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Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center
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Searching Tips

This publication search uses the Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center's document database only. It does not search the entire World Wide Web.

Search Methods

You can search the publications database using a keyword, author, title, or document type. You can use just one search method or combine methods to narrow your search. If you use too many search methods at one time or misspell a word, you may not get any search results. You may also use double quotes to search for an exact phrase.

Keyword

Use the keyword search to find documents about a certain subject. When you type in a keyword and select Search, the database will retrieve all documents that contain that word in its title, abstract, or keyword. For example, if you type in "PHEV" into the keyword search box your results would include all of these documents:

  • Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle Analysis - Milestone Report
  • Impact of Battery Characteristics on PHEV Fuel Economy
  • Clean Cities NOW, Vol 12, No. 2

Author

Use the author search to find documents written by a particular author or authors. Type in the last name of the author and select Search. You can type in more than one last name separated by a space or a comma to retrieve all documents with either name listed as the author.

Title

Use the title search to search for a document by words in its title. Type all or part of the title and select Search. You do not need to type in the exact title. The database will retrieve those documents that contain the words you typed in the title, but not necessarily in the order you typed.

Document Number

If you know the AFDC document number, you may enter it in the keyword box.

Document Type

To limit the document search results to one type of document (for example, reports), choose that document type from the drop-down list. Only the type of document selected will appear in your search results.

Narrow Your Search

You can narrow your search by choosing one or more keywords from the categories: fuels, vehicles, fleet applications, or other. You can use these provided keywords to search the database instead of typing in your own search words or use it in combination with the search methods above.

The number of documents found (using the terms you have chosen) is shown at the bottom of the page (for example, Documents found: 238). Choosing additional keywords will lower the number of documents found in the database.