Results Page

Once you've run your query Scirus will return a list of results based on your search parameters.

Results box

Scirus displays a summary of your results, listing your specific search criteria ("Searched for:"), the total number of results including the breakdown by each of the three source categories ("Found:"), and the option to sort your results by relevance or by date ("sort by:").

Scirus will display all results but you can also select one of the source categories to only view those results (journal results, preferred web results, other web results).

Sort results

Results are sorted by default by relevance. Scirus uses an algorithm to calculate ranking by relevance, which comprises, among other elements, two basic components:

1. Term frequency - the location, proximity and frequency of search terms within a result

2. Link analysis - link cardinality takes into account the number of links to a page, where generally speaking the more often a page is referred to by other pages, the higher it is ranked. The anchor texts (metadata) from the referring pages are taken into account when calculating the ranking.

Scirus does not use metatags, as these are subject to ranking-tweaking by users.

Results Display

Each result will list a document title which contains a link to the record.

If authors feature in the results of a search, Scirus will display a maximum of eight author names for any one result. The first seven authors and the last author's name will be shown. You can however search on all authors, even though not all may be displayed in the results.

For results coming from the Journal and Preferred Web source categories, Scirus displays the name of the content source below the snippet, and enables you to view all the results from that particular source by clicking on the view all results from... link below each record. For results coming from other Web sources, the url of the record is displayed, along with a more hits from link which displays results from the same url.

You can also click on the similar results link below each record to view results that share your query terms in addition to the keywords pertaining to that particular result. The keywords of a record combine the author-assigned keywords with those automatically extracted by Scirus.