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Universiteitsbibliotheek – LibGuides

Master ISS literature search: Search engines

Index

On this page:

Search engines

Open Access search engines

Grey literature

Tips

 

Other pages:

Introduction

Phrasing the search question

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Search strategy and search techniques

Getting hold of the full text

Selecting and evaluating sources

Referring in APA style

Thesis

Summary and feedback

 

You can go from one page to the other by clicking on the tabs in the black top bar (for example, go to the tab Search engines) or use the next/previous buttons at the bottom of the page.

Read the pages from top to bottom.

You can navigate to specific topics or pages by clicking the links in the Index.

Search engines for Interdisciplinary studies

See from which angle you approach your problem and then look for search systems that match. Preferably use more than one database (and not just Google Scholar). Check in advance the content and options of the database.

The Utrecht University Library offers an overview and access to multiple search engines. There is also a list of databases per discipline. Read the short descriptions and choose the database that best matches your search query.

A selection of other search engines

  • Scopus contains abstracts of scientific articles and book chapters in all disciplines. It also contains references from and citations to articles. It also offers user friendly filter options to limit your search results
  •  Web of Science is also a scientific database, but smaller than Scopus. It contains fewer journals in the field of social sciences.
  •  Sociological Abstracts provides bibliographic information in the field of sociology. Also includes the subjects of social psychology, methodology, sociology of art, political science, gender studies, environmental issues.
  • APA PsycInfo covers the whole field of psychology and behavioural science of man and animal. It also offers information on language and communication, culture and society, psychochemistry and statistics. It contains summaries of journal articles, but also books and book chapters.

  • ERIC is a database in the filed of education. NB there is also a freely available version of ERIC and there is the version of ERIC that we offer via Ovid. This last version has more search options and contains the UBUlink to the digital publications that we give access to at the UU library.

  • PubMed includes literature in the field of (bio)medical sciences, but also behavioural sciences (PubMed also has a version without the UBUlink, so pay attention which version you use)

  •  For the complete list of All search engines visit the library website

Where to find the full text?
 In this (and several other) search engines  you will see the UBUlink-klein  next to the results. It tells you if the publication is available in the university library, online or on paper (books especially).

  • WorldCat UU is a catalogue where you can search for literature on a global, national and Utrecht University Library level. You will find the Utrecht University Library collection in WorldCat, together with material from thousands of other libraries and publishers worldwide.;
  • Google Scholar with UBUlink is useful if you are looking for a well-known article, but less so if you search by subject. As a rule, you get large numbers of (often less relevant or reliable) hits and there are no good filter options.

In Google Scholar you don't see a button but a text link: Fulltext@UBUlink.

Please note: Go to all these search engines through the homepage of the library (www.uu.nl/library) and click on the button Search engines. On the next page click on the yellow button Search engines by discipline > Social and Behavioural Sciences.

You will find more on where to find sources in the LibGuide Search Strategy.

Open Access search engines

Open AccessOpen Access articles are freely available. Below you will find a list of search engines containing only or mainly Open Access material

If you want to find out what journals are Open Access you can check the Directory of Open Access Journals. 
And use the Lean Library extension, it will tell you if an open access version of the article is available.

Where to look for grey literature?

There are documents that are not available through the regular (publisher's) channels and that often do not have an ISBN or ISSN number. These documents (such as policy documents, reports, theses and dissertations, conference papers, pamphlets, etc.) are referred to as grey literature.

Searching for these types of resources is not easy. Grey literature can be found everywhere on the internet (at the government websites, at the webpages of organizations and companies, in databases, etc.).

Tips:

  • Are you looking for policy documents, try Overton or the free database Policy Commons (make your own account).
  • Use Google to search for websites of companies, organizations and institutions that publish documents in your subject area.
  • Use the Netherlands Research Portal (Open Aire) for searching Dutch dissertations.

Many organizations place the reports they publish on their own website. These publications are often freely accessible and can be found via major web search engines such as Google or Bing.
You can use the following tips when searching for reports:

File type filter: Search with terms that describe your subject and set the filter for file type: climate change filetype: PDF (via the 'advanced search' screen). This decimates the number of results and limits it to the more important sources.
 
Site filter: If you know which organization publishes important reports for you, you can also set a filter 'site:' where you enter the domain name of the website, for example: climate change site:unep.org (for the United Nations environmental program).

 Filters gebruiken voor rapporten zoeken in Google
Report keywords: If you still find too many results, you can add that you are looking for reports. For example, add to your search: report OR investigation.

Some publications appear in the form of preprints or working papers (versions of scientific publications that have not yet been officially released). This type of publication is often available earlier and usually free of charge to everyone. Please note: the preprint/working paper may differ from the final (officially published) version.

You can find this type of publications by clicking 'All versions' in a search result in Google Scholar. There are also databases that offer preprints or working papers (see e.g. Dimensions (limit on publication type>preprints), SSRN (for social sciences, in a very broad sense), various preprint servers, etc., etc.)

Conference proceedings are collections of papers (or the summaries of these papers) presented at a conference. They often present preliminary research results and (as a collection) and offer a good overview of the state of affairs in a particular research area (and at that time).

It is difficult to trace (articles in) conference proceedings. Sometimes they appear in book form or as a special issue of a journal. You can find them in search engines and databases such as Google Scholar, Scopus or Web of Science.

If you are looking for an article in a collection of conference proceedings:

  • Enter a specific term in Google Scholar and enter conference proceedings at Advanced Search > Return articles published in:
  • You can search a database (a multidisciplinary one or one that is related to the field of the conference) and then (if possible) filter on conference abstracts or conference proceedings.
  • Some proceedings are available in print and can be found in WorldCat  on the title of the conference.
  • Look for the conference website, you may find the papers/abstracts, details for conference proceedings or other useful information there.

Tips

  • Use more than one search system. There is hardly a discipline in which only one search engine is enough to find articles.
  • Familiarise yourself with one or two article search engines, for instance by using these LibGuides.
  • When searching articles you could use specific (scholarly / professional) terms, usually in English. If you want to search using non-English terms, first find out whether there are articles in that particular language at all in the database or search engine you are using.
  • Google Scholar searches the full text of the articles. This may be an advantage, but there is a big chance you will get loads of hits. It is wise to use many and specific terms in Google Scholar.
  • Google Scholar sorts its results partly by the number of citations. New articles have not been cited many times yet, and so end up further down the results list. So set up a lower limit for publication years in the advanced search options.
  • Scopus sorts the results list by date. It may make sense to change that and sort by relevance in Scopus
  • Follow links (if possible) by clicking on author, keyword, citations and references. That way you will find related information.

Find to little or find too much? See also the special LibGuide Search strategy UBU LibGuide search strategy.