Problem

You entered an ISBN using the ISBN, DOI, PMID feature (see our manual) but Citavi displayed the message "No results found for the given criteria."

Possible reasons

• The book was not published yet or was published very recently and is not yet included in any library catalog.
• The book was published in a different language region than the catalogs you selected for the ISBN download.
• You were searching for a non-academic book in academic library catalogues.
• There's a technical problem: a proxy server is preventing the query from going through (rare).
• You entered the ISBN incorrectly. (You don't need to enter dashes, however.)

Solution

We recommend using the following catalogues in this order for the ISBN search:

• Your university or local library. When importing results, make sure to also import call numbers.
• Your regional shared catalog.
• The National library catalog for the countries in which the books in you topic area were published.
• WorldCat. The largest shared catalog worldwid with over 240 million records.
• Amazon. Here you can find popular and not-yet-published works.

Select catalogues for the ISBN search by clicking Tools > Options > Search > ISBN download

Make sure that the library you check out books from most often appears at the top of the list. Citavi searches catalogs from top to bottom. The search stops as soon as a match is found and the reference information (including the call number or shelf number, if desired) are downloaded.

Some books are only published in very limited runs and may not appear in any library catalog, even if they have an ISBN number. In such cases, you'll need to add the book by hand.