The Compendex database indexes the engineering literature including journals, trade magazines, conference proceedings, books, standards, and theses.
Boolean Operators
Use the Boolean operators below to combine search terms.You may use more than one Boolean operator in the same search. Just remember to enclose each Boolean phrase in parentheses. Below are some examples.
| Boolean operator | Example |
| OR | constructed OR artificial |
| AND | (constructed OR artificial) AND wetlands |
| NOT | greenhouse NOT "greenhouse effect" |
Proximity Operators
Use proximity operators to find phrases and words in close proximity to one another. Quotation marks can be used to retrieve words in a specific order. THe NEAR operator will retrieve words in any order. You can specify the number of words in between your terms by adding a forward slash and number. For example, NEAR/2 will retrieve terms within two words of each other.
| Proximity operator | Example |
| " " | "green roof" |
| NEAR | runoff NEAR/2 water |
Articles indexed in Compendex are assigned one or more controlled vocabulary terms from the Ei Thesaurus. Below are selected examples of water-related controlled vocabulary terms. You can use these terms in your initial search or to filter your keyword search results. Use the Thesaurus search to explore more terms.
Articles indexed in Compendex are also assigned Ei classification codes representing broad topic areas. Codes for water related topics include the following.