Library Research Guides: Searching the literature: Searching for information

Selecting databases to search

Bond University Library provides access to full-text articles from over 22000 journals in hundreds of databases.

Find a database by subject:

Library Research Guides provide recommended resources for your particular subject area
The Electronic Resources A-Z List includes all databases by subject area
Your Faculty Librarian can recommend databases relevant for your research topic

Find a database by name

Look for a particular database on the Electronic Resources A-Z list

To find a specific journal. use the Journal Search in Library Search.

The quickest way to search for journal articles is to use Library Search (also available from the search box on the library homepage).

Library Search indexes most of our databases simultaneously, but it does miss some key databases (PubMed/Medline, PsycInfo, legal databases etc.) so it should be used in conjunction with other databases. This video will show you how to search Library Search:

Developing your search strategy

Searching for a Literature Review
For a step by step approach to searching for a literature review, including how to identify your search words and modify and combine them to get the best results, see the document above. Remember that your Faculty Librarian can give you one on one assistance with searching for a literature review, including assistance with developing your search strategy, identifying and using appropriate databases, and anything else mentioned in this guide.

Tools for citation searching

When you find a key paper in your field of research you should look at its reference list for other relevant papers. You can also search for papers that have cited the key paper. There are 3 main sources of citation data that can be used for this purpose.

Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Produced by Thomson Reuters, Web of Science incorporates the Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index. Historically it has been the most widely used tool for performing citation analyses.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Produced by Elsevier, Scopus covers the sciences (life sciences, health sciences and physical sciences), social sciences and humanities. Scopus is the citation data supplier for the 2010 ERA Evaluation.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar also tracks citation data. It has better coverage in the arts and humanities than Web of Science or Scopus, but covers the sciences as well. Publish or Perish is software that extracts the citation data present in Google Scholar and produces a range of metrics, including the h-index and journal impact metrics. Produced by Professor Anne-Wil Harzing of the University of Melbourne. The Publish or Perish software is not supported by Library Services.

If you use this Bond ezproxied link instead of the standard URL, you will be able to see holdings information from Bond Library.

Searching the literature

Searching for information

Selecting databases to search

Developing your search strategy

Tools for citation searching

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