Library Guides: GEO314/513 Research Skills Guide: Use Journal Databases

Which Databases should I choose?

Journal databases:

Are the best source of academic or scholarly information for your assessments
help you locate peer reviewed articles
Are subject specific, so that you get more relevant results
Have many options for refining results

Visit the Environmental Science Journal Databases listing for all potentially useful databases in your area.

Recommended Environmental Science Databases

ProQuest SciTech Premium Collection This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive package of databases in the ProQuest platform, covering the natural and applied sciences.
ProQuest SciTech Premium Collection consists of three subsidiary collections which you can search individually if you wish. Two of these contain further collections/databases in the ProQuest hierarchy:
* Natural Science Collection - consisting of the Agricultural & Environmental Science Collection, the Biological Science Collection, and the Earth, Atmospheric & Aquatic Science Database
* Science Database
* Technology Collection - consisting of the Advanced Technologies & Aerospace Collection, and the Materials Science & Engineering Collection.

Content is sourced from scholarly journals, trade and industry journals, magazines, technical reports, conference proceedings, government publications, and more.

Topics include: advanced technologies; aerospace; agricultural science; aquatic science; atmospheric science; biological science; computer science; earth science; engineering; environmental science; materials science; polymer science.

The date range is from 1946 to current.

More information is available from ProQuest's SciTech Premium Collection LibGuide.

Once you are in the ProQuest platform, you can change to any other ProQuest database: click on the hamburger menu at the top left of any ProQuest screen, then click on Change databases. The databases are listed in a hierarchy. For another broad collection of databases in the science area, try ProQuest's subject package of Science & Technology Databases.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
A multi-subject abstract and citation database of research literature. Known for its citation-tracking and bibliometric features.
Scopus is an abstract and citation database of research literature which offers coverage of more than 22,000 journals, and more than 150,000 books, from more than 5,000 publishers. There are nearly 70 million records and 1.4 billion cited references. Most records date since 1996 but Scopus has recently added records dated from 1970 - 1995.

Scopus does not in itself include the full-text of articles, but many records in a results list will have a View at publisher link. If that link doesn't work, use the Find it link to search for the full article via Primo Search.

Subject coverage includes:
* Life Sciences
* Health Sciences
* Physical Sciences
* Social Sciences & Humanities.

Scopus has a number of specialised features relating to bibliometrics which are mainly used by higher degree researchers. But one feature that might have wider application is the ability to use the View Cited By function to find articles that cite your selected articles(s). You can also sort your results list by citation count.

A note on access for academic/research staff: If you are academic/research staff and require access to your Charles Sturt researcher profile, please use this link - https://www.scopus.com - and sign in using the "Access through your Institution" option. Type Charles Sturt University into the search box and follow the prompts.
Water Resources Abstracts This link opens in a new window
This is now part of ProQuest's Environmental Science Index. It provides citations and abstracts from the world's technical and scientific literature on water-related topics covering the characteristics, conservation, control, pollution, treatment, use and management of water resources.
Abstracts are drawn from journals, books, conference proceedings, and technical reports in the physical and life sciences, as well as from engineering, legal and government publications.

Until 1994, Water Resources Abstracts was produced by the United States Geological Survey, when it was generally known as Selected Water Resources Abstracts. Since that time, Water Resources Abstracts has been produced by Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, which broadened the scope by including more material published outside the U.S.A.

The link here takes you into ProQuest's Environmental Science Index. By default, your search will be limited to Water Resources Abstracts content only. Deselect the checkbox to expand your search and get more results.

There are no direct links to full-text, but you can use the "Find a copy" links to search for the full item in other databases.

For a related database with much full-text content, try ProQuest's Environmental Science Database.

For a related database with greater coverage of the marine and biological environment, try ProQuest's ASFA: Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts.
BioOne This link opens in a new window
An entirely full-text collection of more than 150 peer-reviewed journals, covering biological, ecological, and environmental sciences.
BioOne is a global not-for-profit collaboration which brings together scientific societies, publishers, and libraries to provide access to critical, peer-reviewed research in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences.

