Electrical Engineering 4BI6 How to Find Refereed Articles for Your Design Project

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Electrical Engineering 4BI6How to Find Refereed
Articles for Your Design Project

• Linda Michtics, Engineering Liaison Librarian
• Thode Library

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Obectives

• By the end of this session, you will be able to
• define what a refereed (peer reviewed) article is
• find article databases
• search for articles in a database
• find RACER, Refworks and patents databases

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• What are
• Refereed Articles ???

Magazine VS Scholarly publication
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Refereed Articles

• Written by and for researchers/academics
• Longer articles written in a formal scholarly
  style to share facts and research with the
  academic community
• Specific, in depth
• Often include charts and graphs to support
  research findings
• Usually no advertisements
• Include references and bibliography
• Reviewed by peers in the field for quality,
  relevance and appropriateness of journal

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The database to check to determine if a journal
is refereed
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The link to the database
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The icon that indicates that a journal is
refereed.
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How to Find Article Databases

• Steps
• Click Articles/Databases tab on the McMaster
  library homepage
• Search databases by subject if you are not sure
  which database to choose
• Search database by name if you know which
  database you are looking for

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The subjects
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You can type the name of a database if you know
it.
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Best Bets for your Assignment

• Compendex
• IEEE Xplore
• INSPEC
• Medline or Pubmed (medicine)
• BIOSIS (life sciences and biology)
• Science Citation Index Expanded (includes
  biology, biotechnology, medicine)

These three are good for engineering info
These three are good for medical info
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How to Search for Articles in a Database
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Compendex powered by Engineering Village
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Constructing a Search

• Identify main concepts
• Identify synonyms for these concepts (tip use
  online thesaurus)
• When phrase searching, enclose phrase in
  quotation marks eg. human computer interface
• Use boolean operators and, or, not
• Use proximity operators eg. near
• Use asterisk symbol (truncation) for plurals or
  alternative endings eg. canad gets canada,
  canadian, canadians
• Use wildcard symbol ? to replace a single
  character eg. wom?n for woman and women

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Do you know why we put s here?
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Tips for Too Few Results
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Tips for Too Many Results
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One Good Article Strategy

• Find one good article
• Use hyperlinked words from descriptors (main
  heading controlled terms, uncontrolled terms,
  etc.) or authors to find other relevant articles

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Click here and you will get the full-text of the
journal article.
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Set up a RACER account and our library will
order research materials that we dont own.
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Click here for information on RACER.
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Google Scholar

• Searches across many disciplines and sources from
  one place
• Includes peer-reviewed articles, theses, books,
  etc. published by professional societies,
  preprint repositories, universities
• Can link directly to full-text papers that
  McMaster subscribes to if you see get it _at_ Mac
  (this works from on-campus and from home if you
  use your MacID)

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RefWorks

• Web-based citation management software
• FREE to Mac students
• Registration required
• Create one or several accounts
• Store unlimited number of references
• Can move your RefWorks database into
• another database programme (eg. Endnote,
• ProCite, Reference Manager, etc.)

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You can use RefWorks to manage your references.
If you want to learn more, there is an online
tutorial.
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Refworks Demo Using Compendex
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Select Engineering Design
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For design research, check Patent websites and
product Catalogues.
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Summary

• Refereed (peer reviewed) articles
• Finding databases
• Searching for articles in a database
• RACER, Refworks and Patents

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• Questions?

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Need Help? Just ask!

• Visit Research Help Desk in Thode Library,1st
  Floor
• email library_at_mcmaster.ca
• Call ext. 22000
• Chat http//library.mcmaster.ca/justask/
• Contact Linda Michtics, Engineering Liaison
  Librarian michtic_at_mcmaster.ca or ext.
• 23882