Kate Purcell, Subject Librarian Birkbeck Library

Outline of the session  Reminder about accessing electronic journals.  Literature searching: key bibliographic tools.  ABI/Inform.  Business Source Premier.  Social Sciences Citation Index.  Questions and practice.

Overview of the eLibrary Access over 25,000 electronic journal and newspaper titles. Read past exam papers back to Search databases to find out what has been published in your subject area. Find and download statistical data. See

Accessing the eLibrary You need an IT Services username/password To log on to computers and use photocopiers inside College. To access e-resources outside College. Available from IT Services Helpdesk, ground floor, Malet Street. Tel:

Access e-resources from outside College Register your computer by setting a cookie. One-off process. Lasts 18 months. Login in with your ITS username and password. See

Setting a cookie

Journals – a reminder

Understanding journal references Windsor, D. (2006). “Corporate social res Caldwell, R. (2003). “The changing roles of personnel managers: old ambiguities, new uncertainties”. Journal of Management Studies. Vol. 40 (4): Author Date Article title Journal name VolumeIssue Page numbers

Finding journal articles Search for ejournals at Use the ‘Find a known ejournal’ search box to type in the name of the journal. Check the date of your article. No access electronically? Search the Library catalogue for print access. No print access? Use the interlibrary loan scheme. £1 per request. Plan ahead!

Types of journal articles  Be aware of the differences between academic or scholarly journals and trade press.  Both are legitimate sources of information.  Academic journals publish a higher level of scholarship.

Types of journal articles

Searching for relevant articles? Want to research a particular subject but don’t know where relevant articles have been published? Searching each title is too time consuming. Can search across a group of journals but beware of looking at just one publisher’s output. Best to use bibliographic tools.

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What is wrong with using Google? Anyone can publish information on WWW. No editorial control or third party reviews. Is the information an appropriate level for academic study? Full text academic journals usually require a subscription and so payment is required to view.

Social Sciences Citation Index

SSCI: subject coverage All areas of social science including organizational psychology. Other relevant areas include:  Business  Communication  Ergonomics  Industrial relations  Management  Organizational studies  Psychology  Public administration.

SSCI: pros Extensive subject coverage. Only covers academic peer-reviewed journals. Lists who has cited an article. Useful for tracing research and development of theories. Helps to identify key authors / journals in a field.

SSCI: cons Only goes as far back as Provides abstracts only – you must locate the full text yourself. Some of the earliest records have no abstract. The abstract will be in English but the article may not be.

Business Source Premier

BSP: subject coverage Predominantly business and management. Most relevant areas include:  Human resource management  Management  Organizational psychology.

BSP: pros Specific to management. Full text access to over 2,000 titles. Some titles go as far back as Useful for trade press. Can be searched simultaneously with PsycINFO.

BSP: cons Of the full text titles, only 1,100 are academic peer-reviewed journals. American bias. Some titles delay releasing full text access for 3, 6 or even 12 months.

ABI/Inform

 Subject coverage: business and management, including HRM.  Full text access to over 2,000 titles.  Academic peer reviewed titles and trade press.  Also includes market, industry and company information.  Some titles delay releasing full text access for 12 months after publication.

Search tips

Before starting to search… Consider variant spellings, especially Americanisms – ‘s’ vs. ‘z’ and ‘our’ vs. ‘or’. Use truncation for variant spellings. E.g. stress* will find stress, stresses, stressors, stressed, stressful. Use wildcards for variant spellings e.g. organi?ation to find organization and organisation. Consider alternative and related terms. Search for exact phrases using quotation marks.

Using Boolean operators Combine words / terms using Boolean operators to focus results. Narrow searches using AND. Broaden searches using OR. Exclude terms using NOT.

Boolean operators AND If term A is ‘management’ and term B is ‘women’, this search will find articles about ‘women AND management’.

Boolean operators OR If term A is ‘personnel management’ and term B is ‘human resource management’, this search will find articles that contain either term.

Boolean operators NOT If term A is ‘labour’ and term B is ‘party’, this search will exclude articles about the ‘Labour Party’.

Search tips: ABI/Inform  Can restrict results to full text only.  Can restrict results to scholarly journals.  Default search searches abstract, title and publication details.  Can use a Topic search to browse by subject headings.

Search tips: Business Source Premier Can restrict results to full text only. Can restrict results to peer reviewed titles. Default search searches abstract, title and publication details. Additional option to search the entire full text of the articles..

Search tips: Social Sciences Citation Index Deselect the Science Citation Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index. Consider whether to use the lemmatization option (i.e. grouping together the different forms of a word). Automatically searches for plurals, American spellings, different tenses of a verb. Can save time – don’t have to consider as many alternative terms. Can ‘crowd’ your results, reduce relevancy and increase time you spend sifting results.

Search tips: Social Sciences Citation Index Mark relevant records, it is easy to get lost. Cited references show you the body of research used to produce the article. Times cited shows who else has used the article. Click on the full text button to see if Birkbeck has a e-subscription. Click on the holdings button to see if Birkbeck has print access. Sort results. ‘Times Cited’ and ‘Relevance’ are useful.

Search tips: Social Sciences Citation Index Use Analyze results to identify the most prolific authors in a field, find the top publications and discover trends in your subject area. Use the Cited reference search to find articles that have cited a previously published work – book or article. Remember cited reference searching searches the bibliographies of all the articles on the database so your search is not restricted to the journals the database indexes.

Help by or telephone Telephone or Kate directly.   Telephone or the Library Help Desk.  