Db tips and tricks

DB tips and tricks for research students
Jack Hyland

Problems searching
Its easy to find something if you know exactly what it is

Problems searching
How do you find something you don’t understand yet?
How many papers / books are out there?
Where are they?
Who indexes them?
What search terms will lead to them?

Problems searching

Many different ways to search, depending on:
Type of query
Volume of papers out there
Why you are searching
Looking for a specific paper
Overview
Systematic review
User’s preferences
Very precise searching
Wider, more circular searching

Contents
Finding the right database / search engine
Search strategy
Using the right search terms
Combining search terms
Filtering searches
Alerts
Saving search records
Tracking citations
Exercises / time for practice and questions

Finding the place to search
Direct from publishers – ScienceDirect, Wiley etc.
Completely up to date
Smaller collections
May not be subject specific
A single publisher probably won’t have everything your need

Abstracts only databases – Web of Science, PubMed etc.
Very wide coverage
Gap of about a few weeks
Links to full-text
Good searching / filtering tools

Abstract vs. full text databases

Google Scholar
Very wide coverage
Gap of about a few weeks
Links to full-text
Great for finding a specific paper
Messy dataset
Bad with complex searches
No way to reduce large numbers of hits

Specialised search engines
Scirus, Citeseer, Scitopia
Federated searching of publishers websites
Completely up to date
“Cleaner” data than Google Scholar

Searcher
DCU library federated search engines
Search most of our online collection at once
Some DBs missing, e.g. SciFinder
Keep searches simple: not great with advanced searches
Great for finding the “best” DB for your topic quickly

Defining your search
Starting with reference works
Dictionaries
Encyclopaedias
Wikipedia
Review articles

Search Terms
What happens if you go to a DB and search two words together like this:

Only both words together
Both words only, separately or together
Both of the above (1,2)

Answer: all three!
Only both words together
Both words only, separately or together
Either or both words. separately or together

Search terms
Solution: Get around this by using “” for phrase searches:
“climate change”
“carbon nanotube”
“machine translation”

Variations of search terms

Use OR search for either term

Another option: find the preferred term in the database
1. Search its thesaurus

Another option: find the preferred term in the database
1. Do a pre-search and check what terms are used

truncation, wildcards and proximity indicators
Searching for comput* will return computing, computers, computation etc.

Advanced searches
I’m looking for: visualisations of electromagnetic waves
Identify your concepts:
Visualisations, electromagnetic, waves
Think of similar words that describe each of these concepts
Visualisations:visualizations, animation
Electromagnetic:electromagnetism; EM
Waves: frequency, band, spectrum; radiation

Advanced searches

Advanced searches
Visualisation* OR Visualization* OR Animation*
AND
Electromagneti* OR EM
AND
Wave* OR Frequenc* OR Spectrum

Advanced searches
(Visualisation* OR Visualization* OR Animation*)
AND
(Electromagneti* OR EM)
AND
(Wave* OR Frequenc* OR Spectrum)

Advanced searches
(Visualisation* OR Visualization* OR Animation*) AND
(Electromagneti* OR EM) AND (Wave* OR Frequenc* OR Spectrum)

Advanced searches

Filtering / Refining Searches
Available from most abstracts databases.
Start with a broad search and then weed by:
Subject area
Keywords
Date range

Filtering / Refining Searches

Saving Searches
RefWorks:
Securely save your references online
Save a lot of time by automating your citing and referencing
Regular classes held in Library
Zotero:
Highly rated, free, open source app.
EndNote
Used by some researchers here
No local support or training

Information about journals
A directory of journals, answers questions like:
is journal X still active?
how often is it published?
what DB’s index it?
is it peer-reviewed?

Information about journals
Ranks leading journals, answers questions like:
Avg. number of citations for article published in journal X?
What’s the leading crystallography journal (ranked by no. of citations)?

Citation Tracking / Searching
Easy to find what papers an article cites:
Just see the paper’s bibliography!
(Gordon 2001)
(Ellis 1998)
(Brabazon 2003)
(Murphy 2005)

Citation Tracking: reference lists (older articles)

But who has been citing (Murphy 2005)?
(Gordon 2001)
(Ellis 1998)
(Brabazon 2003)
(Kittle 2007)
(Chi 2006)
(Glazer 2009)
(Murphy 2005)

You can do a lot with citation info:
Search backwards and forwards in time to see how ideas develop
Find the most highly cited papers in your field
Identify key researchers and institutions by their citation counts

Collating this info is difficult and only a few databases or websites do it
Web of Science
Scopus
Google Scholar / Publish or Perish

Citation Tracking: Web of Science

Suggested search strategy
Phase 1:
Try a selection of databases and search engines
Single keyword / phrase searches (testing the water)
Checking thesauri / keywords in other papers
Combining search terms
Scanning search results and abstracts
Refining / filtering searches
Saving the papers you like (RefWorks)

Suggested search strategy
Phase 2
Reading articles and keeping/discarding them
Taking notes
Citation tracking (bibliographies and Web of Science)
Adding new papers
Searching again

Db tips and tricks

by hylandjack

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