Advanced search

Advanced search tips

Expert Guide's advanced search allows you to comprehensively search the profiles in our database using more of the information that experts have provided. Where our standard search allows you to search names and keywords only, Advanced Search allows you to restrict your search to experts from individual organisations or departments/faculties, search multiple categories simultaneously, and use exact keyword matching. You can also combine any field with any other field to find the expert you need.

The key to Advanced Searching is to remember that the more specific information you enter, the fewer results you will receive. Therefore, we recommend you start general (combining only two or three pieces of information in your search) and get more specific if you receive too many results.

Here are some more tips on using each section in the Advanced Search:

Find people

You can search for someone by first name or last name by entering the information you know about them in the relevant box. You can also combine this field with any others in the database by typing a name and then selecting another category. For example, to search for an expert named Michael whom you know to be at a particular organisation, type “Michael” in the first name field, select the organisation from the drop down list, and then hit “Search”.

You can also search for people according to the kind of enquiries they want to receive. To do this, select a type of enquiry from the “who has expressed interest in” dropdown list. For example, to find an expert in biotechnology who is interested in doing conference presentations, select “Conference Presentations” from the dropdown list, and then type “Biotechnology” as the keyword in “Search expert profiles”.

This section also allows you to restrict any search to only those people in the state or states of your choice by selecting relevant states. To select more than one state at a time, hold down the Control key as you click the states you want.

Show only experts from

This section allows you to restrict your search by sector, organisation or faculty/department keyword.

For example, if you are looking for an industry/professional expert rather than an academic, choose “Industry & Professional” from the dropdown list in this section.

You can also restrict your search to a particular organisation, or browse only those experts from one organisation. To browse all experts in an organisation (other than a university), simply select the organisation from the list and hit “Search”. If more than 30 results are returned (eg. for universities) you will need to enter another piece of information (eg. a keyword) to narrow it down to fewer than 30 people.

In some cases, it may be easiest to find the person you are looking for by entering a keyword from their department/faculty name. For example, by entering “biotechnology”, you can browse experts who work for a department with that word in the title – even if that word is not in their keyword list.

Category

By selecting one category, you can restrict your search to only those people who have listed their expertise in that general category.

By selecting two categories and then hitting “Search” you can find experts with very specific expertise. For example, by selecting “Law, crime & justice” and “Health categories”, you will find only those experts whose expertise crosses into both areas.

Search expert profiles

This section allows you to search for experts with or without specific keywords in their profiles. Here are examples of how to use each option:

For the exact phrase – this will return only experts who have the exact text you enter in their keyword lists. The text you enter must be identical to that in their profile – with no differences in punctuation, spelling or the order of the words.

For any of the words – if you enter multiple words, this option will return experts whose profiles contain any one of the words you list. You can use this option by entering a range of synonyms to prevent you performing multiple searches. For example, if you enter “weather, storms, climate change, global warming, forecasting” your search results will show experts who match any of those keywords.

For all of the words – if you enter a number of words, as above, this search option will only return those experts whose profiles contain all of the words you list. However, unlike exact phrase searching, the order does not have to match.

Without the words – this option allows you to narrow any search by excluding those experts whose profiles contain certain words. For example if you do a search for weather experts, but notice that you receive a lot of experts in “business forecasting”, you could repeat your search and exclude those profiles containing the word “business” to see a refined list.