BSC 292: Finding Articles
Note about Primary Research Articles
Remember that primary research articles will have specific sections in them. Different journals call them by slightly different names, but the contents of each section are the same regardless of the section titles used.:
- Background/Introduction/Objectives
- Methods/Methodology
- Results/Findings
- Conclusions/Discussion
Web of Science
This resource requires login with your MU ID and password from off campus.
Change the drop down menu to "Topic" and enter your topic. Refine your results using the menu on the left column. Here are some important options:
- Under Quick Filters, check the box next to Review Articles and then choose the Exclude link.
- Under Document Types, click Articles, and click the Refine, button.
- Under Publication Years, place a check in the box(es) next to the year(s) you wan to include in your search, then click Refine. Remember that for science topics, current information is important.
- Scroll down to nearly the bottom of the menu and click Languages. Place a check in the box(es) for any language in which you are fluent, then click Refine.
As you make these selections, your results list will get shorter. This is because you are throwing out articles that do not meet the specified criteria each time you make another limit. All of your selected limits appear at the top of the screen under the search box and can be undone by clicking the X next to the limit option.
Searching Backward and Forward in Time
You can use a technique called citation searching to conduct a search backward or forward in time. Web of Science provides an easy way to do this within the detailed record for each article. To the right of the basic article information is a column labeled Citation Network. You'll see a pair of numbers at the bottom of the box at the top of the column.
The first number (18 in the example below) shows how many times the article you are reading has been cited by other authors in their work. This is searching forward in time and will show how this article has contributed to the scholarly conversation about this topic.
The second number (51 in the example above) shows which articles the author cited when writing their paper. It's a list of the sources they used just like the References page in the papers you write here at Miami. This is searching backward in time and will show you the development of knowledge about a topic, identify experts that specialize in the topic, and see how a theory or model developed as time passed.