Literature searching For final year chemistry undergraduates Isobel Stark 12 th October 2011

Today’s session Introduction to text-based literature searching Finding the full-text Managing your references

Literature searching

3 important questions What information do you need? Where do you look for it? How can you get hold of it?

Research information needs to be.. High quality – peer reviewed Up to date Relevant

Types of research information Journal papers Conference papers Books Theses Standards & patents Reports Grey literature

Where to find it Gateways & search engines Pre-print & e-print servers Publishers websites e.g. Science Direct Learned Societies Journal databases and indexes

Gateways & search engines There are some good search engines –useful for finding free information Google Scholar (general academic) Scirus (scientific information) ArXiv

Gateways & search engines Gateways such as Intute (Chemistry) select and evaluate websites for you. There are many high quality websites but you still need to evaluate what you find.

Pre-prints & e-prints the information is free and usually full text they contain the very latest research and ideas there is no delay in publication institutional repositories may contain data and other information too Varying quality: ‘pre-prints’, departmental publications Search many at once through OAIster or Google

High quality information Link to full text if we have a subscription Alerting services often available BUT Limited range of source material Less sophisticated search facilities than major databases Publishers websites

Learned societies Like commercial publishers, learned societies websites restrict you to a single publisher targeted; limited but likely to be very high quality Can have other useful information elsewhere on the website

Journal databases These list research published in academic journals, conferences, etc. The university pays for a number of subscription-only databases which allow you to search for this material For the key ones relevant to you see your subject page

Why journal databases? Because they link to up to date information from peer reviewed publications are usually well indexed enabling you to search in detail contain abstracts summarising the articles retrieved often link directly to the full text if it is available electronically

Which database?

Journal databases For the key ones relevant to you see your subject page

Rexays Reaxys is a web-based system for searching Crossfire Beilstein, Crossfire Gmelin and the Patents databases. It covers an extensive collection of organic, organo-metallic, and inorganic chemistry data Search by structure, substructure, reaction, text, and property data. Online training and support available:

WoS - Citation searching Looks to see who has cited (referenced) whom Only available on certain databases (e.g. Web of Knowledge)

Access Institutional login –Southampton Username and password VPN –check iSolutions site for details –as if ‘on campus’

Search techniques

Anatomy of a literature search Create a search strategy Identify resources that cover your study topic Conduct a search using search operators (i.e. AND, OR and NOT) Check results for relevance Changes to search strategy needed? From library resources, obtain the items to read

Searching techniques Boolean And, Or, Not Truncation Wildcards Phrase searching

Boolean Logic a AND b a OR b a NOT b aaa bbb Can be used to join different search terms

Boolean Or Use to combine synonyms/alternative terms, e.g. Greenhouse effect OR global warming

Boolean And Use to combine different concepts, e.g. Greenhouse effect AND methane

Boolean searching Force order of search using brackets e.g. (Greenhouse effect OR global warming) AND methane

Truncation Finds words with a common stem (normally * symbol, $ in webcat / medline) environ* will find –environs –environment –environments –environmental –environmentalist etc etc

Wildcards Replace one or two characters (normally ? symbol) –Ethan?l will find both Ethanol and Ethanal –Chemist? will find both Chemist and Chemists but not chemistry –Alumin?um will find both aluminium and aluminum

30 Phrase searching Search in quotes to force a phrase search Some databases default to phrase searching, some to Boolean AND. Truncation usually doesn’t work “greenhouse effect” will only find records with that phrase and not records with ‘the effects of greenhouse gases’

Controlled vocabulary (thesaurus) Only available in certain databases (Medline, Inspec, Beilstein, Scifinder) Terms added to records from a centrally maintained list – subject index

Controlled vocabulary (thesaurus) Terms added to a record by Indexers –Taken from a fixed list (thesaurus) Searching these makes results more relevant by –Avoiding concepts mentioned in passing –Retrieving material containing alternative terms

Chemical Searching in Inspec How do you differentiate between Co and CO when the database is case insensitive? Element where there is a single component Binary where there are to components System where there are more than two components

Chemical Searching in Inspec In additional there are four roles indicating the function of the chemical component. These roles are: –Dopant –Interface system –Surface or substrate –Adsorbate or sorbate

Chemical Searching in Inspec Inspec Classification Split into 5 sections. Section A: physics and section B: electrical and Electronics probably of most use to Chemists –e.g. A7155G Impurity and defect levels in II-VI and III-V semiconductors

Finding the full text

Finding the documents Direct links from databases TDNet – electronic (and some print) journal holdings – links from Library web page and from most databases WebCat – print and electronic holdings of books, journals, conferences and reports

Finding the full-text Rexays – DOI links WoS/Inspec – TDNet button

Managing your results

Search results – what next? Mark, Export, Record –Mark relevant references –Export: /reference software to manage your results –Record: how you found it

Recording Academic integrity Referencing styles –ACS –Harvard Plagiarism

Endnote Web Register for it on the Web of Knowledge website Endnote Web Quick Reference Guide Endnote Web Training and support ndnotewebtraining.html ndnotewebtraining.html

Organising your documents Decide on a filing system and stick to it! For example: –First Author/year –Add numbers or letters at end if more than one paper per year Note the filename and or physical folder in Endnote/bibliographic software

Further help Contact your Academic Liaison Librarian