Advanced Research Skills :

Scientific Archaeology Autumn 2015

Sue Bird Bodleian Subject Librarian Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences

Dissertation Assessment

Aims: Does the essay / dissertation have a clear aim,

question or perspective that is relevant to the literature or

an issue?

Presentation: You are expected to know how to cite

references

Literature: Does the dissertation / essay address a range

of relevant literature, and demonstrate a good level of

understanding of the literature on the topic.

You need to conduct initial scoping lit review – key

themes, etc.

Followed by a more focused & deeper literature review.

Peer-reviewed literature acts as a form of substantiation

This session

More on Bibliographic Databases

Searching techniques for journal articles,

conference papers, book chapters etc

Keeping up to date

Subject searching

Better to use specialist indexes covering the world’s

literature to find articles

Access via OxLIP+ (http://oxlip-plus.bodleian.ox.ac.uk)

Use inter-library loan for items not held in Oxford and not

online

E-Journals

“I didn't check for the hard copy

- so used to getting online access!”

“I had just googled the article rather

than using SOLO, so that was the

issue & why I’d been asked to login,

or use Athens”

Bodleian Maps

SOLO Map

Search

Databases vs. Search engines

• Contents are indexed by subject specialists

• Subject headings

• Limiting functions e.g. publication types, language

Allow you to

• View Search history

• Combine searches

• Mark and sort results

• Print/save/email/export

• Save searches

• Set up alerts

• Searches done by

automated “web crawlers”

• No thesaurus / subject

headings – just free text

searching

• No limiting functions

• Usually none of these!

Databases (Scopus or Web of Science) enable you to:

• Refine results overview to find the main journals, disciplines and authors that publish in your

area of interest.

• Click on the cited by and reference links to track research trends and make connections.

• Find out who is citing you or your supervisor, and how many citations an article or an author

has received.

• Use Author Identifier to automatically match an author’s published research including the h-

index

• Use Journal Analyzer to provide quick insight into specific journal performance

• Analyze citations for a particular journal issue, volume or year.

• Use this information to complete grant or other applications quickly and easily.

• Use Alerts, RSS and HTML feeds to help you stay up-to-date

• Data export via bibiliographic managers such as RefWorks, EndNote and BibTeX

Bibliographic Databases

Vast range

SCOPUS

OVID SP

ProQuest

Web of Knowledge

Search Strategies

• Boolean logic

• Truncation

• Wild cards

• Synonyms

• Which language are you using?

Boolean connectors

• AND – combines terms to restrict results

• OR – useful for covering synonyms

• NOT – excludes unwanted areas of research

Improving Searching –

Boolean Operators

• Use Boolean operators

– AND – narrows down

– OR – broadens out

– NOT – excludes

• Use brackets to group operations

• Human* OR “Homo sapiens”

• “climate change” AND lithic AND (human* OR “Homo sapiens”)

Tephra Deposition

Tephra

AND Deposition

Mousterian Neanderthal Neanderthal

NOT Mousterian

Pottery Potsherds

Pottery

OR Potsherds

SCOPUS THE bibliographic database for the Earth,

Geographical and Ecological Sciences

Abstract & citation database containing both peer-reviewed research literature.

22,000 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers.

Now starting to include more book material

57 million records:

• 36 million records with references back to 1995

• 21 million records pre-1996 which go back to 1823

• Details from over 100,000 books

References

Aramayo and Bianco, 1996

Aramayo, S., Bianco, T.M. de, 1996. Nuevos hallazgos en el yacimiento

paleoicnológico de Pehuen-Có (Pleistoceno tardío) provincia de Buenos Aires,

Argentina. Primera Reunión Argentina de Icnología, Asociación Paleontológica

Argentina, Publicación especial 4, Buenos Aires, pp. 47–57.

Batten, 1987

Batten, D. J. (1987). Application of palynofacies analysis to interpretation of

palaeoenvironments and source potencial for hydrocarbons. Course notes. 34 pp.

