Boolean operators are a powerful way to build your searches in SCOUT’s Expert Search. This article will explain what lexical search is, and how Boolean operators work. 

• We recommend you read How to use the query builder.
• Additionally, learn how to formulate good expert queries following this article.

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Lexical Search

This type of search is especially useful when you want precision and control over your query. In SCOUT’s Expert Search, you are working with terms—these can be technologies, materials, applications, or company names. 

Lexical search is based on exact matching of words or phrases. This method relies on how terms appear in documents. In SCOUT works such that:

• Terms are matched exactly as written—there’s no automatic interpretation or synonym expansion.You should manually include synonyms (e.g., "AI", "artificial intelligence", "machine learning") and word variations (“battery”, “batteries”) to cover all relevant content.
  This helps ensure that your search covers all relevant terminology used in publications, patents, and other sources.
• Boolean operators are used to define logical connections between terms

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How Boolean operators work 

Boolean operators define how SCOUT combines or filters your search terms. They are applied based on how you structure your query in the interface.

SCOUT supports three main Boolean operators:

• OR: broadens your search to include any of the connected terms.
  SCOUT uses this logic to retrieve documents that contain any of the terms. This is ideal for including synonyms or related concepts.
  

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• AND: narrows your search to only include results that contain all connected term groups. SCOUT will return only results that contain at least one term from each section, meaning the results must match all parts of your query. This helps you combine different concepts to narrow down your search.
  

For this example, SCOUT will return only results that include at least one AI-related term and at least one term related to medical imaging

• NOT:  excludes specific terms from results.
  Using NOT helps you filter out irrelevant topics and sharpen the focus of your analysis. However, we generally recommend prioritizing the use of AND and OR operators, as they tend to deliver more balanced and comprehensive results in most research scenarios.
  

This tells SCOUT to return results that match battery or lithium-ion terms but exclude any results that mention "lead-acid."

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Topic and Organization searches 

The Boolean logic explained above (OR, AND, and NOT) works the same way in both search fields in SCOUT. You can build precise queries for either topics or organizations or both.

• Topic search bar is used to explore technologies, scientific fields, materials, applications, or emerging trends. Example: “hydrogen storage”, “biodegradable packaging”, “machine learning”
  
• Organization search is used to explore the ecosystem around companies, universities, research institutes, or startups. Example: “Siemens”, “MIT”, “Tesla”

When you enter queries in both fields, SCOUT automatically connects them using the AND operator. Have a look at the example below. This query will return results that relate to the topic autonomous driving and are specifically linked to Tesla. This helps you focus only on Tesla’s activities in the autonomous vehicle space—filtering out all unrelated results and making your research highly targeted.

This combined logic is especially useful when:

• You want to investigate what a specific organization is working on in a given field.
• You’re conducting competitive benchmarking or trend tracking tied to specific companies.
• You’re analyzing collaborations, patents, or  other publications linking key players to relevant technologies.

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Verbatim Search 

By default, SCOUT may match variations or related forms of the terms you enter. This helps broaden your search and capture more relevant results across different sources.

However, if you want to search for a term or phrase exactly as written, you can use verbatim search by placing it in double quotation marks ("").

In this example, placing "train" in quotation marks tells SCOUT to match only the exact word "train"—as in the context of transportation—and not related words or other meanings like training program, or training data.