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Finding Journals and Journal Articles

Additional tools to use

You can save and add tags (labels) to records and resources you would like to keep a note of.

  • Sign into Library Search; you can see it in the yellow bar at the top of the home page.

  • Search and locate records you want to save for later.

  • look for the pin icon, top right of the title and click on it.  You will see a red pin icon flash to the top of the screen indicating that the record has been added to your Favourites list.  The pin against the record will now have a yellow circle around it.  You can remove the item from your Favourites by clicking on this.

 

To add tags to your Favourites:

  • click on your name (top right of screen) and select My Favourites  
  • You will see the saved records and have the option to add tags (labels) to each record; you can add as many as you like.  You can add labels to individual records using the labels option beneath each record OR you can select multiple records to add the same label to by using the Add labels option next to 'My Favourites' (see the image below for detail)

In a similar way to saving individual records, you can save search queries to your Favourites area.  You will need to be signed in to Library Search to use this feature.

  • Perform the search you want, applying any filters you feel are appropriate to get relevant results
  • Click Save Query

  • You can save a search alert (notification) for the query too (the yellow banner will pop up after you click on the Save Query button)

  • You can find your saved searches in your Favourites area

  • You can use the small icons at the right to set an RSS feed for the search, set an alert or remove the search from your favourites area

You may want to share searches and results with other people you are working with on a project or who may be interested in your research.

You can share results in two ways:

  • Share an individual result.

  • Click on the three dots at the right of the title in your results list to open the screen shown below.


  • Select the permalink OR email the result to another person.
     
  • Share a complete search result set
  • At the top of your results screen, look for the small QR code and click on it (it's next to the pin icon, by your name if you are signed in)

  • This will open a dialogue box where you can scan another QR code or copy the link to paste it into an email or other document.
  • If you have saved a search to your favourites, you can use the QR code at the top right of the screen in exactly the same way, althouhg this will share all your saved searches with others.

Screening may sound a little daunting, like a medical procedure, but it's something that you're likely to need to do because it's rare to do a search for a topic and only get a few results. It's more likely, especially when you're working on longer assignments, dissertations, and theses, that you'll still have hundreds (if not thousands) of results in your final list from Library Search and Database searches.

Any search can only base your results on what you've asked them to look for and exclude (so your keywords that have to be present and any filters you have applied) so it's not unusual to have an article in your results list that does contain your key terms but the overall context of the article is not relevant to your research. At this point you need to 'screen' out those articles and keep the ones you are interested in.

Whatever level of study you're engaged in, the process is the same. 

  • Look at the article title and the abstract

In those two locations you should have enough information to help you decide whether it's worth your while to read the article in full or not. The abstract should be able to confirm whether the article is based on primary research or not; what type of research was conducted and how; and what the conclusions of the research were.

The abstract is a summary of the article's content; its purpose is to hit the high points to convince you to read it so it's a good guide as to whether it contains useful information or not. Sometimes there will be records that don't have an abstract so you will need to go through to the full text of the article in order to screen it out but most records will have an abstract either within the record itself or, sometimes in Library Search, there'll be a link out to another database where the abstract is held.

You should be able to remove a lot of articles from your list of results in this title / abstract stage of the process.

  • Read the full-text of the articles you think are relevant

Don't be surprised when, as you read (or speed search) an article, you sometimes decide it isn't relevant after all. It's okay to exclude an article at this point if the context isn't correct.

The Reading Academic Information section on the Critical Thinking and Reading skills guide has more information about understanding the different parts of a journal article.

Organising what you find

Referencing management tools can help you keep track of, store, organise and manage your references. You can use them to create bibliographies in a variety of referencing styles. They are particularly useful when completing large assignments such as dissertations when you are likely to be using more literature. The university has a subscription to EndNote Referencing Software and you can access this via the software section on course resources. 

There is also a separate Referencing Software Guide which contains information and links to resources about using EndNote as well as other referencing software and apps such as Mendeley and Zotero.