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Graduate Research Portal

Library-based support for University of Lethbridge graduate students

Databases By Subject

If you use a citation management tool like EndNote, Mendeley or Zotero to capture citation data for your research sources (articles, books, reports, etc.), you'll find the highest quality data for exporting purposes is found in the Library's subscription databases.  To browse databases in your subject areas, from the Library homepage choose the Find Articles tab then select Databases By Subject.

Unpaywall

Unpaywall gives you an easy way to obtain research articles from legal sources when you enable the free Unpaywall browser extension for Firefox or Chrome.  Once installed, when you encounter a paywalled article, Unpaywall will search across thousands of legitimate preprint servers and other repositories for a free version of the article.  If a free version is found, you'll see a clickable green opened lock on the right side of your screen. If no free version is found, you'll see a grey lock instead.

Journal TOCs

Journal TOCs helps you locate scholarly journals in your areas of interest and browse their tables of contents. You can see each journal's publisher and determine whether the publication is Open Access.  The free version gives you access to "the biggest searchable collection of scholarly journal Tables of Contents (TOCs). It contains articles' metadata of TOCs for over 28,930 journals directly collected from over 2760 publishers."  Customization and additional functionality is available through a "premium" paid subscription.

 

Subject Searching

Everyone knows how to do keyword searching (Googling), but advanced researchers should also be skilled in other search techniques. One of the most important is subject searching.  Most of the  Library's commercially produced indexing databases offer subject searching, which relies on an underlying controlled vocabulary to index the subject matter of the included resources.  Controlled vocabularies are also known as subject heading lists, thesauri, and subject terms.  

In subject searching, which supports much more precise and comprehensive searching than keywords, the goal is to identify and use the specific controlled vocabulary terms that are relevant to the topic or issue you are researching.  For example, the controlled vocabulary used to index resources listed in the U of L Library catalogue is called the Library of Congress Subject Headings.
 


Source: https://www.loc.gov/library/libarch-thesauri.html 

Another well-known controlled vocabulary is called Medical Subject Headings (MESH), which is used to index Medline, the U.S. National Library of Medicine's main indexing database for the journal literature in the biomedical sciences.

The Medline database is the main component of PubMed, a free resource, that uses MESH-supported subject searching.  For an introduction to how MESH subject searching works, see Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®) in MEDLINE®/PubMed®: A Tutorial

 

Using Search History

Many of the Library's subscribed index databases automatically log all of the searches you conduct for the duration of your browser session.  Often called the Search History, these logs can be useful when you need to do in-depth searching on a complex, multi-faceted research topic.

To use Search History as part of your search strategy, the main idea is summarized as follows:

  1. Analyze your complex research topic into its discrete conceptual parts. It helps to do this in writing so that you have a list of all of the key terms and concepts that are relevant to your topic.
  2. Next, conduct thorough searches on each concept individually. This may involve determining whether the database uses a subject indexing language, and if it does, whether there are standardized subject terms for some or all of the concepts comprising your research topic.
  3. Finally, in an iterative and exploratory manner, combine the saved searches in your Search History in various ways to find the intersection or union of different individual search results and assess the relevance and quality of the combinations in each case.

While each database search platform supporting Search History will do so in somewhat unique ways, they will all generally support the above 3 main steps.  For vendor-prepared tutorials and guides on using Search History, see the following:

Ebsco databases (e.g., Academic Search Complete):

ProQuest databases (e.g., ABI/INFORM Global):

Clarivate databases (e.g., Web of Science):

Note that your search history is not automatically saved on the JSTOR platform, but you can choose to save some or all of your searches individually.  See Organizing your research with Workspace for guidance.

Pearl-Growing (Citation Searching)

If you have at least one scholarly source in hand that is strongly relevant to your research topic, you can try 'pearl-growing' to find more relevant sources. Pearl-growing, or citation searching, uses the works cited in your source in hand to identify additional potentially useful items by searching the indexed literature backward and/or forward in time. The strongly relevant item in hand serves as the original 'grain of sand' around which you will try to grow a 'pearl,' a larger body of published literature relating to your research topic.

Backward citation searching:

  • Examine the references list of your strongly relevant initial source to look for cited works that appear to be potentially useful. Doing this work in a citation index can help you quickly find abstracts or full-text for those works in order to determine whether they are likely to be useful. This approach is 'backward' in the sense that you are looking for relevant publications that were in the research literature before your initial source was published.

Forward citation searching:

  • In a citation index, search the title or other unique identifier of your initial source to look for works that have cited your initial source.  Again, examine the abstract or the full-text, if available, to assess the relevancy of works whose titles suggest potential relevancy. This approach is 'forward' in a chronological sense, using the publication date of your initial source as the comparison point.

Web of Science (Wos)

  • WoS is the oldest English-language citation index. It supports backward and forward citation searching.  See the Clarivate tutorial on Web of Science - Citation Sources (clip starts at 2:29) for an overview of how citation data is organized in this database.

Google Scholar (GS)

  • Use the Library's customized GS URL, above, to ensure that search results include links to full-text sources in the Library's subscription databases. GS supports forward citation searching. Search the title of your initial source. In the results page, find the appropriate matching citation(s) and click "Cited by" to see references to works that have cited your initial source.

Interlibrary Loan

Have you found a book, journal article, research report, thesis, or other information resource you need for your U of L academic work that is not available in the Library's collections?  If so, all you need to do is submit an Interlibrary Loan request to the Library. 

If you have identified the item via Google Scholar, look for the Interlibrary Loan option and click "Submit a request":
Article in Google Scholar

Submit ILL

If you did not use Google Scholar to identify the item you need but you have the relevant citation information (e.g., author, title, publisher, publication year), you can submit an Interlibrary Loan request manually.  On the Library homepage go to Services (top menu bar) and choose Interlibrary Loan | Request Interlibrary Loan:

Request ILL

Google Scholar

If you use Google Scholar frequently while researching off-campus, be sure to bookmark and always use the Library's customized Google Scholar URL: 

https://www.ulethbridge.ca/lib/search/google-scholar.asp

By using the customized URL off-campus, you will see the "Find it @ U of Lethbridge" links in your search results pages.  Following the "Find it" links will either

  • take you to University Library-subscribed sources of the works you wish to access or
  • give you the option to "Submit a request" to obtain the works via the Library's Interlibrary Loan service if the Library does not own or license them

Also keep in mind that you can export citations from Google Scholar into EndNote by changing the Settings:

       

Converting Unproxied Links

Links to content in Library-licensed databases always include the address of the Library's proxy server.  While researching off-campus, the proxy server enables you to authenticate yourself as a current U of L student, faculty or staff member in order to access the licensed content.  When you access Library-licensed content on-campus, you are not asked to log in because content providers usually support IP authentication for access requests originating from computers within the U of L IP domain.

But when you are researching from off-campus you may encounter links to content licensed by the Library that are not in a proxied format.

a) sample link to subscribed content in unproxied format: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20058731.pdf

b) sample link to subscribed content in proxied format: https://www-jstor-org.uleth.idm.oclc.org/stable/pdf/20058731.pdf

At home, if you use the link in a), above, you will be unable to access the JSTOR article.  But if you use the link in b), you will be prompted for your U of L username and password, thereby authenticating you as being entitled to access the article.

If you are off-campus and encounter an unproxied link to content you believe is licensed by the Library, you can use the Library's Ezproxy Link Generator tool to convert the link to a proxied form.