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Concept Search = Relevant Results

• OnePetro uses Autonomy search technology, which is concept, not keyword based.
  (You can treat it as if it was Google, but you'll get better results if you give it more information so it can return the most relevant results.)

• The default (and recommended) sort order is relevance. As with many search engines, the number of overall results may be high, but most users are able to find what they need in the top 25. If you do not find what you are looking for, try to search with more complete phrases or added information.
• Relevance is based on Autonomy's interpretation of how well the document matches the concepts in your search. It is using all of the information it has about a paper to make that determination (Title, abstract, and full text when available). If you give it sufficient information in your search request, customers report excellent results.
• While the default order of search results is by relevance, you can choose to sort your results by paper number or year (most recent year first) if that better suits your research needs. The relevance will still be shown in your results for reference.
• If you enter only a couple of keywords, you'll see that a large number of documents have the same relevance. That's because all the search engine could do was identify documents that include those words – it didn't have enough information to determine which were most relevant to what you are really looking for. Give it more information about what you want to know and it will be able to put the "best" matches first.
  
  *Reminder: You can combine fielded searches such as year and author with information in the search box.

Fielded Searches

• To get an exact match on the title try putting it in 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 you locate the right paper.
• Use commas to separate multiple items in a field.
  (Exception: If your search term is in quotes to get an exact match, you will not be able to input multiple entries in that field in the same search. Multiple searches will be required.)
• Year search will return you papers for only the years you specify. You can enter single years, ranges (2000-2005), or before/after (<1990, >2000).
  • More information about coverage
    
• Author and Author's Employer searches are special cases and may take longer to execute. These data have not been consistently entered across organizations or years. 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. As a result of this, all papers by authors with that name are displayed in the order of society. Because in some cases company names are included in the same field as author, your search may return some documents not by that author.
  • 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 someone with a common last name, you may have to try multiple searches or go through a longer list of papers.
  • To search for an author formatted last name first, you need to put the entry in quotes (e.g., "Smith, G.E.", "Jones, Carl") If you don't enclose your request in quotes, the search engine would see the request as two separate terms -- Smith and G.E., which would get more results than you intended, but would still return the papers by that author.
  • 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.
  • The author's employer 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.
    

• Too many results? Try limiting your search by selecting only the organizations you feel are relevent to your query. By default, the search is set up to search all the organziations listed for your query. (For example: if you know the author wrote the paper for NACE, enter the author's name, and leave only NACE checked under 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.
• OnePetro has a drop down list of all the journals currently available.

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

Helpful Hints:

• More words=better results. Search by relevence works best with three or more words.
• Search is case sensitive! If you enter title case such as" World Oil Fields Nigeria" the search will assume that the title case indicates a proper name and will return only results that contain " World Oil Fields Nigeria". When in doubt, it is best to always use lower case, for example: "world oil fields nigeria".
• Limit your search by society. SPE is the largest collection available in OnePetro. As a result, many of your searches may return a number of SPE documents on the first pages. If you don't find what you are looking for, select to refine search and uncheck the societies you do not with to get results from.

If you are looking for a single, specific document based on a reference, paper number, or other known information, click the link at the bottom of the search screen "Locate a Specific Document." This will take you to a separate search screen. Once you select the organization, you will be able to add the identifying information to locate the specific document.

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

After you enter your search terms and click the Search button, you will first see an area of search results with a blank space to the left. A few seconds later, the left column will appear.

Search categorization is displayed to the left. This categorization is only ever for the top 500 results (based on relevance of documents to your search criteria).

The first area of categorization is by society. The number in parenthesis after the society indicates the number of documents from that society included in the top 500 search results. This gives you a quick method to see which of the organizations included in OnePetro has the largest number of documents related to your search request.

The second area of categorization is by author. The number in parenthesis indicates the number of documents in the top 500 authored or co-authored by an individual. This will allow you to identify who has written a lot on your topic of interest. Note: This is based on how the author's name was shown on the document. So H.J. Ramey, Harold Ramey, and Hank Ramey, Jr. would show up as 3 different people. In the example at right you can see Yoon-Seok Choi and Y.-S. Choi are both listed. The results are displayed in order, with only the top 10 shown. You can click the More... link to see the rest of the list. Be forewarned that it will be very long.

The third area of categorization is by company (author's employer). This information does not exist for all documents. Results are based on those for which the information is available. This allows you to quickly identify what organizations have been active in the area of your search. Note: This is based on how the author's company is listed in the metadata for each document. So Institut Français du Petrole and Institute Francais du Petrole (IFP) are seen as two different organizations. The results are displayed in order, with only the top 10 shown. You can click the More... link to see the rest of the list. Be forewarned that it will be very long.

What happens if I click on an item in the categorization?

If you click on a society, author, or company, your original search is re-executed with the additional constraint of that society, author, or company. The categorization at left will remain unchanged, but the search reults set will change.

Why is my number of search results different from the number in the categorization?

The categorization is limited to the top 500 results. If you had more than 500 total results in your original search (1,024 in the example above), re-executing the search is looking for that society, author or company across your entire result set, so the number found may be larger than what was shown for the top 500.

Why doesn't the categorization change when I click on an item in the categorization?

We kept the categorization constant so that you could easily click through a series of authors or companies to see what they were writing about.

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

Do not use a question mark at the end of your query. The search engine treats it as a wild card character at the end of the last word, which may affect its understanding of your request. If a term is or may be hyphenated (e.g., highly-fractured, multi-phase, one-trip), you may want to try your search both with and without the hyphen, as responses may differ, especially when use of the hyphen depends on sentence structure.

3. Consider spelling differences and synonyms where appropriate

The search engine 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). But it 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.

If your credit card does not have a security code (a limited number of Visa/Mastercards outside the US), you may check the box indicating that your card does not have a security code.

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 pruchased 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 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. I.E. 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 info@onepetro.org for assistance.

Why do search results for SPE papers in OnePetro differ from a search in SPE's eLibrary?

This is a temporary situation. Once SPE launches its new eLibrary in May 2007, results will be the same. While results sets appear different, the difference is primarily a different ordering of a group of papers that have the same relevance to your query. The SPE papers in the eLibrary and OnePetro have been indexed slightly differently, which accounts for the slight differences in relevance observed and different ordering. Both libraries are evaluating the same set of papers; just slightly different indexes.