Tips to Optimize your Open-Ended Search:

1. Exact matches: This search will return exact matches only, and will not automatically correct for alternate word endings or similar spellings. For example, the search oilsands will return entries that contain oilsands, but not oilsand or oil sands.

2. Automatic wild cards: The search will add wildcards to both the beginning and ending of individual search terms. For example, the term nano will return entries that contain nano, nanotechnology, and ACSNano.

3. OR searches: The search uses an "OR" function to search multiple terms separated by a comma or a space. For example, the search rail, car (or the search rail car) will return entries that contain rail (trail, railway and railcar) and entries that contain car (car, carbon and railcar).

4. Quotation marks: To search for an exact match (and avoid the addition of wild cards), you can use quotation marks with spaces. For example, the search " water system " (with spaces before and after the phrase, and contained inside the quotes) will return entries that contain the exact phrase water system. In contrast, the search "water system" (with no spaces before and after) will return water systematic or saltwater system.

Alternately, the search water system (with no quotation marks) will return all entries that contain the word water (for example: waterway, saltwater and waterworks) and system (for example: systemic and systematic).

5. Case insensitivity: The search is case insensitive.