The Researcher's Companion

Table of Contents

1. Welcome to the Researcher's Companion
2. Getting started
3. Searching for materials
   1. Formulating a search strategy
   2. Databases
   3. Research Library Catalogues
   4. Citation Search
   5. The Internet as a Search tool
4. Access to materials
5. Evaluation and referencing
6. Subject Specific

Databases

This module is split into five topics - click the topic name to navigate directly to that topic:

• Choosing which database to use
• Web of Science
• ISI Citation Indices
• Cited reference searches
• Running a saved query
• JSTOR

Choosing which database to use

There are a number of questions that you may need to ask yourself when deciding on which database to use.

• Which subject? Does it need to be general or subject specific?
• What level of information are you looking for? Full text online access or references, abstracts, citations - or a combination of all of these?
• How do you want to search? Do you want a structured search, or just to browse?

You can access a wide range of databases from the Roehampton Library and Learning Services web pages from the full alphabetical list, or from the relevant subject resources pages which give information about recommended databases for each subject. Alternatively, if you can log in to Myzone from the Studentzone homepage, you can select Mylibrary and log in to Athens which will give you access to all our electronic resources, without having to enter you username and password each time.

What follows is a description of two different kinds of databases Web of Science and JSTOR. Both are generic in coverage, but differ in that Web of Science covers the most recently published material but gives references only and not full text, whereas JSTOR is a full text archive of journal publishing, and as such does not include the most recent material.

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Web of Science

Web of Science is part of the Web of Knowledge service and comprises:

Three databases

• ISI Arts and Humanities Citation Index
• ISI Science Citation Index
• ISI Social Sciences Citation Index

And contains:

1. Millions of references to articles dating from 1981 with
2. bibliographic (citations) for each reference
3. Items, added each week, include letters, articles, editorials etc. More than 8000 journals and conference proceedings
4. ISI Science Citation Index
   1. 19,000 new records per week
   2. 70% of all records have abstracts
5. ISI Social Sciences Citation Index
   1. 2,900 new records per week
   2. 60% of all articles have abstracts

2. ISI Art and Humanities Index
   1. 2,300 new records per week now a total of 2.5 million articles
   2. Articles abstracted from 2001

Limitations of Web of Science Databases:

• Science focus - there are three times as many science journals as Arts and Social Sciences journals
• There are few abstracts in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index
• It is not the best database for coverage of some subjects, e.g. Education
• The references are only to journals - there are no books or book chapters

ISI Citation Indices

There are three options available - General Search, Advanced Search and Cited Reference Search. You can link to ISI Citation Indices from Roehampton University's Online Databases page

General Search - offers a simplified search by either topic, journal, person or place that displays a maximum of 100 results.

Advanced Search - offers the ability to search across multiple areas using field tag

Both searches allow you to save your search history to rerun at a later date using the save history button and combine sets using the search number and connector in the search box eg. #3 AND #6.

Cited reference searches

• Can search for cited author, cited work and cited year
• Can search for any author listed in the database

Running a saved query

You can save your search for use later:

• on your local hard disk drive or floppy disk
• with a .html extension

You can do this from the option in search history. You will need to register; this is free.

Re-run the search from your internet browser

Exporting data:

• Email
• Print
• Import into Bibliographic software or your personal database

JSTOR

Roehampton University subscribes to the arts and sciences collections - which include humanities and social sciences.

• JSTOR is a full text database
• Over 400 journal titles
• The archive goes back to volume 1 issue 1 of each journal title.
• The oldest document in the collections is dated 1665.
• JSTOR does not include the most recent issues. This is normally the last 3-5 years of publishing, but the archive is continually added to so this is a so called "moving wall" cut off point.

To log in off site select JSTOR from the online databases page of the library and learning services webpages. You will then need to log in using institutional access which is option 2 on the log in screen. Select your institution Roehampton University from the alphabetical list and then click on the log in button below and log in with your Athens username and password .

The database can be searched or browsed.

Choose browse to look at journals in a discipline, or individual journal titles.

Choose search and use a keyword, author or title to search the entire database searching the full text or if you prefer selected parts of the record - eg title.

Use the article locator to find an individual article where you already have the full or part reference.