Featured Database
Web of Science is a collection of databases that index the world’s leading scholarly multidisciplinary literature as well as articles published in journals, conference proceedings, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions across the globe. It is often recommended as the starting database for STEM students.
Not sure if the article you have is from a peer-reviewed journal?
Look up the journal in the database, Ulrich's and look for the following symbol to know it is peer-reviewed/refeered.
Check out these links and resources for creating an annotated bibliography:
Literature databases have many tools that allow you to specify your search and filter your results.
Keep phrase keywords together as one search term using quotation marks. This tells the database that your search phrase is just one keyword, rather than each word being a separate term.
Florida, sea, turtle 🆚 "Florida sea turtle"
red, mangroves 🆚 "red mangroves"
Search for variations of the same root word using truncation to remove its ending. Truncation is an easy way to account for pluralization and verb conjugations. Not all databases are the same, but you can usually use an asterisk for truncation.
hydrophobic* ↔️ hydrophobic, hydrophobicity ✅
Be careful not to truncate too much!
hydro* ↔️ hydrogen, hydroelectric, hydroplane, hydrosphere, hydroponics ... ❌
Tell the database exactly how keywords should be linked together using Boolean operators. You can combine synonyms for the same concept together using OR, which will find more results. You can look for the overlap between different topics using AND, which will narrow your search to only items which contain both concepts.
When combining multiple operators, use parentheses around groups of keywords to keep your logic clear.
"gold nanoparticles" OR "Au nanoparticles" AND synthesis OR fabrication ❌
("gold nanoparticles" OR "Au nanoparticles") AND (synthesis OR fabrication) ✅
Use search fields when entering a search to specify where a database should look for the information you've entered. In some databases, you'll need to open an "advanced search" to specify fields.
AUTHOR = Knoevenagel 👉 find articles by someone named Knoevenagel
TOPIC = Knoevenagel 👉 find articles about Knoevenagel condensation reactions
Use filters to narrow down your search results. Every database is different, but some useful filters are Document Type, Year Published, and Publication Language. You can also sort your results according to your priorities.
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