CSU Extension

Science literature is always changing. Looking at older articles can help you get an understanding of what you are interested in, and learn about the history. Make sure to look for recent articles to get the most up-to-date information. You can limit your search results by date in almost all databases.

1.  Think about your search strategy.  This will save you time in the long run.  Break your topic into concepts and keywords.

Example: If you are interested in gene silencing uses in tomatoes, break that into concepts and think of different ways to express those concepts (synonyms, scientific names, etc.):

2. Use Database language to search.

Boolean logic (AND, OR, NOT) and other database search "language" can allow you to have more control over your search. See the table below for the most common "tricks" that work in most databases.

Most databases also have a help section to explain how to best search in that particular database. Look for that.

Sometimes you may want to search for articles on a topic or subject, but also limit by journal. For example, you may just want articles about food webs in the journal: Ecological Monographs.

The search example below is from CAB Abstracts. To limit your search to journal articles from the journal: Ecological Monographs, you type in the journal name then in the right hand box, select SO Source:

In Web of Science, the search looks very similar (click on "add another field" to add more lines):

Most CSU databases have the icon next to each article. You can click on the icon to see if we have an electronic version of the article.

For example if you found this article, you could click the FindIt@CSU icon.

You would then be directed to a page that looks like this. (If we didn't have the article, the page has a link for requesting through Interlibrary Loan.)

This article is available from multiple vendors. Clicking on the blue titles will either bring you directly to the full-text article, or a webpage that links to the full-text. The page you get to after clicking the blue link will vary depending on who we get the article from, but you should always be able to find a link to the full-text, either in HTML or PDF.

ILL is a FREE resource that provides you access to full-text articles that CSU does not have.

Set up your account and request items by going to the ILL page and logging in with your eID and password.

A couple of hints:

• When you're in a database, use the button to see if full-text is available. If not, click on the ILL link to submit a request. (The request form will auto fill this way!)
• ILL requests are generally processed within 24-48 hours. You'll get an e-mail alert when the article is available.
• Short on time? ILL can be used to request document delivery of articles from print journals owned by CSU Libraries.

Do you have a DOI number for a journal citation?

If you do and it looks like this: 10.1037/0003-066X.59.1.29

Add this: http://doi.org/ to the beginning of the DOI to make the DOI
searchable on the web.

So this example would look like:

http://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.59.1.29