arXiv Search tips:

Names:

punctuation is not important, but syntax is.
for author searches, or anything with more than one word, must have some punctuation (like a dash,but not a colon) connecting it.
Truncation works both within words and at the end of them.
Unless an author ALWAYS publishes with exactly the same form of their name, you should search the author field like this:

Author lastname-f*
or
Author Serre,j*

Searching:

ArXiv will retreive all the articles with the words you search for in any order. To get only articles with the words in a particular order you can put quotes around your words or connect them with any punctuation other than a colon.

An asterisk (*) matches any string of letters within a single word. It will work in the middle of a word and at the end of a word, but not at the beginning (right truncation is allowed, but not left). For example:

Anywhere diff*ism

Search requests can be typed directly into URLs, provided that spaces are converted to plusses (+) and some special HTML symbols (?&%=/) are avoided. Here are some examples:

http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/author/willliam-p-thurston
http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/title/kontsevich+formality
http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/search/"mirror+symmetry"

In the Anywhere field and the "search" URL you can search most fields using the field name or a two letter abbreviation (see the URL at the bottom of this page for those) and a colon (which restricts your search to just that field). These all work:

from:harvard
primary:(ag or dg)
abstract:zeilberger and cat:co
pages:9
au:[borcherds connes kontsevich yau-s*]

You can use the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT. Boolean AND is the default, unless you are searching with square brackets.

Square brackets act as parentheses, except that inside them "or" can be omitted and "and" must be written explicitly.

Technicalities:

A word consists of letters or numbers, but not both, so that SO3, SO(3), SO_3 are synonymous.

You can search using any punctuation other than a colon to connect words.

The colon operator distributes on the right first. In other words, [A B]:(C D) is equivalent to (A:C or B:C) and (A:D or B:D)

advanced searching:
http://arxiv.org/find

URL:http://libweb.uoregon.edu/guides/math/mathstep_arxiv2.html
Last revision: October 28, 2004 by Annie Zeidman-Karpinski
Created by annie zeidman-karpinski, University of Oregon Libraries