Subject Databases - Psychology
Journal articles and books published by Elsevier, covering the natural and social sciences.
Citations and abstracts for journals, books, and conference proceedings, primarily in the natural and social sciences.
Subject Databases - Medicine
Citations for journal articles in the life sciences, particularly relating to biomedicine, neuroscience, as well as plant and animal sciences.
Citations for journal articles in the life sciences, particularly relating to biomedicine, neuroscience, as well as plant and animal sciences. This database is produced by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and is a major component of PubMed.
E-Journals Search
You may want to check out the library's e-journals list to search for articles in specific journals. For example:
There are 2 methods that you can use to search within 1a specific journal, newspaper, or other periodical publication.
In some databases, you can specify the publication in your search options, either in the Advanced Search menu or by using a special tool. PsycINFO lets you use the Cited Reference search to search by Source.
You can also search within a journal by going to that journal's dedicated 'home page' in each database. To do this, search for the journal title in the E-Journals List, then click on the name of the database you want to look in.
Pay attention to the date ranges available in each database. You will need to match these date ranges to the date on your article (for example, a database marked "1993-present" will not contain an article dated 1984).
From the journal 'home page,' you can browse by issue, and will usually also see an option to search the journal's contents. This will look slightly different in each database, and might say something like Search this journal (Sage) or Search within this publication (Academic Search Premier, PsycINFO, ProQuest).
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a great tool for doing a broad search of scholarly literature on your topic. The 'academic' side of Google, It searches multiple disciplines and a broad range of sources ( including journal articles, conference papers, theses, dissertations, academic books, pre-prints, and abstracts).
Some caveats:
Tips for using Google Scholar effectively:
Google Scholar Settings
While on campus, Google Scholar will recognize that you are at Holy Cross and connect you to articles accordingly. To make this happen while using Google Scholar at home, you need to update your Scholar Settings. See the document linked below for detailed instructions with screenshots.
Instructions for customizing your Google Scholar settings
In brief:
1. Go to Settings > Library links
2. Type College of the Holy Cross into the search box
3. Check College of the Holy Cross - Full Text Finder Results.
This will trigger HC links to display on the right side of your results page.
Following the Conversation
You don't have to begin your article searching from scratch. You may already have found some sources that, while not primary research themselves, can lead you back to primary/research articles. For example, try using....
...to find a starting point. Read the information presented in these sources. Where does the information/research originate from? Can you locate the original research study?
For example:
Say that you had found the following news article (from the Types of Research Articles page):
Cannabinoid may make new brain cells grow, reduce depression in rats. (2005, December 12). Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly 17 (47), 7.
(1) Read the article for clues to the original research. Note that:
(2) Bring your clues into a search engine like CrossSearch, PsycINFO or Google Scholar to look for a primary or secondary research study that matches your clues.
A Google Scholar Search for
university of Saskatchewan research synthetic marijuana 2005
finds the original study as the first result.
Using Subject Headings
In most databases you will see subjects listed for each resource. You can think of these as 'tags' used to identify the topic(s) covered in a given article or database. These subject headings can be very useful for identifying possible keywords for your search (or revising the keywords you are already using). They are also a great way of pulling together all of the resources 'tagged' with a particular topic!
In many article databases, you can search by Subject (usually under Advanced Search options). Choose a subject heading and use that as your keyword; then, choose to search in the field Subjects.
Some databases also allow you to search or browse a thesaurus, or a comprehensive list subject terms used in the particular database. For example, PubMed's thesaurus is called MeSH (for Medical Subject Headings). You can search the list of MeSH terms by choosing the appropriate link from the PubMed home page:
From here, you can search the list of MeSH terms, or, visit the NLM's MeSH home page to browse the complete list:
Once you've identified relevant MeSH term(s), you can automatically add them to your search in PubMed using the search builder. Note that PubMed will also provide you with information on the technical definition of each MeSH term, which can be helpful when working with precise scientific terminology.
TRACE Research Leads:
No piece of research stands alone; each is part of a broader scholarly conversation in that topic/ field. These resources have clues that you can TRACE, if you know how to look. We also sometimes call this technique the exploding article, because it helps you 'explode' a single source into many sources!
Terms– Check the abstract, subject terms and article for concepts and terms that you can use for your future searches.
Reported in– Is the journal where the article was printed relevant? Try searching for other articles from this journal.
Author– What else has the author(s) published on this topic? Search the databases for their other publications
Consulted by - Check Google Scholar to see which articles or books have cited your sources, and to find
more-recent research which builds on your original information.
Evidence -Check the references list (or bibliography) to see what previous research this resource is drawing on. From here, you may wish to consider:
- Previous articles or books published on your topic
- Other authors who have published on your topic
- Journals where your topic is frequently discussed
Tools for TRACE-ing:
Citations and abstracts for journals, books, and conference proceedings, primarily in the natural and social sciences.