Search results normally display in the order returned by the fastest search target. You may sort search results by Title, Author, Date, Full-text availability, Relevance or Collection.
Relevance allows you to sort the search results according to the relevance score. Select Relevance and enter the number of records you want to be sorted. For example records that match all of your search terms will be most relevant. You can also rank certain collections in your personal Search Profile with a score of 1-5 depending on how you generally rate the records returned by those databases. The ranking you assign to Collections is factored into the Relevance score.
Choosing Show Best Results on the Results menu will also sort the result set by relevance.
Title allows you to sort the results by the title of the book or article. Note that articles at the beginning of the title (A, The, Le, Los, etc.) are not ignored when sorting.
Advanced Sort allows you to choose ascending or descending order. Up to 1000 search results may be sorted.
Another way to sort search results is to click on the name of the search target whose results you want to see first. For example, if you’re searching your own library catalog, Science Direct, and PubMed and your library’s results display first (because that’s the fastest server) - but you want to see PubMed results first - just click on PubMed in the list at the top. That will move the PubMed results to the top of your result list.