This entirely full-text collection of more than 150 journals includes some of the most important academic society journals in their respective disciplines.

When you first log in, you will be in the Advanced Search screen, but you can also browse the database by title, publisher, or collection. (There are 3 "collections" - BioOne.1, BioOne.2, and Open Access. The first two collections represent packages of journals as added to the database, while the third is a small collection of open access journals.)

If you set up your own profile, you can make use of the My BioOne features, which include saved searches, search alerts, and lists of favourite journals.
CSIRO Electronic Journals This link opens in a new window
Multi-subject Australian full-text journal collection published by CSIRO Publishing.
This resource is a collection of about 30 entirely full-text Australian journals published by CSIRO Publishing. The website has a tab for, and lists of, books and CDs, but it is the journals to which Charles Sturt Library subscribes, and which are available in full-text. These cover a broad range of scientific disciplines including mainly agriculture, the plant and animal sciences, and environmental management.

The collection can be searched or browsed. Searching can be limited to a journal or a number of journals. The searching functionality is not very sophisticated, and users are advised to check the Search hints link which is available on the Advanced Search screen. Some users prefer to use another index, such as Web of Science Core Collection or Scopus as a searching tool, and then use the Find it links to link to the full-text within CSIRO Electronic Journals.

Coverage varies with title, but in some cases extends back to the early 1900s. All articles are available in PDF format.
CAB Abstracts (1910 to present) This link opens in a new window
A bibliographic database produced by CAB International (CABI), available on the Ovid platform in various date packages. This one is the full package, with coverage back to 1910. Covers agriculture; animal & vet sciences; environmental sciences; health, food, and nutrition; leisure & tourism; microbiology & parasitology; and plant sciences. Includes some material in full-text.
Originally a citation-only database, the database now includes full-text content which was previously only available through a separate subscription. There are tens of thousands of full-text documents available including journal articles, reports, and conference papers. To display results that are directly available in full-text in this database, you need to use the limiter for Ovid Full Text Available, which you can get by clicking on the button for Additional Limits.

The Ovid search interface for CAB Abstracts includes a "Map term to subject heading" tick-box, which you can use to check for and search by authorised subject headings.

Updating is weekly.

You can access the other CAB Abstracts packages from the Ovid databases menu.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
A collection of 6 databases available in the Thomson Reuters interface, the most significant of which are: Web of Science Core Collection; Current Contents Connect; MEDLINE; and SciELO Citation Index. These databases can be searched together or individually.
Details of the 6 databases are:
* Web of Science Core Collection - a collection of 5 citation indexes and 2 chemical indexes, where you can, amongst other things, find citing articles (ie articles that have cited a specific reference);
* Current Contents Connect - a current awareness product which includes tables of contents and citations from journals from all disciplines;
* KCI-Korean Journal Database - features research emanating from South Korea, and covers about 2,000 scholarly journals;
* MEDLINE - the well-known international health and medicine database, produced by the (US) National Library of Medicine;
* Russian Science Citation Index - covers Russian research in fields such as engineering, materials science, and ecology, with more than 600 journals indexed;
* SciELO Citation Index (Scientific Electronic Library Online) - a program of the Sao Paulo Research Foundation for the cooperative publishing of open access journals, which includes regional journals from Latin America and the Caribbean as well as titles from Spain, Portugal and South Africa.

These databases can be searched together ("All Databases", which is the default) or individually. To change to a single database, click on the drop-down arrow beside All Databases in the main tab-bar of the Web of Science screen.

Most of the articles in this databases don't have the full-text attached, but you can use the Find it button, situated beneath each record, to locate the full-text in another online database or in a campus library print holding.

