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Searching ProQuest's Dissertations & Theses: Find Similar

This guide is a brief introduction to all aspects of ProQuest Dissertations & Theses including content, searching, and viewing results on the new ProQuest platform. Content provided by and edited with permission from ProQuest.

Find Similar Search Tips

Find Similar identifies key terms within the text you enter, using them to search for related content.

1. Text Box 

Enter the text (preferably the abstract or document summary) and ProQuest will analyze the keywords and retrieve similar documents. Find Similar works best if you enter at least 50 words into the text box.

2. Limit to: Full text

Full text is the search limit that appears in Find Similar.

Checking the Full text limit will restrict your search to only search and retrieve records containing full text from ProQuest.

NOTE: This limit will only appear if you use ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text and if it has been turned on in the ProQuest Administrator Module. Whether or not this is checked by default is also determined by your ProQuest Administrator Module settings.

3. Display Options

The Sorty results by menu controls the sort order of the records that appear in the results page. Sort by relevance, date (oldest first), or date (most recent first). Relevance is determined by an algorithm that factors in the number of times your search terms appear in the record as well as where in the record your search terms appear.

Items per page is used to select how many results will display on the results page. Choose from 10, 20, 50, or 100 items.

Duplicates can appear in ProQuest if the item is indexed in more than one database or collection. The default behavior is to suppress the duplicate, however, if you would like the duplicate items to appear in the results, select to include duplicate documents.

 

Find Similar