International Political Science Abstracts (IPSA), produced since 1951 by the International Political Science Association, is a bibliographic database that indexes and abstracts articles from periodicals published throughout the world.  The abstracts summarize the source articles.  Coverage of the CD-ROM is from 1989 to the present.

Articles in English are abstracted in English; those in other languages are abstracted in French, with all titles translated into English.

The following list is sorted alphabetically by field alias. Click a field name to see the description and search information.

Beginning a search request with an operator (and, not, or, with, near, or in) automatically combines that request with the previous one.

For instance, if the search you just completed is radio-tagging, searching for and frogs will give you the same results as if you search for radio-tagging and frogs.  Similarly, the search red tide followed by the search in ti is the same as red tide in ti.

Use the truncation symbol (*) or the wildcard symbol (?) to find variations of your search term.

Using Truncation (*)

Use the truncation symbol (*) as a substitute for any string of zero or more characters in your search term.  For example, the search robot* retrieves any record containing "robot," "robots," "robotics," etc. You can use the truncation symbol anywhere in your search term, except as the first character.

Using Wildcards (?)

Use the wildcard symbol (?) as a substitute for one character or none.  For example, the search m?cdonald retrieves records containing "McDonald" or "MacDonald." You can use the wildcard symbol anywhere in your search term, except as the first character. 

The limit fields listed below are specially indexed fields that allow you to limit your searches to records of a particular characteristic, such as publication year or language of text. This is particularly useful when you retrieve too many records in a search.

You can search these fields with in or =.  For example, to retrieve documents originally published in French, type:

french in ls  or ls=french

In addition to in and =, the following operators may be used with the UY field:

Below are examples of the types of searches you can use to retrieve information from International Political Science Abstracts.

1. Conduct a search for environment*. The truncation symbol (*) enables you to search for all variations of the root term "environment," such as "environment," "environmental," "environmentally," etc.
2. Conduct a search for and political behavior in so. Beginning a search request with an operator (and) automatically combines the request with the previous search. This search request limits results to those records drawn from the journal Political Behavior.

1. Conduct a search for immigration.
2. Conduct a search for and (us or usa or etats-unis). Beginning a search request with an operator (and) automatically combines the request with the previous search.

1. Conduct a search for go?vern?ment. Using the wildcard symbol (?) searches for variant spellings of the term government.
2. Conduct a search for and corporat*. Beginning a search request with an operator (and) automatically combines the request with the previous search. Using the truncation symbol (*) enables you to search for all variations of the root term "corporat," such as "corporate," "corporation," "corporatism," etc.

Certain words of little intrinsic meaning appear too frequently to be useful in searching text.  Information systems call these "stopwords." You cannot search for the following words alone in the database, but they can be included within a phrase:

This database contains a free text index as well as field-specific indexes.

Using the Free Text Index (General Index)

The Free Text Index (General Index in WebSPIRS) contains an alphabetical list of terms used to index the database. It allows you to look up, select, and search for variations of a term.  The Free Text Index is particularly useful if you are uncertain of the spelling of a term or how the terms appear in the database.  Since the Free Text Index shows terms that have been used in indexing the database, searching directly from the index will always yield results.

Refer to the SPIRS Help for more information on using the Index.

Using Field-Specific Indexes

Field-specific indexes are available for some database fields. Each field-specific index contains an alphabetical list of the terms appearing in an individual field. As with the Free Text Index, this enables you to look up, select, and search for variations of terms in the database. The advantage of a field-specific index is that you know where the terms appear in the database. For example, if you look up "French" in the Language of Summary Field-Specific Index, you know that all occurrences of the term are as a language name.

In addition to the Free Text Index, the following database fields have field-specific indexes. Highlighted fields are limit fields.

International Political Science Association

Copyright, International Political Science Abstracts, International Political Science Association, 1989 to present. All Rights Reserved.

Copyrights of SilverPlatter International, N.V.: Search and Retrieval Software, 1990 to present; guide files, indexes and supporting files, 1995 to present.

"SilverPlatter" is a registered trademark of SilverPlatter International, N.V. The SilverPlatter logo, SPIRS, WinSPIRS, NEC SPIRS, and MacSPIRS are trademarks of SilverPlatter International, N.V.

The Subscriber may use the Database for research purposes only, and may not publish, reproduce, transmit, store in any information retrieval system, or otherwise make available or sell the disc or its contents, whether in hard copy, electronically transmitted or any other form, and whether for commercial, educational or other purposes, other than for its own internal purposes or otherwise in accordance with the Subscription and License Agreement.

The International Political Science Association uses its best efforts to ensure that its Database contains an accurate representation or interpretation of the original material from which the Database was drawn, but neither the International Political Science Association nor SilverPlatter International, N.V. or its affiliates (collectively, "SilverPlatter") shall be held responsible for any damage, claim or expense incurred by a Subscriber or user as a result of its use or reliance upon the Database.

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