phrases using the words AND, OR, and NOT (otherwise known as Boolean operators) to create a very broad or a very narrow search.  

• AND combines search terms so that each search result contains all of the terms. For example, the search Offshore Drilling and Europe finds articles that contain both "Offshore Drilling" and "Europe".
• OR combines search terms so that each search result contains at least one of the terms. For example, the search Residue Oil or Residue Gas finds results that contain either "Residue Oil" or "Residue Gas".
• NOT excludes terms so that each search result does not contain any of the terms that follow it. For example, the search Porosity not Permeability finds results that contain "Perosity" but do not contain "Permeability".

Note: When executing a search OR and NOT are always evaluated before AND.

For OnePetro users, Booleans can be used on the Advanced Search page. The Advanced Search page is an example of “field searching”, where specific parts of articles can be selected and combined using Boolean operators. The following are acceptable Boolean search examples in OnePetro:

Example 1:

Using AND narrows a search by combining terms. It will retrieve documents that use both the search terms specified, as in this example:

• methane hydrate AND stability. To help illustrate the Boolean logic, this can be expressed as: (methane hydrate AND (stability)) …or also stated as… (A AND (B)).

Note: AND always narrows a search.

Example 2:

Using OR broadens a search to include results that contain either of the words entered, as in this example:  

• education OR technology. To help illustrate the Boolean logic, this can be expressed as: (education OR (technology)) …or also stated as… (A OR (B)).

Note: OR always broadens a search.

Example 3:

Using NOT will narrow a search by excluding certain search terms, as in this example:

• jazz NOT blues. This search can be expressed as: (jazz AND NOT blues) …or also stated as… (A AND NOT (B)).

Note: This search finds articles that are exclusively about Jazz. The NOT operator will always exclude articles that contain the specific NOT term.

Example 4:

For multiple search terms, a combination of Boolean operators can be used to narrow or broaden one’s search, as demonstrated in this example using the AND and the OR operators:

• Methane hydrate AND stability OR dissociation. To illustrate the Boolean logic these search terms appear as: (Methane hydrate AND (stability OR dissociation)) …or… (A AND (B OR C)).

With the launch of the Google-based search, OnePetro has eliminated a separate search page for specific documents.

To quickly find one or more documents when you know the paper number, you can use the box in the right column on the home page. To enter multiple numbers at once, separate them with a comma followed by a space.

If you are unable to locate the document you seek, please check the coverage of documents in OnePetro.

• More words=better results. Search by relevance works best with three or more words. Entering a single word will return a very large number of documents and the search will have little information on which to decide what is most relevant.
• If you select to search for your term or phrase in the full article, you cannot use the "OR" operator on a specific field. "Anywhere in the article" automatically sets the criteria to look in the full record, the program cannot limit the search to just one field for additional criteria.

For example:

      Corrosion (Anywhere in article)
     
      OR

      Smith (Author)

      ..will return an error and will reset the search to "AND".

• Too many results? Try limiting your search by selecting only the organizations you feel are relevant to your query. By default, the search is set up to search all the organizations listed for your query. (For example: if you know the author wrote the paper for NACE, enter the author's name, and select only NACE in the list of organizations.)
• Looking for a paper from a particular meeting? Enter either the full name or a portion of the name where the paper was presented. For SPE meetings, you can also use the meeting code if you know it (e.g., 11DC, 09OE, 10NAICE)

Note: if you enter both a meeting and select a journal from the drop down menu, you will not get any search results

When you get your search results, the right column gives you a variety of ways to focus and refine your results. This categorization is based on up to 10,000 documents that may be relevant to your search. If you see estimated numbers (e.g. >2850), that means your search pulled a very large number of documents. To return results quickly, the Google search appliance is estimating the actual number of documents.

What happens if I click on an item in the dynamic navigation?

If you click on a society, author, or company, your original search is re-executed with the additional constraint of that publisher, content type, author, company, etc. That will reduce the number of documents returned. You will see a small X appear in the right column next to the item you clicked. If you decide that you want to return to your original search, you can click the X to remove it and you will be back to your original search results.

Why don't I see as many search results as appear in the dynamic navigation?

You will only see a maximum of 1000 search results. This is a function of the Google search appliance. Since most customers rarely go past the first 1-2 pages of results, Google has decided that 1,000 results should be adequate, so that's all that they have enabled. The listing by category at right is based on up to 10,000 papers. You can use elements in this dynamic navigation element to focus your search to get to the 1000 papers most relevant to your needs.

1. Provide as much information as possible (more detail = better results)

For example, "reservoir modeling" will return a very large number of results. "Reservoir modeling in carbonates" will provide a more focused group of responses. "Reservoir modeling in carbonates in West Texas" gives an even more focused group of results that may be able to help you locate the information you need quickly. Don't be afraid to use industry terminology. Tell it what you really want to know.

2. Numbers, punctuation and special characters may have unintended effects, so avoid them as much as possible

Google tends to ignore articles (the, a, an, etc.) and most types of punctuation. Special characters such as letters with carets or accents (e.g., â, é), currency symbols (e.g., €, £), certain punctuation marks (e.g., —), and other types of characters may not find matches because of differing types of character encoding, so they are not recommended in your search unless unavoidable.

3. Consider spelling differences and synonyms where appropriate

The basic search automatically "stems" words down to their root word and considers all words with the same root to be a match (e.g., expand, expanding, expanded, expandable). Stemming of root words does not apply to a search by title, author, etc.

