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Research Guides@Tufts

Community Health 184: Globalization and Health

Cited Reference Searching

  • Cited references are found in the bibliographies or works cited sections of a journal article, book or report.
  • Cited references can be journal articles, books, reports, white papers, newspaper articles, etc.
  • This type of search strategy is useful for locating current articles or research on a topic or identifying top researchers in a field.
  • Some of the databases we subscribe to that feature this search startegy are: Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, CSA, Chemical Abstracts, JSTOR, Environment Complete and Google Scholar.
  • To learn more about cited reference searching go to http://www.thomsonisi.com/tutorials/citedreference/crs1.htm

 

Scholarly and Peer Reviewed Journals

  • Scholarly and professional journals feature articles written by researchers and practitioners in a particular subject area. The authors often have particular specialties. Peer groups of researchers, scholars and professionals within a specific discipline are the audience for scholarly literature.
  • Peer review is a well-accepted indicator of quality scholarship. It is the process by which an author's peers read a paper submitted for publication. A number of recognized researchers in the field will evaluate a manuscript and recommend its publication, revision, or rejection. Articles accepted for publication through a peer review process implicitly meet the discipline's expected standards of expertise.
  • Articles in some scholarly and professional journals are not peer-reviewed, but are selected by an editor or board. Standards of scholarship in such journals are often equal or comparable to those of peer-reviewed publications, although this is not always the case.
  • Peer-reviewed journals can be identified by their editorial statements or instructions to authors and in sources such as Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory. In Ulrich's, the graphic: icon that means a journal is refereed icon indicates a "refereed" (peer-reviewed) journal.

(Used and modified by permission from Patrick Ragain, Business and Government Information Librarian, University of Nevada, Reno. http://www.knowledgecenter.unr.edu/instruction/help/peer.html)

Keyword Searching

Keyword Search Rules for the Library Catalog and Databases


Using AND/OR/NOT (Boolean Search Operators)
AND

Use AND to focus search and combine different aspects of your topic.

Example: tuberculosis and India

OR

Use OR to expand your search and find synonyms/related terms.

Example: tuberculosis or TB or "Mycobacterium tuberculosis"

NOT

Use NOT to exclude a word or phrase from your search

Example: tuberculosis and India not United States

 


Additional Search Tips

"Phrase search"  - Use quotation marks" " to search for a particular phrase.

Example: "industrialized countries"

Truncation * - Use an asterisk to find variations of a word. Put an asterisk following the root of the word to find all variations of that word, including singular and plural.

Example: resil* (finds resilience, resilient, etc.)

(Grouping/Nesting Keywords) - Use parentheses ( ) as a way to group all your search terms together.

Example: (tuberculosis or TB or "Mycobacterium tuberculosis") and India and "health policy"

See the Basic Search Tips guides for more information, including examples.

Research Data Librarian

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Elizabeth McCall
she/her/hers
Subjects: Community Health