HELP & ADVICE ON SEARCHING FOR RELEVANT JOURNAL LITERATURE

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1 HELP & ADVICE ON SEARCHING FOR RELEVANT JOURNAL LITERATURE This handout is intended to provide a useful resource that will help you to make the best use of a variety of search tools and abstract databases when searching for journal literature relevant to any coursework assignment. Before we examine the various websites that are available, there some important issues you need to bear in mind when searching for relevant literature. 1. You need to persevere: It is unlikely that you will find a whole stack of relevant articles within 5 or 10 minutes of starting your search. However, if you persevere and spend 30 minutes to an hour experimenting with different search terms, then you will certainly find plenty of relevant material. In other words, you need to invest some time to get a worthwhile end result. 2. Need to be specific: The sites described here are ideal for finding material on specific topics (reflecting the focused content of journal articles). However, they re unlikely to be of much use when you re searching for information on a general topic (e.g. climate change) as this is likely to yield thousands of hits. Therefore they re best used after you ve identified your key points and you re searching for recent research or case studies on a specific topic (e.g. the impact on climate change on the incidence of waterborne diseases). 3. Keywords: The secret to finding relevant material is the thoughtful and creative use of various keywords as your main search terms along with what are known Boolean operators (e.g. AND, OR etc.) 1. For example, if you were searching for information on the previous example, I would search for the following: climate change AND waterborne disease In this example, putting the key terms in inverted commas ensures that the search tool looks for that specific phrase (rather than the words individually) whilst the addition of AND instructs the tool to look for articles that contain both specific phrases. This has generated 30 hits that can then easily be checked to search for relevant articles. 1 Further information on how to use Boolean operators when searching for literature can be found on various websites, e.g. 1

2 SCIRUS ( This is one of the sites I use most frequently to search for relevant material on a topic as it is quick and easy to use. The site can be used to search for web sources and journal articles but in this case I obviously what you to restrict your search to the latter: Searching for relevant literature is then simply a matter of adding a combination of key phrases and Boolean operators that best describe the material you re searching for. Select journal sources to restrict your search Refine your search box This has generated 2,585 hits, which is far too many to search through. As you re searching for journal literature, then click on the journal sources button (see arrow) to restrict your results to this specific source. 2

3 This has restricted your search to 188 articles. However this is still rather too many to look through so you restrict things further by using the Refine your seach function in the bottom right of the window (see previous page). If for instance your essay is focusing on the various impacts of climate change, then you could select this phrase. This reduces the number of hits to 48, which you could browse through in 15 minutes or so. Note: You can use this refine your search multiple times to progressively narrow down the focus of your inquiry. This simply adds these specific phrases to your original search term. Saving and exporting your search results If you simply want to do a quick search and identify the articles you might want to peruse at a later date, then just tick the box next to the results of interest. If you ve got multiple pages to search through, it s best to save the selections for each page (highlighted in red). You can then return to your list of saved articles and either print off or them to your account. Accessing relevant articles Click on the title to access the article itself. Each of your search results will look like the example above. If you click on the title this will open up a separate window relating to the article itself. You will be able to access the abstract of any of your results. However, you will only be able to access the full article if we subscribe to the electronic version of the journal. The existence of a logo after the article such as PubMed Central or ScienceDirect indicates that you can access the article online. Note: Don t give up if you find that we don t subscribe to the journal in question. If you check the library website, you might find we subscribe to the journal in print form only. If the abstract is reasonably detailed, this alone might enable you to use the article in your assignment. 3

4 GOOGLE SCHOLAR (SCHOLAR.GOOGLE.COM) Google Scholar is similar in design to Scirus and obviously similar to the standard Google search engine, the only difference being that this searches specifically for scholarly literature. It is just as easy to use, simply involving the input of key phrases and Boolean operators (see p1). The screen grab above illustrates the results page that is very similar to the one for Scirus. One convenient feature is the provision of quick links to the right of the articles that provide direct access to the article in question. If this includes a fulltext@keele link, this means we have access to the related journal at Keele. Additional useful features Google Scholar features 4 additional tools that can be used to expand and broaden your search:

