Key Search Skills for Searching the Scientific Literature

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Key Search Skills for Searching the Scientific
Literature

• Gabriella Netting, Penny Roberts
• 6 November 2005

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What will we cover?

• Reasons for conducting a literature search
• Organisation and access of scientific literature
• Search strategies for subject searching
• Evaluation
• Citation searching
• Demonstration of a database search

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Some reasons for searching

• Specific information
• E.g. specific data needed for an experiment,
  information about a technique, a mathematical
  equation, explanation of an observed phenomenon,
  etc.
• Research needs
• E.g. finding relevant data/information for a
  project, an essay, or an exhaustive search for a
  preparation of a systematic review
• Current Awareness
• E.g. monitoring progress in a specific research
  interest

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Organisation of scientific literature

• Primary literature
• These are the first published results of an
  original investigation usually reported by an
  individual or a research group.
• Examples conference papers, patents,
  theses/dissertations, research articles,
  pre-prints
• Peer review process
• Intended audience researchers within the same
  field
• Specialised vocabulary
• No financial rewards for the publication

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Basic structure of primary literature

• Abstract or introduction
• Methodology
• Results and discussion
• Conclusion
• References
• Examples Proceedings of the Royal Society,
  Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, American Journal
  of Surgery, etc.

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Organisation of the scientific literature cont.

• Secondary literature
• This is information about primary sources in a
  condensed format.
• Examples bibliographies, encyclopedias, also
  textbooks and review articles
• Intended for wider audience
• Not peer reviewed
• Written by journalists
• Publications contain advertisements
• Examples Nature, Science, Scientific American
  etc.

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How do we access scientific literature?

• Papers are recorded by indexing/abstracting
  services
• The records are electronically searchable
• Results contain all necessary information to find
  the paper
• Some results will link to electronic full text
  but not all of them!

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Search skills

• Finding the best search terms
• Combining terms using connectors
• Finding appropriate information sources
• Selecting, evaluating and saving results
• Retrieve full text electronically or in print

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Where to start?http//www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/oxlip
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Journal article databases

• Used to find papers, book chapters and book
  reviews (N.B. references only, NOT necessarily
  full text)
• They could cover a specific subject or many
  subjects
• Are not necessarily tied to library holdings
• They look different but have similar
  functionality

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A couple of definitions

• Bibliographic (journal article) Database a
  systematic compilation of citations of journal
  articles
• (Use these to search for content, e.g. book
  chapters and journal articles)
• Library Catalogue a list of books, journals,
  maps, records, etc. held in the
• library
• (Use this to search for a book or journal, once
  you know the title of the journal or the author
  or title of a book)

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Interdisciplinaryjournal databasesfor the
sciences

• Web of Knowledge http//wok.mimas.ac.uk
• Web of Science covers journals in all subject
  areas
• Scopus http//www.scopus.com/scopus
• Covers all sciences and some social science

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How to create a search strategy?

• Ask a clear search question
• e.g. What are the popular ways of losing weight?
• Break the question into search concepts
• e.g. popular, ways, losing, weight
• Select a range of related search terms
• popular common, favourite etc.
• ways methods, techniques etc.
• losing lose, reduction, reducing etc.
• weight fat, diet etc.
• Combine terms into a search strategy by using
  Boolean operators

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Combine terms using Boolean connectors

• AND, OR, NOT
• AND to narrow the search
• OR to broaden the search (use this to combine
  synonyms, or related terms)
• NOT excludes search terms

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AND, OR, NOT
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Other search tricks

• Symbols for wildcards and truncation
• ? for a single character within the word
• wom?n for woman or women
• for truncation or variant spellings
• enzym for enzyme, enzymes, enzymology etc
• use this for searching for phrases
• e.g. creation theory

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Final search string
Topic Popular ways of losing weight Search
string could be (popular OR common OR
favo?rite) AND (way OR method OR technique)
AND (los OR reduc) AND (weight or fat or diet)
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Evaluate your results

• By relevance
• By the source material
• By citations
• For web resources URL, currency, layout,
  working links, etc.

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Getting your hands on the full-text

• Is there a TOUR link from the database?
• Click on it to access the full-text if available
• Check TDNet
• http//tdnet.bodley.ox.ac.uk/

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Getting hold of the full text (cont.)

• Is it available in print in an Oxford library?
• Check OLIS
• http//www.lib.ox.ac.uk/olis/
• If not, request the document from a document
  provider through your library

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Citation Searching

• Doing a search on just one citation allows you to
  create a bibliography of both old and new
  research related to your topic.
• To work back in time use the bibliography at the
  end of the paper
• To work forward in time use a citation index to
  see how many papers referred to the original
  paper subsequently.
• Examples Science Citation Index, Scopus and
  Google Scholar

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Any questions about

• Access to databases and e-journals
• eresources_at_ouls.ox.ac.uk
• Radcliffe Science Library services
• enquiries.rsl_at_ouls.ox.ac.uk

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We welcome feedback

• You will get an e-mail with the online evaluation
  form in due course.
• Next WISER Science session
• Keeping up to date with the literature. Monday,
  13 November
• This session will show you ways of using
  electronic bibliographic resources to keep up
  with the literature in your field by creating
  personal research / interest profiles and making
  your own current awareness service

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Demonstration

• Question
• Is there a link between lack of sleep and
  academic performance among university students?
• Search string
• (sleep depriv OR insomnia) AND (academic
  performance OR academic achievement) AND (college
  student OR university student)