Look for articles published by PolyU scholars? Try PIRA!
The PolyU Institutional Research Archive (PIRA) is an online platform that actively collects and disseminates the research and scholarly outputs created by the PolyU community.
Generally, there are three ways to find articles:
Follow the steps below to find an article in OneSearch:
To search articles in Google Scholar, we suggest that you access Google Scholar via the Library homepage, especially when you are out of campus. 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.
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.
Note that login with NetID is required to access the following databases off campus.
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.
AND combines search terms so that each result contains all of the terms. AND narrows your search.
e.g.: youth AND drug finds articles that contain both youth and drug.
OR combines search terms so that each result contains at least one of the terms. OR is often used to connect synonyms or similar concepts. OR broadens your search.
e.g.: youth OR teenager finds articles that contain either youth or teenager or both.
NOT excludes terms so that each result does not contain the term that follows it. NOT narrows your search.
e.g.: drug NOT alcohol finds articles that contain drug but exclude alcohol.
E.g.
Truncations (*) and wildcards (?, #) are used to include different spellings therefore broadens your search.
E.g.:
Truncation and wildcard symbols may vary by database. Check the Help page in the database to learn the symbols and operators that database supports. (or, google database name + "operator" to locate the search help page directly)
Phrase search is used to search the specific expression or concepts. Usually quotation marks "" are used to search the exact phrase. Phrase search narrows your search.
E.g.
In some databases, quotation marks cannot be used with truncation or wildcards. e.g.: "knowledge shar*". Do check the Help page in the database to learn the symbols and operators that database supports.
| Keyword searching | Subject Heading searching |
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Keywords are natural language words or phrases that describe the search topic. Keyword searching looks for the keywords in any field of the record (if not specified). |
Subject headings are a group of "controlled vocabularies" that describe the content of each item. These controlled vocabularies are usually given by subject specialists or indexers. Subject heading searching looks for the subject heading terms in the subject heading field (e.g. Subject, Subject Terms) of the record. Commonly used subject headings include MeSH and Emtree, both are used to search biomedical literature. |
Follow the steps below to install the bookmarklet to your browser.
Watch a short video to learn how to install bookmarklet in Chrome:
EndNote Click (formerly Kopernio) is a free browser plug-in which helps you to get full-text PDF faster by securely connecting you to the Library’s journal subscriptions and open access content. Follow the steps below to install the plug-in in your browser.
LibKey is a free browser plug-in which provides instant links to full-text content for articles subscribed to by the Library - or open access alternatives - as you do research on the web and come across literature. The service covers thousands of scholarly publisher websites, Wikipedia and major databases such as PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science.
Unpaywall is a free browser plug-in which helps you to skip the paywall on millions of journal articles and get permissible full-text PDF. Follow the steps below to install the plug-in in your browser.