Please note: Web of Science does not work in Internet Explorer 6 or 7, or Internet Explorer 8 or 9 when running in Compatibility View. If you wish to use Web of Science with IE, you should update the version, and, in IE 8 or 9, hit F12 and check that your Browser Mode is not set to Compatibility View.

Government based databases

Australian Wetlands Database This link opens in a new window
Free online database provided by the Australian Government's Department of Environment, with information on Australia's nationally and internationally important wetlands.
This database provides online access to information on Australia's Ramsar wetlands and sites listed in the Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia.

Note that you don't have to use every database for every assignment - but nor should you restrict your search to one database only.

Don't forget, you can also use Primo Search and Google Scholar to locate journal articles.

What is the SciTech collection?

The SciTech Premium Collection is a multidisciplinary content collection of scholarly and learned material in the natural sciences, technology, engineering and related disciplines. Faculty, graduate and post-graduate students will find comprehensive coverage from thousands of full-text titles including peer-reviewed journals, trade publications, books/monographs, conference proceedings, reports, newswires, video material and much more.

Moreover, for those who need to dive deep into their discipline, we include a wide-range of discipline specific A&I databases for fast discovery of relevant content. Editorial input into content selection, controlled vocabulary and indexing brings structure to the literature making it easier for researchers to efficiently discover relevant papers within their discipline.

Advanced Search

Use the Advanced Search to create a more structured query, searching across different fields. Enter your search term, then use the pull-down menus to the right to select the search fields you want to target (outlined below), and between each row select Boolean operators to connect your search terms.

Try It Now - Open the ProQuest SciTech Premium Collection and try trying in the keywords - "Murrumbidgee River" AND river flow AND seasonal variation*. We are using trucation here in the form of an astricks (*) which will locate variation, variations. Other ideas may be to search Murrumbidgee river NEAR/4 flow. You could even consider adding seasional variation* or regulat* in the line below.

NEAR/# allows you to target your search by finding documents where they words are within some number(#) of words from each other (either before of after). The # will be replaced by the number, the number will determine the number of words between your search terms. In the ProQuest example below, the databases will search for drift within 4 words of invertebrate in the title of the article (search field changed to document title). Also, try changing the search in field for keywords to appear in the abstract or subject of the articles.

You can limit your search to items containing Full text and Peer Reviewed - items to only find documents reviewed by subject matter experts. Use the Publication date menu to target a date range or a specific date.

From the Advanced Search page you may find a link to the thesaurus feature. A thesaurus is an alphabetical listing of all the subject terms in a single database, used to classify and organize information for that database. The thesaurus shows relationships between terms such as synonyms or related terms, and hierarchical arrangements such as broader terms, or narrower terms.

How do I search in databases

Take a look at the video below for a demonstration of how to search within ProQuest

Full text

Sometimes you will read that a database is 'full text', or that an article can be found in 'full text'. 'Full text' means that the entire document is available online. When a database carries an article in full text there will be a hyperlink to view it as either a PDF or html document. Not all journal databases contain full text.

If an article is not available in full text you may be able to locate it in another database. Clicking on the button will allow you to check if the article is available elsewhere.

Journal Database Search Strategies

When you go into a journal database you will notice that many of them feature multiple search boxes that are stacked one above the other in rows.

While they may look intimidating, they can make your search process easier.

Think of each row as a train of thought. For example, if you were searching for an article about the effects of regulation on the season flow regime of the Murrumbidgee River, you could use a new row for each element of your topic. In this case you might search for:

1st search row: regulat*
2nd search row: "Murrumbidgee River"
3rd search row: seasonal flow

You'll notice we have used some search tips in the search above. Check out the FIND [link] page for a listing of these tips.

Tip: If you want to learn more about how to maximise your search using search strategies, contact the Library. We can assist you in creating an effective search strategy.

Want to learn more about journal databases?

The Library holds a series of Online Library Workshops, some of these focus on journal database searching.
We also have a Databases Help guide that contains a wealth of information on using journal databases.