Library Guides: Literature Review & Research Skills Guide: Use Journal Databases

Choosing a database

A journal database is an organised collection of information records that can be accessed electronically.

While you may use a variety of source types in your literature review and/or research report, you will find scholarly journal articles form an important part of your research, which is why it is important for you to feel confident when searching journal databases.

An information record in a journal database can contain:

Reference details (such as author, date of publication, title, etc);
Details describing the publication (such as a summary, contents, abstract, or subject area);
Information about its veracity (such as whether it has been peer-reviewed, or its citation count); and
A link to the full text (i.e.: to a copy of the document the record is about).

Databases often cover specific subject areas and the Library has grouped its databases into subject areas for your convenience. You can find the Library's databases on the A-Z Databases page. Browse these databases by title, discipline or vendor.

In this guide we will look at the Education & Teaching databases, but you may find that there are databases in other disciplines that are relevant to your research, depending on your topic.

Your lecturer particularly recommends the Springer, SAGE and Informit databases, all of which can be located in the Education & Training databases list (and are linked to below).

SpringerLink This link opens in a new window
A database of journals and eBooks published by Springer, with much available in full-text. The journals tend to be from the scientific, medical, and scientific disciplines, while the eBooks cover biomedical & life sciences; computer science; earth & environmental science; humanities, social sciences & law; and medicine.
Charles Sturt Library does not subscribe to all the items in this collection.

You can tell which results are available to you in full-text because those that are NOT available are marked with a padlock icon.

You can't limit a search to journal or book material, or to full-text content only, at the time the search is run. But you can refine your results by Content Type and/or by unticking the box for Include Preview-Only content. There are other refining options for Discipline, Subdiscipline, and Language.
SAGE Journals Online This link opens in a new window
SAGE Journals Online provides online full-text access to the hundreds of journals published by SAGE. These journals are in the subject areas of business, humanities, social sciences, science, technology, and medicine.
Charles Sturt staff and students have some full-text access to most of the journals in this database. In Advanced Search, you can limit your search to Only content I have full access to (or to Open access content only). In your results list, full-text articles are marked with a green open-padlock icon.

You can search within individual journal titles or across the whole database, and browse journals by title, discipline or subject. The 4 disciplines are Health Sciences, Life & Biomedical Sciences, Materials Science & Engineering, and Social Science & Humanities, and each discipline has a number of subjects.

You can use My Tools to create alerts, save citations and searches, and set up "My Favourite Journals".

Coverage varies according to each journal, but in some cases extends as far back as 1879.

Other notable databases include the EBSCOhost Education Research Complete database and the ProQuest Theses & Dissertations database.

Education Research Complete This link opens in a new window
An EBSCOhost database which covers all levels of education from early childhood to higher education, and all educational specialties, such as multilingual education, health education, and testing.
Education Research Complete provides indexing and abstracts for more than 2,100 journals. Of these, more than 1,200 are available in full-text. It also has the full text of more than 500 books and monographs, and of numerous education-related conference papers.

Education Research Complete is one of many databases available in EBSCOhost. It is also available as part of the EBSCOhost (Education) package, which also includes the important education database, ERIC.

Once on the EBSCOhost search screen, you can change databases by clicking on the Choose Databases link above the search boxes. All EBSCOhost databases can be searched individually or in any combination.
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global This link opens in a new window
A ProQuest database of Doctoral and Masters theses from US, European, UK, and Irish universities. It includes millions of citations of theses, many of which are also available in full-text.
This database covers all subjects and provides:

* millions of searchable citations to dissertation and theses from 1861 to the present day;
* more than a million full text dissertations available for download in PDF format (please note that PDF downloading can be slow as many files are large);
* the full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997;
* more than 2 million titles available for purchase as printed copies.

Each dissertation published since July 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Masters theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts. In many cases, citations of the dissertations and theses include 24-page previews.

More than 70,000 full-text dissertations and theses are added each year.

Once you are in the ProQuest platform, you can change to any other ProQuest database by clicking on the hamburger menu at the top left of screen, then on Change databases. There are nearly 100 databases in the ProQuest platform, covering a range of subjects and source material. All ProQuest databases can be searched individually or in combination.

Saving searches and creating alerts

Most databases provide the option to save your searches and set up alerts to help you keep up to date with the latest research. To do this you will need to create an account within a database which is separate from your Charles Sturt University login.

A search alert will be sent to you after you have saved a database search that you run periodically.
A table of contents (ToC) alert will allow you to receive the table of contents lists for selected recent journal issues.

To find out how to set this up within different databases see the Library's Keep up to date with the literature website.

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.

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.

Library

Literature Review & Research Skills Guide: Use Journal Databases

Choosing a database

Saving searches and creating alerts

Want to learn more about journal databases?

Full text

Searching in a database