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Find - Journal articles

 

You have access to a range of Library resources to help you search for and locate journal articles.  The resources you use, and how you search in them, will depend on the depth of information you require and how quickly you need it. 

 

When you don't know what you are looking for

DISCOVERY

Generally speaking, the best resource for you to start with is DISCOVERY.  This allows you to cross-search lots of different publishers (and also the Library Catalogue) and allows you to find books, journal articles, news articles, conference papers etc, that match the keywords you enter into the search box. 

You access DISCOVERY via the Library homepage (or below) by entering search terms/keywords in the search box:

DISCOVERY : Search Heriot-Watt University Library resources

   
[ More info ]

If you are looking for something in particular (e.g. a specific article), then put your words in “quote marks” if you are looking for general results on a topic, then just enter your selected words.  Think carefully about your keywords.

Content not searched by DISCOVERY

The Library subscribes to over 130 Bibliographic Databases which allow you to search across thousands of different journal titles from hundreds of different publishers.  Many of these are cross-searched via DISCOVERY (though some are not), check with your Subject Librarian if there are any Databases you should search in addition to DICOVERY. Sometimes these databases will give you the full-text and sometimes not - remember the point of using these resources is to allow you to conduct a comprehensive search and find the most relevant articles (not limiting your search only to what we have subscriptions for). 

They offer several search limiting/refining features to help you pin-point what you need.  In addition they offer various personalisation features, which allow you to save your searches, set up alerts (to be notified automatically of any new research which matches your search criteria) and to bulk export several references into reference management software (e.g. EndNote) - all useful features which could save you time. 

eJournal Services

The Library subscribes to over 9,000 online journal titles, the full-text of these are usually provided via eJournal Services (e.g. ScienceDirect, SprinerLink, Emerald etc). You can also find journal articles by searching in these eJournal Services.  Bear in mind that you are usually only searching one publisher (and therefore your search will be narrower) - it depends on how comprehensive/thorough you need your literature search to be.  In addition, although we do have access to our subscribed titles via the eJournal Service, we will not have access to all articles in that database - you may only get to see the abstract. 

Remember: If you find details of an article and there is no full-text link OR the full-text link prompts you for payment - do not pay! There are other ways you can get the full-text cheaper of for free.

 

Using an article to find other articles

Keyword searching is one way to find articles, another is to use a good article to help you find other useful articles. There are various different ways:

    1. Reference List (looking back)
      • This author found these papers useful, might it be worth checking these out?  Check if we have these papers or can get them for you (i.e. you know what you are looking for, see below).  These will necessarily be older papers.
    2. Cited reference searching (looking forward)
      • We subscribe to a resource called Web of Knowledge (WoK). In WoK it is possible to search for an article and then see who has cited that paper (times cited).  This is necessarily looking forward i.e. how has this area of research developed/who has subsequently cited this paper in their research? Some Publisher sites also have a 'times cited' option, it is worth checking both.
    3. Related articles
      • Usually given in a publisher database/eJournal service – other articles in that database which share some of the same references as this article
    4. Keywords/controlled vocabulary
      • If you are struggling to think of appropriate keywords to broaden your search, look at those used in a useful paper
    5. Author Details (often links in a database)
      • Is this author an expert in the field, might they have other useful papers? Use the author name to search for other papers or check their personal website
    6. Journal Details
      • Is this quite a specialised journal, might it publish papers on the same topic?  Search within that journal with your selected keywords and set up alerts to be notified of new articles

When you are looking for a specific article


If you are looking for something specific, e.g. an article on a reading list, or a reference list:

Managing Complex Spatial Planning Processes, Planning Theory and Practice, 8(4), 2007.

Then you can either use DISCOVERY and search for the “article title” (put it in quote marks i.e. “Managing Complex Spatial Planning Processes”) or, you can use the Library Catalogue and search for the journal title (Planning Theory and Practice):

Library Catalogue

Click on the link saying ‘Full text available…click here’ (and if prompted, enter your Heriot-Watt username/password) - then navigate to the year (2007), volume (8), issue (4) and page numbers you need.

A note on the Library Catalogue
You cannot use the Library Catalogue to search for articles, only for journal titles (i.e. to see if we have the journal for the year/volume and issue you need)

Getting the full-text

If you have trouble getting the full-text, further help is available in our Access the Full-text page.

Keeping up-to-date

If you want to be kept up-to-date with the latest table of contents, you can either set up alerts to be notified of these electronically or you can limit your search to only search the latest table of contents.  Some subject areas also make the journal articles available as pre-prints (available prior to publication in a Journal) in a pre-print repository.  In addition, many subject areas present the most current research at Conferences. See the Keeping up-to-date page for further information.

 

There are also some non-HWUL resources that you may find useful:

Articles other scholars have found useful (Scholarly bookmarking)

As researchers save and tag useful references they have found, a different approach to finding articles might be to search what other researchers/students have found useful e.g. CiteULike, Brainify

Author-archived articles (Institutional repositories)

Increasingly authors are making their publications freely available either through their own personal web-page or via Institutional Repositories.

Scholarly search engines

Both Microsoft and Google are developing search engines to search only for scholarly material.  Currently these are not as comprehensive as the Bibliographic Databases, nor do they offer the same functionality (e.g. personalisation features), however, again these can be useful if you just need to find 'some' journal articles. 

REMEMBER: For any results you find, if there is no full-text link OR the full-text link prompts you for payment - do not pay! There are other ways you can get the full-text cheaper or for free.