MS.

Batten, 1996

Batten, D.J., 1996. Palynofacies and palaeoenvironmental interpretation. In:

Jansonius, J., Mc Gregor, D.C. (Eds.), Palynology: Principles and Applications,

American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists Foundation 3, Chapter 26A,

pp. 1011–1064.

Borel et al., 2001

Borel, C.M., Bianchinotti, M.V., Quattrocchio, M.E. 2001. Palinoformos fúngicos del

Pleistoceno – Holoceno en el valle del arroyo Chasicó, provincia de Buenos Aires,

Argentina, Polen 11, pp. 21–37.

Bibliographic

Searching

Search Tip : 1

– Important to remember that although each database covers

thousands of journal titles no single database is ever

comprehensive.

– If you are having difficulty finding material on a topic use the

keywords you find in any relevant reference to extend your

search.

Bibliographic

Databases

IBSS: International Bibliography

of the Social Sciences

Compiled by the British Library of Political & Economic Science @ L.S.E.

Contains an international selection of publications (inc. 2600 + journals)

Covers economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology.

Pre 1987 compiled by the International Committee for Social Science

Information and Documentation, and provided by the International Committee

for Social Science Information and Documentation and UNESCO.

GEOREF

Compiled by the American Geological Institute

Contains over 3.6 million records from 1666

Covers :

Bibliography of North American Geology,

Bibliography & Index of Geology exc. North America,

Geophysical Abstracts,

Bibliography & Index of Geology.

With additional items from special bibliographies

Bibliographic

Databases

Bibliographic

Databases

Web of Science/Knowledge :

Core Collection

– Includes Science, Social Science & Arts and Humanities Citation Indexes

– Citation indexes can be used in the same way as any other abstracting and indexing service. Their extra facility is the option to search the bibliographies of any articles- a citation search. Academics use the citation index to find out who has cited their work.

Bibliographic

Searching

Search Tip : 2

Take time to explore the various databases & platforms available.

Some will be more useful to you than others.

• Scopus

• GeoRef

• I.B.S.S.

• Web of Knowledge

Bibliographic

Searching

Search Tip : 3

Boolean Logical Operators AND, OR, NOT

Proximity operators

Adj (literally adjacent); Near(same sentence); With(same field)

Field descriptors: AU(author); TI(title); AB (abstract); SO(source

or reference); DE (general descriptor) etc are likely to be specific

to each database and won’t operate in ‘cross searches’

Combining searches: #1 and #2

Other tricks:

Use symbols for wildcards and truncation

? or $ for a single character

coloni?ation / coloni$ation (is it an ‘s’ or a ‘z’)

* for truncation or variant spellings

archaeolog* for archaeology, archaeological, etc

use quotation marks for searching for phrases e.g. “tree-ring analysis”

Bibliographic

Searching Search Tip : 4

• Consider subject synonyms & British and US spellings.

• Apply truncation, usually * to find plurals/alternative word endings and ? to replace a single character.

• Expand search by following hypertext links esp. subject headings

• Authors names: Check the online help for formats. Use the database index to find different forms of author’s name otherwise truncate first initial.

Bibliographic

Searching

Three ways to keep up to date:

• Saving and rerunning searches – you save a search and run it again in

the future.

• E-mail alerts / RSS feeds:–

– Specify a search to be repeated and the results emailed to you at chosen

intervals or on a continuous basis

– Select your favourite journal(s) & the database will tell you when the

next issue of a journal is available.

• Citation Alert – you will receive an email every time a particular

article is cited in another WoS or Scopus indexed article.

Search :Impact of climate change on early human societies

Scopus = 29 articles

IBSS = 3 articles only but adds another 2 to the total

GeoRef = 36 but only 8 have already been found

Web of Science = 30 articles (but 14 have already been found)

RefWorks de-duplication = 75 unique items!!

Bibliographic

Databases

GUIDE to RESOURCES http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/archaeology

Advanced Bibliographic Skills

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