Skip to content

How to perform booelan keyword search within a user-defined pool of journals (and avoid repositories as Zenodo, HAL, etc.)? #457

Description

@pbessin

First of all, thank you for developing this solution, which is very similar to the ‘Researcher App’ I used to use and which has, sadly, been discontinued. Anyway, the phylosophy of Wispar sounds really nice for me!

I would like to be able to set up a search for articles using a boolean combination of keywords (e.g. subglacial AND bedform OR drumlin OR ribbed moraine NOT dune) in specific journals (e.g. Boreas OR The Cryosphere OR Geomorphology), but I am encountering the following problems:

  1. via the article search: I’ve managed to set up Boolean keyword searches using OpenAIex, but the search aggregates all documents from repository sites and databases (Zenodo, HAL, ArXiv, DOAJ, etc.)
    --> Is it/Would it be possible to target journals specifically using this article search?

  2. via the journal search: I can restrict the search to the journals I’m interested in, but Boolean combinations of keywords aren’t allowed (it’s impossible to add AND, OR or NOT between two keywords or to use compound keywords such as ‘subglacial bedform’
    --> Is it/Would it be possible to set up a boolean search here?

I’m happy to provide further details if necessary.

Thank you again for developing this excellent tool.

Paul

Activity

  1. Scriptbash commented on Jun 17, 2026

    @Scriptbash
    Owner

    Hi Paul, thank you for your question! I will need to check if the OpenAlex API allows excluding specific journals from the results.

    Currently, there are two different ways you can filter out the results:

    1. Via the article search: You can provide a list of ISSNs (comma delimited) and it will return results only from the specified journals. This may not be ideal if you need include several journals or only want to exclude 2-3 journals.
    2. Using a custom feed: Save your OpenAlex search query and enable "Include in feed" on the query card in the Library screen. Next, create a custom feed and expand the "More journals" section. Simply deselect Zenodo, ArXiv, etc. The app will remember the last used feed. If needed, you can find more information about custom feeds here: https://wispar.app/docs/custom-feeds

    Let me know if these solutions work for you or if you have other questions! I will still look if we can exclude journals using the API when I have the time.

  2. Scriptbash commented on Jun 17, 2026

    @Scriptbash
    Owner

    I just checked and it seems like Zenodo isn't showing up in the custom feed journals list. It's probably because it doesn't have an ISSN. If you can't find Zenodo, ArXiv, etc. in the journals list, simply select all journals and they should get filtered out anyway. I will update it so that it also shows sources with no ISSN.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    enhancementNew feature or request

    Projects

    No projects

      Milestone

      No milestone

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions