Research Guides: ENE 520, Professor Kinner, Fall 2015 (UNH Durham): Find Articles

Strategy

First, try out a topic. Write it down a few times, using different words if you can, such as synonyms and words that are narrower or broader in scope. Use the recommended websites for this project (in Blackboard) to learn about the topics and discover the words that are used to describe them. The words you choose will be the "search terms" that you start with. You can adjust them to find out what works best. Examples: climate change in the Arctic; effects of global warming on the Arctic; impact of climate change on Arctic region

Next, find the folder icon for Databases to choose a few databases to search. Most databases let you search in a more structured way than Google does, so that you can get more precise results. Most of them also search less material than Google: they are selective. Because of this, searches in different databases produce different sets of results.

An aside: do you want more background first? Try books. The UNH Library Catalog (on home page) is a database of UNH Library-owned materials: books, journals (scholarly periodicals), and more. See the "Find Books & E-Books" tab for more info.

Back to searching for articles. The UNH Library Database List has lists organized by subject that you can skim to find broad areas related to your topic. For these topics, it might also be good to check the "General/Multidisciplinary" list. There are some recommended databases for your ENE 520 project below, but you can choose others. When you search most of these databases, you need to switch from everyday language to searching syntax. Example: "effects of global warming on the Arctic" might become: "global warming" AND Arctic (you would see then which articles appeared to be about the effects).

Please go on to the boxes below this for more about Searching for Articles...

Find Journals

Journal titles can be searched in the UNH Library Catalog to determine what years are available from your UNH Library (online and/or print volumes). If preferred, you can browse all of the journal titles that are directly available online or in print on "Journal Search." If you just want journals that are online, try the list of UNH fulltext online journals.

Test your knowledge:

In the following citation, which is the journal title? Hint: it's in italics. Some citation styles indicate the journal title in italics or boldface.

Camenzuli, Danielle, AND Freidman, Benjamin. "On-site and in situ remediation technologies applicable to petroleum hydrocarbon contaminated sites in the Antarctic and Arctic" Polar Research [Online], Volume 34(7 September 2015)

To find out if a journal is "peer-reviewed", use Ulrichsweb, an international directory of periodicals. Look for the symbol next to the journal title. That indicates that the journal has peer-reviewed, also called "refereed", articles.

NOTE: Pieces in a peer-reviewed journal may not all be peer-reviewed! Editorials, for example, are not peer-reviewed. Peer-reviewed articles are normally scholarly. If you are not sure, check Ulrichsweb, and if the journal is peer-reviewed, check for a bibliography or reference list at the end of the article. No bibliography? Not scholarly! Thus, not peer-reviewed!

If there is a journal abbreviation you don't understand, ask a librarian or check the list of Science and Engineering Journal Abbreviations.

What is Peer Review?

Refereed journals

In the referee process (also called peer review):

Researcher submits manuscript for publication to the journal editor
Editor sends a copy to one or two anonymous reviewers (referees)
Reviewers, who are peers (researchers in the same field), evaluate it and make recommendations
Editor notifies author if accepted, accepted with changes, or rejected
If the article is accepted with changes, it is the author's choice whether to make the changes or submit to another journal.

This process provides quality control by peer review.

Search for Articles -- Customized for ENE 520 project

To find articles for ENE 520 projects, try these techniques and click below to see what happens in the model search:

Use the strategies above to pin down topic words and choose databases
Try to use the search boxes to specify relationships between your topic words with AND's and OR's. You can add quotation marks to set off phrases in most databases. For example: arctic in one box; ("alternative energy" OR "renewable energy") in another.
You can use an asterisk (*) to stand for any ending. For example, to search for both "oil spill" and "oil spills" you can put this: oil spill* Note: If you search Google, that assumes you want any ending on every word.
When you find a good article, use its bibliography to find more good articles. Also, use the search tools, like subject terms, from the good article to do more searching.

Sample database: Environmental Sciences & Pollution Management: this database has a thesaurus so you can check for the exact subject terms that are used in it. MODEL IN ACTION: Click to see a search in this database.

Sample databases: Greenfile and Environment Complete (Ebsco): MODEL IN ACTION: Click to see a search in this database.

5. After you search, save the citations and get the articles! If there is a "Full Text" or "Check For Full Text" button, use that to check the library. If not, you can search the catalog for the journal title (see box to the left).

6. Capture the citation info to save time later on. Save, export, or email citations from databases or from the article home page. You can use software to organize (see box to the left) and also to re-format your citations for papers you are writing (see the "Save & Cite" tab).

Tips for Successful Online Searching
This basic approach works with many databases.

Specialized databases of potential interest

Environmental sciences and pollution management
Provides abstracts and citations to material in the environmental sciences; includes scientific journals, conference proceedings, reports, monographs, books and government publications.

Environment Complete This link opens in a new window
Has some full text within database.

GreenFILE
Collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles covering all aspects of human impact - individual, corporate and local/national governmental - to the environment, and what can be done at each level to minimize these effects.
As with all Ebsco databases, be sure to check the "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" box to get the kind of information you need.

Alaska and Polar Periodical Index
Produced by the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library at Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks. There is no full-text; use the source/journal title from the citation to check the UNH Library Catalog for the item.
more...less...
If link does not connect, go to Google and search for "Alaska & Polar Periodical Index."

Using InterLibrary Loan to Get Article Scans

If the location of a journal in the Library Catalog is Storage Per Request Item, that means the volume is not in a public area, but you can request it online. Here are the instructions. To get the original print journal volume, use the Request icon on the top toolbar of the catalog and the volume will be brought to Dimond Library for you; you'll get email when it is available.

If the UNH Library does not have the article you need, we can get it for you. There is no charge. The Check for Fulltext page provides a link to InterLibrary Loan so that you can order the article conveniently. The citation information goes into the form automatically, but check that it has transferred correctly and completely. Usually, the link to the scanned article is available within a couple of days, but do allow time for this.

If you have not used ILL before, log in with your UNH User ID and password (your Blackboard/MyCourses ID) and fill out the registration.

Click for more info on getting material from other libraries