How do I find an article that is a certain number of pages?
I'm supposed to analyze an article that is 3-5 pages long, but the articles I'm finding are 12, 15, 22 pages. How do I find shorter articles?
Answer
Many databases, including Academic Search Complete, do allow you to specify the number of pages in the resulting articles. You might want to also include MasterFILE Premier in your search because it contains many popular sources, which tend to have shorter articles.
Combine those databases together, and then in the Advanced Search option, you will want to check the button for Full-Text, and scroll down under "Limit your results" at the bottom to look for an option called Number of Pages.
Unfortunately, you can't put a range in there. Use the dropdown to select what you're going for - so you could choose 'less than' and put 20 in the box, and find all articles with less than 20 pages. You can could instead choose 'equal to' from the drop down, and put 3 in the box. Hit search, see what you get, and then if you need other options, repeat these steps and try 4, and then 5 on a third search. (One word of warning - even though your search term usually stays filled in, the database often clears all your other selections, so you'll probably need to check the full-text box each time.)