The search does not automatically account for the differences in U.S. and British spelling of certain words (e.g., favor and favour). Since the search engine is looking through documents from around the world, if a word with alternate spellings is important to your query, you may want to input both as part of your request.

OnePetro uses a secure checkout process (note the lock in the lower right of your browser) that is verified by VeriSign. We take your online security very seriously.

All purchases in OnePetro require a credit card for payment. You will go through a series of screens to enter:

• Billing address (which should match the billing address for the credit card you are using)
• Payment information (including security code)
• Confirmation of your order.

NOTE: If you choose to purchase papers in GBP or EUR, you must use Visa or MasterCard. American Express will only accept USD transactions.

When your transaction is complete, a receipt page will be displayed. From that page you can print a copy of your receipt (for your records or expense reimbursement) and you can go directly to a page for downloading the documents you purchased. In case you are unable to download your purchases immediately, or encounter difficulties, an email with information for printing a receipt and downloading documents will be sent to the email address you provided. You will have 6 calendar days to download your purchased documents.

You will have 6 calendar days from the date of purchase to download your documents.

On the download page, the title of the document is a hyperlink. Internet Explorer (IE) users who click on the link will be asked whether they would prefer to open the document or save it to their computer. The fastest method is to save it to your computer. IE users also have the option to right-click, Save Target As... to save directly to their hard drive. Firefox/Mozilla users will be prompted to save the document to their desktop.

Use of robots, intelligent agents, or download accelerators is strictly prohibited. These tools negatively impact site performance for all users.

If you encounter difficulty in downloading your papers within the time frame allowed, please contact Customer Service at +1.972.952.9323 or service@onepetro.org for assistance.

The search engine is trying to find the documents that are most relevant to your search and is organizing results according to relevance. When your search includes only one or two words (i.e., an author's name) it doesn't have much information to go on, so the rationale for the order in which they are displayed may not be obvious. When it has no other basis for organizing items (i.e., all have the same relevance), the order can be somewhat random.

If you prefer to sort your results by date, you can choose an options for newest first or oldest first using the drop down on the search page (advanced search) or on the search results page.

The search engine has found the words or term you searched for in the document even if it isn't obvious to you from the search results. For example, in a search for the author last name of Stein, the first papers returned are written by authors with Scandinavian names and only their initials are shown. These would not appear to be a match. But if you expand the author listing in the dynamic navigation, you'll quickly discover that some of the authors have the first name of Stein. A counter-intuitive result, but one that is still accurate.

Why don't I see a link to add my paper to a cart?

You may have visited them on a previous search. Information about previously visited links is held in your browser's history files. So even though you have not visited the link during this particular browser session, if the information about a prior visit remains in your browser's history, the link will show up as visited. To reduce this, you can shorten the amount of history retained by your browser.

For Internet Explorer, select Tools, Internet Options. On the General Tab, there is a place to specify the number of days to retain history and a button to clear the history. This will affect everything you do in your browser, not just OnePetro.

For Mozilla/Firefox users, under Options there is a link to clear all recent history. Or to reduce the amount of history stored, select Tools > Options > Privacy and specify how many days of history you would like your browser to store. This will affect everything you do in your browser, not just OnePetro.

OnePetro puts a cookie on your computer with the items in your cart. This cookie clears when you complete the transaction, or it expires in 6 days. We did this to assist users who experience connectivity issues mid-transaction. The items in the cart would be from an incomplete transaction the last time you visited SPE. If you no longer want these documents, use the Remove link next to those items on the View Cart page.

Cart cookies are browser specific. If you originally built a cart of items using IE as your browser and you switch to Firefox, you will not be able to see your previous cart.

Not necessarily. If you are a member of one of our participating societies (such as SPE or ARMA) and want to receive the member discount, or if you have access to certain corporate or individual subscriptions, you will need to log in. But non-member users who visit infrequently and just want to purchase papers with a credit card will be able to complete a transaction without logging in.

If you want to use Search Alerts, you will need to create a login and use it when creating (or modifying your search alert). The system needs to be able to tie the search terms and frequency to an email address so that you can be notified of new content.

The size of pdf documents in OnePetro varies widely. While some are small, as authors take advantage of improving technology to include more color graphics, figures, and photos in their papers, file size is generally increasing. While there are exceptions, most companies limit email attachments to a size of 1MB or even less. Many papers in OnePetro exceed this file size, so emailing papers is not practical. PDF is a pretty efficient file format, such that "zipping" them makes little difference in the file size (often 5% or less reduction in file size). So "zipping" will not reduce the file size enough to make email delivery practical. For now, OnePetro does not have a mechanism that would allow you to zip numerous papers into a single document before download (not to reduce size, just to reduce the number of downloads). We know that there is customer interest in this option and we will continue to investigate whether this is something that could potentially be offered in the future. But it is not clear whether this will be feasible.

First, check your spam filter to make certain that the email wasn't caught accidentally. While OnePetro has carefully constructed the email to avoid triggering spam filters, unexpected results are always possible. If you have the option, you may want to "whitelist" email from service@onepetro.org to be certain that your email gets to you. If you have checked your spam filter and still did not receive the email, contact SPE Customer Service at service@spe.org or 1.972.952.9393. Provide them with information that will help them identify your specific transaction, such as the date, your name and email, and any other information that might be helpful.

While many of the PDFs in the OnePetro can be viewed with Acrobat Reader v. 5, beginning with papers published after 1 May 2005, v. 6 or higher of Acrobat Reader is required. As technology has improved, authors have taken advantage to provide more color graphics and photos in their papers. Many of these will not display properly with older versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader. Upgrade your Reader