literature search: natural sciences and technology
TRANSCRIPT
INTRO TO: Take control of your PhD journey: Literature search for technology and the natural sciences.
How to search for literature in technology and the natural sciences
Dr. Lars Figenschou(Phd in Evolutionary Ecology)
Senior academic librarianBiology, Fisheries and GeologyScience and Health Library UiT - The Arctic University of Norway
Hard to understand your own information needs?
What do you need?
Where do you find it?
Within the disciplines of medicine and health sciences, for example, it`s being released over 25.000 journals annually
Search strategy
What`s the problem?
Search strategy - Recipe
Search strategy – Recipe. Boolean search
Immunity AND ejaculate quality
Immune status OR sperm quality
Male fertility NOT female fertility
Search strategy – Recipe. More…
Quotation marks – "global warming"Truncation - (* or ?)Tesaurus Tutorials –videos and help pagesSearch history/save searchSearch resultsRelevant articles (reviews, meta-analysis) Common sence Ask for help
Systematic search
Scopus – the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature
Sissel Helene Hansen
Senior academic librarian, Dr. Scient.
Responsible for chemistry, pharmacy, and biochemistry
Science and Health Library
Phone 77 64 46 89
Scopus subject coverage:
• Agricultural and Biological Sciences • Arts and Humanities• Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular
Biology• Business, Management and Accounting • Chemical Engineering• Chemistry• Computer Science• Decision Sciences • Dentistry• Earth and Planetary Science• Economics, Econometrics and Finance• Energy• Engineering• Environmental Science
• Health Professions• Immunology and Microbiology• Materials Science• Mathematics• Medicine• Multidisciplinary*• Neuroscience Nursing• Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics• Physics and Astronomy• Psychology• Social Sciences• Veterinary• Plus patents from 5 worldwide patent
offices
What yearspan does Scopus cover? How many journals are indexed?
• Main coverage past 1996• Expanding pre-1996 coverage
• More than 22 000 titles from more than 5 000 international publishers – at the time being 55 mill. records. Produced by Elsevier, a European company.
Thesaurus – NOT a dinosaur, but controlled vocabulary!
Thesaurus content:
• Indexing terms are manually added for 80% of content by professional indexers – these terms describe the main focus of the article:
• Geobase Subject Index (geology, geography, earth and environmental science)• EMTREE (life sciences & health science)• MeSH (life sciences & health science)• FLX terms, WTA terms (fluid sciences & textile sciences)• Regional Index (geology, geography, earth and environmental science)• Species Index (biology, life sciences)• EI thesaurus (engineering, technology, physical sciences)
Tips for finding good search terms:
• Find a relevant paper, look at the indexing terms and use these to do a new search!
• Search for one term at a time, and combine terms from the search history afterwards. By doing this, you will have greater flexibility in building searches without having to repeat long search strings!
• Few hits? You may have to search for broader terms
Find more useful articles:
• Use the reference list of a good paper.
• Use the «cited by»-function, then you will find newer research that cites the article that you have found useful.
• Related documents: Another way of finding useful literature that can be based on common references, keywords, or authors!
• If you want to find the most influential papers, choose cited by when sorting the results.
Start by making a personal Scopus account:
• You can save the searches that gave you useful information, and these can be re-run automatically so that you will receive updates when new literature is available!
• By saving your search strategy you will save time by not having to repeat searches, and it will be easy to elaborate further on the search strategies.
• Your personal account makes it possible to keep track of your searches, and it will be easier to decide when you have enough relevant literature!
Scopus versus Web of Science:
• Scopus:
– ~22 000 journals
– Updated daily
– European
– Controlled vocabulary
– >1996
• Web of Science:
– ~12 000 journals
– Updated weekly
– American
– No controlled vocabulary
– -1900
Some final remarks:
• Always use more than one database for your searches – they overlap, but also cover different journals!
• Both Scopus and Web of Science are large, interdisciplinary databases, but we strongly recommend that you investigate the subject-specific databases that are available through the university library! You will normally be able to do a more specific search with these databases.
• PRACTICE!!! If you want your thesis to be as good as possible, you have to utilize the resources that are available . If your literature searching skills are developed, it will be much easier to avoid repeating well known research - and also get inspiration from other people´s work!