5 1. Principal author: A link just below the title will take you to a page that provides more information on the lead author and links to his or her other publications. This provides one way of extending your search (see p9). 2. Who s read my paper?: The cited by link enables you to find out what articles have cited the particular paper in their own research. In other words, it indicates who used this article in their own paper. Clicking on this link provides another means of finding more relevant literature that is even more recent and is worth trying if you find a paper that is particularly interesting. 3. Related articles : Self explanatory! This links to a series of articles on a related topic and is again worth trying if you find an article on your initial search that is of particular interest. 4. Advanced Scholar Search : This opens up another page (see below) that enables you to refine your search by for example selecting a specific author, publication (i.e. journal name), range of publication dates or field of research. This tab also provides additional advice on how to find relevant material 5

6 WEB OF KNOWLEDGE (WOK.MIMAS.AC.UK) The Web of Knowledge is a sophisticated abstract database that provides access to over 22,000 journals and 55 million articles. After clicking on the obvious button labeled click here to access ISI Web of Knowledge you should see the following screen Type your main search term here and refine your search by adding additional terms in these boxes or by adjusting the dates here. This search tool can be used in the same way as Scirus or Google Scholar by simply typing your search term into the first box (which has a default setting of topic ). The following two boxes can be used to refine your search by entering additional search terms relating to an article s title, author, publication name or year of publication. There can easily be customized using the drop-down boxes. Search results screen The search results screen is generally similar to the results screens generated by Scirus and Google Scholar (see next page). Once again the relevant articles are listed and a full text tag is included for articles to which you have full access (i.e. not just the abstract). You can refine your search by using a series of tools available in a column on the left-hand side of the screen (highlighted by the red box on the next page). This enables you to refine your search according to: The general category: e.g. limit your results to scientific articles. Subject area: Specific subject area involved in the area of research, e.g. environmental science, climatology etc. Document type: Can use this to identify review-type articles. Authors: Useful if you ve identified a key worker in the field you re researching. Source titles: Can confine your search to specific journals. Publication years: Can focus on recent research only. Language: Not usually an issue with most articles (fortunately) being written in English. 6

7 If there is a full text button, this means we have access to the electronic version. Extending your search As with Google Scholar, once you ve clicked on the title of a particular article, you are presented with an additional set of tools and options that enable you to extend your search by 1. Finding other articles written by any of the authors. 2. Search through the article s reference list. 3. Identify more recent papers that have cited the current paper within their reference list (conveniently highlighted in a box on the right of the screen) Times Cited : This indicates the number of times another researcher has cited the paper. In general terms, the greater the number the more influential and potentially the more useful the article will be. 7

8 OTHER IDEAS TO TRY OUT 1. REVIEW PAPERS Review papers are a particular type of journal article that review recent literature within particular subject areas and are therefore particularly valuable if you can find one relevant to your own topic. You can search for these in two ways. Firstly, you can simply add the term review to your search when using Scirus or Google Scholar: Secondly, you can search for articles on a particular subject within journals that commonly include review-type papers. These include: Progress in Physical Geography Progress in Human Geography Earth Science Reviews Add you search terms and the term review into a quick search box to see if any relevant reviews have been published. 8

9 Thirdly, you can specify review articles within the document type tool in Web of Knowledge: 2. BIG NAMES In many academic disciplines, there are a series of well known big names that publish prodigiously on particular subjects and who are considered world authorities. If you come across any such names in your field, for example through background reading, you can look in more detail into what they ve published. You can do this in a number of ways: A. Have a look at their own personal website A selection of articles from Dr. Dave Evan s website a big name in glacial geomorphology. This is most easily accomplished if you know where they work (their affiliation). In which case you can search for their webpage using a conventional search engine like Google. 9

10 B. Use a specific search feature on Web of Knowledge If you click on the name of the author then you can access a list of the articles they ve published. These will also provide the person s affiliation, which can enable you to find their website (step A). SOME FINAL WORDS The search results you ll get from each of the tools described in this handout are likely to be different. Therefore, it s often worth copying and pasting the same search term into each as this will increase your chances of finding something of real value. You often only need to find a single gem of an article in order to break into a whole raft of useful literature. Once you ve found this article, then by using its reference list, the cited by button and other features identified above, you can quickly extend your search to related literature. The advice I ve provided in this handout is largely the product of trial and error. Therefore the last thing I d suggest is that you simply have a play around. Good luck! Dr. Richard I. Waller January,