Welcome to the Science Direct tutorial

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to:

• Do a basic search to find references • Use search techniques to make your results more relevant • Email, print or save your results

Step 1: Accessing Science Direct

Go to the student home page and login with the student login ID and password

Select Resources Online from the list of applications

Select E-Resources

Select your subject (e.g. Life Sciences) and then select ‘Find Resources’

Now select Science Direct from the list

Note: at this point staff will be asked for an Athens log-in and password

You will now see the Science Direct ‘Search’ screenNB you may be asked to register when you first log-on. Clicking on the ‘Search’ button will often by-pass this.

Step 2: Search strategy Before you start searching any database you should plan your search strategy in advance as

itis a more efficient way of managing your time.

Keywords Before you start searching, think about

keywordsfor your given subject.

If your topic is: Discuss the effects of global warming on sea

level.

Your keywords would be: • global warming • sea level

TIP: Authors use many different terms which mean the same thing. Remember, the computerwill only search for what you tell it to search for. If there are other words that mean the same (or similar) things as your search terms you must search for these too. Think about alternatives.

e.g. for "global warming“ you might also search for "climate change"

TIP ON FINDING KEYWORDS: You may find it useful to do some preliminary reading in textbooks and encyclopaedias which will help you identify some keywords, and perhaps also key authors.

In the search box type global warming and select search. Make a note of the number of results your search finds.

Your search results should look similar to this - you should find that you have over 38,000 results.

Step 3: Broadening your search

• The term OR will broaden a search and include items where the authors have used different terms.

• Example:

“global warming” OR “climate change”

In the first search box type “global warming” OR “climate change” .

Click on search and make a note of the number of results you get.

Items containing either search term have now been searched for and your search results list will have now have increased to over 101,000.You can add more alternative words if you want to widen your search further.

Step 4: Combining your search terms

• Searching for “global warming” OR “climate change”

will give you everything the database has on those terms

• You therefore need to be more specific about the subject you are looking for. To do this you can combine different search terms together.

• The term AND will narrow your search

Search for “global warming” OR “climate change” AND “sea level”. Make a note of the number of results you get.

You have now searched for items containing either “global warming” OR “climate change”, as well as “sea level”. Using ‘and’ will usually result in fewer but more relevant hits.

Note: you can also specify particular journals, years etc. within the results

Step 5: Refining your search

• When you have entered all the search terms you want to use you will still often need to cut down on the amount of results you have.

• To refine your search you might want to:– Remove articles which do not have the full text available in

Science Direct – Remove all the older articles or select a range of years

• TIP: It is usually best to refine your search by selecting one criteria at a time. Selecting multiple criteria can sometimes mean you get no results.

This screen below shows how to specify full text articles and also specify date or date range of publication.

Selecting “subscribed sources” will limit results to full text articles

select date of publication

Step 6: Reading your articlesTo help you decide which articles are relevant to you look at the citation and abstract. Do this by clicking on the title of the article or “preview”. You will be given all the information about the article. This will include the title, authors, journal name, year, volume, issue etc. For most articles you will also be able to read an abstract, a summary of what the article is about. If you can access the full text of the article you will see a PDF Full Text link.

Using your results

Science Direct offers a number of options

Step 8: Search histories and saving your searches

Science Direct offers you the option to save and recall previous searches but they do require you to register.

Further assistance is offered through “Help” button

Congratulations – you’ve come to the end of this tutorial

If you need more advice about constructing your search, such as choosing keywords, or how to

combine searches, or if you have any other related queries, please contact ALT staff.

We hope you enjoyed the tutorial