Check out the library's self-paced tutorial How do I search library databases? to learn the basics of database searches.
1. How do I search for articles about my research question?
- Identify the keywords of your topic and use those as your search words.
- Each book and article has tags assigned to it, words or shorts phrases that make each book or article searchable
- You want your search words to match those tags
- Words like impact, benefits, effects, or causes are not used as tags
- Example topic: How does the process of anticipation influence our visual perception?
- Search: anticipat* AND "visual perception"
- anticipat* searches for anticipate, anticipating, and anticipation
- "visual perception" searches for visual perception as a phrase, not separate words
2. I have too many irrelevant search hits. How do I focus them to my assignment requirements?
- Use the Refine Results sidebar to the right of your search hits to focus them to sources more relevant to your assignment needs
- You can focus your search hits to:
- Academic Journals to focus to articles from peer-reviewed journals
- source type, such as journal articles, books, newspapers, or magazines
- publication date, so you get the most recent research
- Example: for your lab report, you are supposed to use research-based journal articles with up to date research
- Under Refine Results:
- check the box beside Scholarly (peer-reviewed) Journals
- move the Publication Date scroll bar over to 2006 to present
- check the boxes beside Journals and Academic Journals under Source Types to find research-based articles
3. How do I know my search words match the tags assigned to articles about my research question?
- As you scroll through the search hits, look at the assigned Subjects (tags), and see if they match your search words
- Example: The relevant articles about anticipation are tagged with the Subject Expectations
- New search: put each main idea in their own search box and combine synonyms in the same search box:
Expectations OR Anticipat*
AND "visual perception"
- Use OR to combine key concepts with their synonyms within the search box
- OR finds sources tagged with any of these search words/phrases
- Use AND to combine search boxes
- AND finds sources tagged with all of the key concepts
- Subjects (tags) also help you identify the specific issues around your topic so you can give it direction and develop it into a focused research question.
4. How do I preview the abstract/summary of articles from the list of search results?
- Click on the title link to open the full article record, which includes the article abstract and other information about the article such as author affiliation and citation information
5. How do I access the article so I can read the whole thing?
- Look for pdf Full Text or HTML Full Text links
- Click on the Check 360 Link for Full Text link to see if this article is available to read in other library databases
6. How do I identify articles that cite an article I've chosen?
- Web of Science: use the Web of Science database to identify articles that cite your article:
- Enter your article title and select Title from the dropdown menu by the search box
- Look for Times Cited: # to the right of your search hits - click on the number to get a list of articles that have cited your article
- Click on Full Text from Publisher to read the article
7. I can't find anything on my research question. What do I do?
- The search words you're using to describe your topic may not match the tags that PsycINFO or PsycARTICLES has assigned to books and articles on your research question
- Use the PsycINFO Thesaurus to identify the words that PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES use to describe your disorders or topics
- There may not be research tying your main ideas together yet.
- Try searching for your main ideas separately and linking their findings together
- If you've found one article that's relevant for your topic, look through the sources in its References list to see if any of them are also relevant to your research
