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Contact your Faculty Librarians on in-depth research questions |
Follow the steps below to find an article in OneSearch:
Click to see steps in screenshots
Access Googles Scholar via this connection Google Scholar@PolyU.on the library website to locate Library’s Full Text Articles in Google Scholar search results.
By doing this you will be able to directly access the full text of the articles (we subscribed to) through PolyU eLinks.
Follow the steps below:
Click to see steps in screenshots
Google Scholar setting - link with PolyU Library
You may also change the setting in your Google Scholar to link it up with Library subscribed databases. This is identical to clicking on Google Scholar@PolyU via Library homepage.
Click to see steps in screenshots
Search in a database
Searching within a database helps you narrow your search as the coverage of the database can be very selective. Some databases focus on one specific area, which can help you filter out the contents that are not relevant to the subject; some may cover peer-reviewed journals only, to ensure the articles covered are of certain quality.
Almost all databases will provide an Advanced Search option, which allows you to search in a more precise way, e.g. search within article title, journal title, or subject terms (that are tagged to each article). This helps you find the most relevant results quickly and effectively.
Many Health related databases also have one's own controlled vocabulary built-in, to help users to retrieve results by the database's preferred indexed terms. To name a few commonly used controlled vocabularies: MeSH, EmTree, CINAHL Subject Headings.
Note that login with NetID is required to access the following databases off campus.
To locate reference material in Chinese, try these:
[Note] If you want to conduct a comprehensive literature review on a research topic, or is involved in a Systematic Review, see the details in the other subject guide: Systematic Search for Systematic Review.
Search in a citation database
Web of Science and Scopus are two large multidisciplinary citation databases.
They do not provide full-text articles, but they are very helpful for exploring related articles by looking at citing articles (who cited the article) and references (who have been cited by the article). If you do not have an idea which databases or journals should go for, start with these two.
Full text not available? Try ILL.
Request a copy by filling up a form via our InterLibrary Loan (ILL) service. Alternatively, you may follow the steps below to place a request while you are searching.
Click to see steps in screenshots
Once you found a relevant article (i.e. a seed document), there are several ways to get more related articles from it. The most commonly used way is relying on the "related articles" or "recommended readings" suggested by the database. Below is an example in OneSearch:
Another skill is citation chaining. The assume is: If a paper citing or being cited by another paper, they normally share similar topics. Citation chaining can be further divided into Backward Chaining and Forward Chaining.
Backward chaining means locating other papers cited by the seed document. You may simply locate those papers from the reference list of your seed document:
One disadvantage of backward citation is: you can only locate the materials published before the seed document. However, you can locate more up-to-date materials by Forward Chaining.
Forward citation chaining means locating other papers citing the seed document.
You can make use of OneSearch, or other citation databases (like Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar) to locate those papers.
PolyU Institutional Research Archive (PIRA) is an online platform that actively collects and disseminates the research and scholarly outputs created by the PolyU community. Learn more at https://libguides.lb.polyu.edu.hk/ira/intro