Electrical Engineering 4BI6

How to Find Refereed Articles for Your Design Project

Linda Michtics, Engineering Liaison LibrarianThode Library

ObectivesBy the end of this session, you will be

able to:

define what a refereed (peer reviewed) article is

find article databases search for articles in a database find RACER, Refworks and patents

databases

What are

Refereed Articles ???

Magazine VS Scholarly publication

Refereed Articles Written by and for researchers/academics Longer articles written in a formal scholarly style to

share facts and research with the academic community

Specific, in depth Often include charts and graphs to support

research findings Usually no advertisements Include references and bibliography Reviewed by peers in the field for quality,

relevance and appropriateness of journal

The database to checkto determine if a journal is refereed

The link to the database

The icon that indicates that ajournal is refereed.

How to Find Article Databases

Steps Click “Articles/Databases” tab on the

McMaster library homepage Search databases by subject if you are not

sure which database to choose Search database by name if you know which

database you are looking for

The subjects

You can type the name of a database if you know it.

Best Bets for your Assignment

Compendex IEEE Xplore INSPEC Medline or Pubmed (medicine) BIOSIS (life sciences and biology) Science Citation Index Expanded

(includes biology, biotechnology, medicine)

These three are good for engineeringinfo

These three are good for medicalinfo

How to Search for Articles in a Database

Compendex powered by Engineering Village

Identify main concepts Identify synonyms for these concepts (tip: use

online thesaurus) When phrase searching, enclose phrase in

quotation marks eg. “human computer interface” Use boolean operators: and, or, not Use proximity operators eg. near Use asterisk symbol * (truncation) for plurals or

alternative endings : * eg. canad* gets canada, canadian, canadians

Use wildcard symbol ? to replace a single character eg. wom?n for woman and women

Constructing a Search

Do you know why we put *s here?

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Tips for Too Few Results

Tips for Too Many Results

Find one good article Use hyperlinked words from descriptors

(main heading; controlled terms, uncontrolled terms, etc.) or authors to find other relevant articles

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“One Good Article” Strategy

Click here and you will get the full-text of the journal article.

Set up a RACER account and our library will order research materials that we don’t own.

Click here for information on RACER.

Google Scholar

Searches across many disciplines and sources from one place

Includes peer-reviewed articles, theses, books, etc. published by professional societies, preprint repositories, universities

Can link directly to full-text papers that McMaster subscribes to if you see get it @ Mac (this works from on-campus and from home if you use your MacID)

RefWorks

Web-based citation management software FREE to Mac students Registration required Create one or several accounts Store unlimited number of references Can move your RefWorks database into

another database programme (eg. Endnote,

ProCite, Reference Manager, etc.)

You can use RefWorks to manageyour references. If you want to learn more, there is an online tutorial.

Refworks Demo Using Compendex

Select Engineering Design

For design research, checkPatent websites and productCatalogues.

Summary

Refereed (peer reviewed) articles

Finding databases

Searching for articles in a database

RACER, Refworks and Patents

Questions?

Need Help? Just ask! Visit: Research Help Desk in Thode

Library,1st Floor email: library@mcmaster.ca Call: ext. 22000 Chat: http://library.mcmaster.ca/justask/ Contact Linda Michtics, Engineering Liaison

Librarian : michtic@mcmaster.ca or ext.

23882