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 Stewartrowena.stewart@ed.ac.ukLiaison LibrarianTel: 0131 650 5207

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

Thinking about the information you need

Think about what you don’t want to read about as well as what you do Limiting or Exclusion criteria

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.

Talk through your topic. Put together some search terms

Bibliographic databases• Library catalogue and e-journal pages tell you what journals we have. Not

who has published what in those journals.

• 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

Bibliographic (or abstracting and indexing) databases:

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

N.B.

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

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

If the library doesn’t have what you want

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

Getting the full-text

Common FeaturesBe 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

Add to your search terms and selection criteria as you find (or don’t find) information on your subject.

Also:• A paper’s reference list• Articles citing a useful

work “Cited by:”• Alerts/saved searches

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

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

Information Capture

• 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 for your methodology

• Saved searches for re-running or generating alerts• Table of contents alerts

Help in keeping current

WoK (olympic* SAME legac*) + REVIEW +other variable in Search History

http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/

Thesis CheckDatabases:

• Index to Theses• Digital Dissertations

Catalogue Search if you want to look at recent ones for layout, bibliography etc

Edinburgh Research Archive – for electronic deposit copyhttp://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

General• Web of Knowledge

for citation search check for journal impact factors

Other subjects• MEDLINE – medicine• BIOSIS & CAB Abstracts – Biological Sciences

Bibliographic databases

Physics• Inspec• Freely available

things

Maths• MathSciNet

• ZMATH

Chemistry• Compendex

• Reaxys• SciFinder Scholar

Help

ISiskills – www.iskills.is.ed.ac.uk

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

Liaison Librarian (Chemistry, Maths, Physics):

Rowena Stewart, rm1406 JCMB,

Tel: 0131 650 5207e-mail: rowena.stewart@ed.ac.uk