In the pack: ChatGPT, Claude & Gemini Prompts for Researchers & Academics
Boolean Search Strings for Your Databases
Prompt
Research question: {{RESEARCH_QUESTION}}
Databases I can access: {{DATABASES}}
Field and any date or language limits: {{LIMITS}}
Steps:
1. Break the question into two to four concepts and list them.
2. For each concept, give synonyms, related terms, spelling variants (US and UK), acronyms, and broader and narrower terms. Mark which words are plain-language terms I am guessing at.
3. Write one Boolean string per database using AND, OR, quotation marks, truncation and proximity operators correctly for that database. Where you are unsure of a database's exact syntax or field codes, say so and tell me to check its help page.
4. Suggest a narrower and a broader version of each string, and what each would change.
5. List controlled-vocabulary headings (such as MeSH or thesaurus terms) only as ideas to look up. Do not state they exist in a given database unless I confirm.
Do not name any paper, author or journal. Output as a table per database followed by a short testing plan.
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About this prompt
“Boolean Search Strings for Your Databases” is a free prompt for ChatGPT in the Deep Research category, 185 words long, added to The Prompt Index on October 28, 2026 by The Prompt Index. Copy it with the button above, paste it into ChatGPT or any other AI chat assistant, and send it.
It has 3 placeholders to fill in first:
{{RESEARCH_QUESTION}}, {{DATABASES}}, {{LIMITS}}.
Use the “Customize this prompt” fields to personalise it before you copy.
Recommended models: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini.
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