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Literature Reviews

Which databases to use?

Choosing sources for your Literature Review

Recommended Databases for your Subject area are listed in the Subject Support Guides (under Support & Training on the Library Homepage)

 

A-Z of Databases: A full A-Z of all the Libraries Databases and a short description of content can be accessed on the Library Homepage

 

Contact the Research Support Librarian for a consultation

Academic Bibliographic/Citation Databases (some of them !)

Bibliographic (Descriptive & Abstract) Citation Databases: Australian Education Index, British Education Index, Education Resources Information Centre (ERIC), Medline,Psyc INFO, Scopus, Sociological Abstracts, Web of Science

Note: Abstracting Databases will link out to full text if available & they search huge numbers of articles !

Full Text Databases: Academic Search Complete, Business Source Complete, Communication & Mass Media Complete, Emerald Management 175, Heine Online Law Journal Library, IEEE Xplore, Institute of Physics Electronic Journals (IOP), JSTOR Archive, Science Direct, Westlaw IE & Westlaw UK

 

Unsure? Speak to a Librarian

Are Databases enough?

You could also:

  • Visually scan reference lists/bibliographies from relevant studies
  •  Hand search key journals and conference proceedings
  • Contact study authors, experts, manufacturers, and other organisations
  • Search relevant Internet resources

Grey Literature

Grey literature is any information that is not produced by commercial publishers. It includes research reports, working papers, conference proceedings, theses, preprints, white papers, and reports produced by government departments, academics, business and industry.

 

Search the Library by keyword, individual name, and organisation

MU Research Archive Library (MURAL)

World Cat the collections of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide

Copac a merged online catalogue of major libraries in the UK and Ireland

LENUS (HSE Health Repository)

OpenGray (Grey Literature in Europe)

ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories)

Science.gov (gateway to U.S Federal Science)

Google Scholar

 

Citation Tracking

Why track citations?

Citation tracking is used to discover how many times a particular article has been cited by other articles. As a general rule, high quality articles attract a greater number of citations. Citations are also used to measure the Impact of a particular Article/Journal or the Research performance of a Individual Researcher or Academic Institution.

The main indexers of citations are the Scopus & Web of Science databases.

More on measuring research impact here:

Conference Proceedings