Searching
Site searching
A search box is always available in the page header. Type a word or term into this box and click the Search button to search content created by “Content Management System contents”. It is not case sensitive and will not look into the British Pharmacopoeia and British Approved Names.
Publication searching
This search box (search within this version) will appear on left side once you are logged in and have valid subscription to the publication.
This search box will appear at “Table of Content”, “Monograph list”, “Content” pages. Type a word or term into this box and click the Search button to search the entirety of the British Pharmacopoeia. The search will find articles and monographs that match all the terms you have entered, and it’s not case sensitive.
At monograph list page you will see two options to select while searching. You need to enter the search text in the search textbox and select any of these to filter the results.
- Full Publication
This option will search entirety of the British Pharmacopoeia. The search will find articles and monographs that match all the terms you have entered, and it’s not case sensitive.
- This list by title
This option will look in to the title of monographs and will give results back those monographs.
This will require at least one word to give accurate search results.
If you want to search multiple words please put them inside double quotes.
e.g. “search monograph title”.
British Approved Names Searching
To search inside British Approved Names documents, please use Search textbox at left side of BAN list page and specify any text from the document or document title. The search will return all documents who matches the title or matched the content.
If you want to exact match, please enter text inside double quotes.
e.g. "2012 Supplement No.1" will return “British approved Names 2012 Supplement No.1” only.
e.g. 2012 Supplement No.1 will look for any word given and return all matched documents.
Advanced searching
To search a specific volume, use the Advanced Search accessible from a link below Publication search. This presents keyword and Title boxes allowing you to search either the whole of the BP text or only monographs titles.
Dropdown list on the Advanced Search form allow you to further restrict your searches to British, European, or Internationally harmonised monographs, and to specific volumes or areas of BP.
For example, to search a specific volume, enter your terms in the search fields and select the checkbox for the volume you wish to search.
Selecting items from multiple dropdown list broadens your search to all of the selected volumes or areas. For example, selecting Volume III and Volume IV will search both volumes.
Three wildcard characters can be used to replace parts of terms.
* (asterisk)
The asterisk can be used to replace one or more characters in a search field. For example, you can enter 'beta*' in the Text field to search for all terms beginning 'beta-'.
? (question mark)
The question mark can be used to replace a single character in a search field. For example, you can enter 'nitr?te' to find 'nitrate' and 'nitrite'.
( ) (brackets)
Square brackets can be used to specify alternative characters in a search field. For example, Acac*(Extract)' will find 'benzoic' and 'benzoin'.
(Extract) will find “Extracts”, “Squill Liquid Extract” etc
Acac*(Extract|dried) will find “Spray-dried Acadia” , “ Acacia” etc
Care should be taken when using wildcard characters. Entering 'a*' in the Text search box, for example, could take a considerable time to search.
Searching using Boolean operators
The Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT can be used to combine search terms. These operators can be used in upper case in the Publication search and Site search boxes.
Boolean AND
Use AND to combine two or more search terms. For example 'sodium AND potassium' will find all records which contain both these strings.
Boolean OR
Use OR to combine two or more search terms. For example, 'fruit OR oil' will find all records containing either 'fruit' or 'oil' or both.
Boolean NOT
You can use the Boolean NOT to combine different words and phrases in a way that narrows the scope of the search. It instructs the search engine to find records that contain one word but not another. You can use NOT in association with AND to form AND NOT. In this case, you can include one term and exclude another.
Searching for terms in proximity to each other
There are several ways of searching for terms that may be next to each other or within a few words:
" " (quotes)
Enclosing a term or phrase in quotes will cause a search for the term or phrase exactly as it appears in the quotes. This is useful if you are looking for a phrase that contains one of the search operators. For example, "clarity and colour" will find the phrase 'clarity and colour' wherever it appears in a particular field.
ONEAR
The word followed by ONEAR will find words which are within one words of each other and in the order you enter them.
For example “Acacia ONEAR British”
NEAR
The word followed by NEAR will find words which are within one words of each other and irrespective of the order you enter them.
Precedence of search operators
The system has rules for carrying out searches where more than one operator is present. Each operator has a precedence that determines the order in which it is processed. The operators with the highest precedence are processed first. The order of precedence of the operators is:
- The specified field
- Boolean NOT
- Proximity operators (ONEAR,NEAR)
- Boolean AND
- Boolean OR
You can override the precedence by using round brackets ( ). Any operators in round brackets will be processed first.