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SONAR Help

Last updated: 17-09-2026
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This guide covers the usage and the features of the SONAR application. Professionals and power-users will find more info about the full capabilities of SONAR in the advanced section.

Basic help

A single search field combines all search terms and provides a list of results sorted by relevance. These can then be filtered using facets.

Search shortcuts and advanced query syntax are described on Search documents.

Facets allow you to filter the results according to different criteria such as: document type, affiliation, author, subject, etc. They can be combined: selecting multiple facets will refine your query and filter the list of results.

The “Search in full-text” button allows you to search not only in the metadata of documents, but also in their textual content, when available.

Boolean operators and search tips

By default, spaces between words are treated as AND operators. Search modifiers and other boolean operators can be used with Elasticsearch's simple query string syntax.

Symbol Description Example Effect
* Truncation uni* Returns resources beginning with "uni", such as "university", "universal", "unilateral" etc.
+ Boolean operator AND mountain + biology Returns resources containing both "moutain" and "biology". This operator is appplied by default for whitespaces in the query.
| Boolean operator OR study | analysis Returns resources containing either "study", or "analysis".
- Boolean operator NOT confederation -swiss Returns resources containing "confederation" but not "swiss".
() Brackets, to combine operators physics + (study | analysis) Returns resources containing "physics" and either "study", or "analysis".
"" Exact expression "human resources" Returns resources containing the exact expression "human resources"

Detailed view of a document

To view detailed information about a document, click on its title in the search results.

  • The page displays the document metadata: title, type, authors, abstracts, identifiers, etc.
  • You can view () or download () the files attached to a document.

Advanced help

  1. What is SONAR
  2. Using the public demo
  3. Basic principles
  4. Search documents

Deposit a publication

  1. Deposit a document
  2. Recommended file formats

Catalogue and moderate

  1. Moderate and validate deposits
  2. Manage documents
  3. List of document fields (metadata)
  4. List of document types in SONAR
  5. File management
  6. Research projects

Administer the platform

  1. Organisation
  2. Users and roles
  3. Collections
  4. Subdivisions

Integrate

  1. REST API endpoints
  2. OAI-PMH service

Reference

  1. Release notes