Finding Academic Literature

• Focussing on what you want • Check no-one’s written your thesis already • Find out what’s been published in your field • Bibliographic databases Rowena Stewart [email protected]

Liaison Librarian Tel: 0131 650 5207

Thinking about the information you need

Think about the question you want to answer to identify its major subjects Also think up your “search terms”:  Synonyms and alternative spellings.

  Colloquial and scientific/chemical terms Specificities and over-arching/broader headings Think about what you don’t want to read about as well as what you do  Limiting or Exclusion criteria Talk through your topic. Put together some search terms

Reviewing the literature systematically combines well focussed research question and search strategy with rigorous appraisal and synthesis of the literature. Someone reading the review must be able to repeat it.

Bibliographic databases

• Library catalogue and e-journal pages tell you what journals we have. Not who has published what in those journals.

• • • Bibliographic (or abstracting and indexing) databases: Contain information about the contents of a range of publications (abstracts, journal articles, book chapters, reports and standards) Are usually subject specific Perform sophisticated searches with controlled vocabularies and limits

N.B.

Not limited to what the library has. Not full-text repositories but link out to full-text

Off-campus access to online collection

• Through EASE (authentication) / MyEd (portal) • VPN – access to University network + wireless access

http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/vpn

• Eduroam – JANET Roaming Service – secure wireless home/uni-from-home/uni

http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/wireless/jrs

Getting the full-text

For anything you find information about and want to read in full:

  Try any links which seem as if they will give you full-text. Treat like a normal reference and use the library catalogue

Because we may have what you want:

• online from a different site • or in print

If the library doesn’t have what you want

• Inter-library loan (ILL) – http://illiad.lib.ed.ac.uk/illiad/ • Other Libraries – NLS and access schemes • Recommend Books

Common Features

Be specific when you start to search for academic papers but, if you are not finding anything to read use broader words and phrases. • • • Search histories Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, ADJ) Truncation/wildcard • • •

Also:

A paper’s reference list Articles citing a useful work “Cited by:” Alerts/saved searches Add to your search terms and selection criteria as you find (or don’t find) information on your subject.

Search strategies – truncation, wildcards, proximity operators, phrase searches

• Wildcards, useful for UK/US spellings (behaviour, behavior). A character which allows for variation in the middle of a word .

Symbols and proximity operators vary between databases  use the Help WoK (olympic* SAME legac*) + REVIEW

• • •

Information Capture

• • • Reference management software Export references Can amend records in reference management software with additional information, eg where/how got reference, Can put images in record of their own

Help for your methodology

Record your search strategy(ies ) for the databases you’ve used You may need to record when you used the databases too Outline your inclusion/exclusion criteria.

• •

Help in keeping current

Saved searches for re-running or generating alerts Table of contents alerts WoK (olympic* SAME legac*) + REVIEW +other variable in Search History

http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/

Databases: • Index to Theses • Digital Dissertations

Thesis Check

Catalogue Search if you want to look at recent ones for layout, bibliography etc Edinburgh Research Archive – for electronic deposit copy http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk

• Regulations – see link to Guidelines for the Examination of Research Degrees at: http://www.acaffairs.ed.ac.uk/Regulations/ Go to Academic Regulations, then Assessment Regulations.

Index to Theses

Bibliographic databases

Chemistry

• Compendex • Reaxys • SciFinder Scholar

Maths

• MathSciNet • ZMATH

Physics

• Inspec • Freely available things General • Web of Knowledge  for citation search check  for journal impact factors Other subjects • MEDLINE – medicine • BIOSIS & CAB Abstracts – Biological Sciences

Help

Liaison Librarian (Chemistry, Maths, Physics): Rowena Stewart, rm1406 JCMB,

Tel:

0131 650 5207

e-mail:

[email protected]

http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/help ISiskills – www.iskills.is.ed.ac.uk