Databases

Search Engine vs Databases

Should I use a Search Engine or a Database?

It really depends on your purpose and intentions, but probably both is a good idea. Start with Search Engines for a general overview, but think critically about the webpages you visit and assess their credibility. If you want to include great quality information that goes deeper into a subject and gives you the ingredients to demonstrate higher-order thinking skills, then you need to dig into databases.   

TIP: Wherever you search for information, if it is for an assessment task, download the Research Process Journal template and keep a record of websites, journal articles and whatever you think you are likely to use in your assessment task. The journal helps you keep track of where the good information is and how you found it. 

Free Access to Databases Via State Library of NSW

NOTE: The State Library is great, at the bottom of the page is also a list of Open Access (free) databases, plus the nifty Unpaywall Chrome extension that lets you know if there is a legally accessible free version of an article even when you are browsing locked databases.

Video: Introduction to Accessing and Using State Library of NSW databases

If a standard keyword search is not working well enough... it's time to bust out the Boo-Yeah Boolean Operators! Read on to collect this skill: 

OR

If your keyword search has too few results and you want to make your search less specific, use the OR operator, it widens results. In the example in Table 1, "enterprise or business" will return results that have either enterprise or business, and results that have both enterprise or business.

AND

If your keyword search has too many results and you want to narrow your search to be more specific, use AND. The example above will only return results that have both economy and finance.

NOT

If you want to exclude particular results or keywords from your search, use NOT. In the example above, you will find search results that have enterprise, but not Star Trek. This would help if you were searching for information about enterprises, but did not want search results that mention Star Trek.

When you use combinations of operators in a search it is called "nesting". You must either use the advanced search interface or use rounded brackets, eg:

(economy OR enterprise) AND capitalism NOT Star Trek

 -this search above is interpreted at the results can include the word economy or enterprise, it must include capitalism, it must not contain Star Trek. 

Using Truncation

Wildcard Searching for Multiple Characters

By adding an asterisk (*) to a partially finished word, the database will search for all variations of that word.

For Example: 

politic* = politic, politics, political, politician, politicians etc.

life* = lifestyle, lifeless, lifelong, lifeline etc.

This is a way of opening up search results and simultaneously searching for all the variables of words. 

Wildcard Searching for Single Characters

By adding a question mark (?) to a word, the database will search for all variations of that word.

For Example: 

wom?n = women, woman etc.

Keyword vs Exact Phrase Searching

Your typical search is a keyword search, typing: global economic superpower will search for global AND economic AND superpower. So the three keywords will appear somewhere in the article, they may or may not be in sequence or even in the same paragraph. 

There are two ways to create an exact phrase search: you can uses quotation marks around a sequence of words in a search, eg. "global economic superpower" will only give you results that have this sequence of three words occurring in that exact order, eg "China is a rising global economic superpower"; alternatively in an advanced search change the button "keyword" to "exact phrase". Different databases may vary this term.

Exact phrase searches are great for pinpointing very specific chunks of information.

Field Searching

In addition to searching Keywords, you have options to search for other fields including Author, Subject, Article Title etc. 

This can be used to widen searches or narrow them.  

Search Limiters

These are great for narrowing searches and finding results that will help you. These typically appear on the lefthand side of the database. Limiters are often titled things like "Refine Your Search". They include options like: Peer-Reviewed Only, Full Text Only, Abstract Only, Date Range, Journal Only, Subject etc.

Limiting search results to include only things like "full-text" articles can be very helpful and speed your research process. "Date range" can also be helpful if you only want to find historical articles, or recent articles.

Citation Tools

Many databases have free citation generators within them. Look for buttons labelled "Cite" or "Cite This" and typically you will be given a few options if citation formats. Save these citations straight to a doc for use if you decide to use the reference in your writing task.

Unless your teacher has instructed you, use Harvard (Author-Date) for a citation style.

Tip 1: Your free access to databases through the State Library of NSW and UOW may provide you access to different databases. It's worth exploring multiple databases.

Tip 2: Databases tend to specialise in subject areas, sometimes multiple subject areas; so a database that might be great for your Biology assignment may be terrible for your English assignment.

Tip 3: On the database search page, there are always different tools and options to refine your search. Try using these to pinpoint the information you are looking for.  

Tip 4: In the Subject Guides section of this website, there are specific guides that often list which State Library of NSW databases are most suited to specific subjects. These include Stage 6 subjects like Economics, English, Historical Investigations & History Extension, Geography, Mathematics, Sciences, Society & Culture, and TAS.

Justifying Your Sources

Do you want to learn how to use metrics like 'Journal Impact Factor' and 'h-index' to gather the information that will contribute to evaluating articles? Have a look at this university guide to metrics. 

Tools to find data about authors and their publishing statistics: 

• Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature

• Scopus Author Search will give you a limited preview including how many times they have been cited, how many documents they have published and their h-index (a measure of the authors impact)

• 
  

Tools to find out data about sources of information, mostly published journals:

Scopus Source Search (#Note: the "Subject Area" button is a drop-down menu that can be changed to other fields including "Title" which would include the journal title.

List of Free Access Online Databases & Tools

First is an interesting tool, it is a Chrome Extension Add-On called Unpaywall. Just in case you are not aware, a Chrome Extension is a little thing you can add to your Chrome Web Browser and it modifies the program. Unpaywall is an extension that notices when you are in an academic database, and if it is a database that requires payment for access to the full article, Unpaywall searches for a legally accessible free copy and displays a green unlock button that you can click and access.  Click here to add Unpaywall to your Chrome Web Browser.

Free Open Access Databases:

1. ScienceOpen: "Functioning as a research and publishing network, ScienceOpen offers OA to more than 74 million articles in all areas of science. Although you do need to register to view the full text of articles, registration is free (Scribendi, 2024).

2. CORE: "CORE is a multidisciplinary aggregator of Open Access (OA) research. CORE has the largest collection of OA articles available. It allows users to search more than 219 million OA articles" (Scribendi, 2024).

3. Directory of Open Access Journals: "A multidisciplinary, community-curated directory, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) gives researchers access to high-quality peer-reviewed journals. It has archived more than two million articles from 17,193 journals, allowing you to either browse by subject or search by keyword" (Scribendi, 2024).

4.  Social Science Research Network: "The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a collection of papers from the social sciences community. It is a highly interdisciplinary platform used to search for scholarly articles related to 67 social science topics. SSRN has a variety of research networks for the various topics available through the free scholarly database... 700,000 abstracts & 600,000 full-text papers... You must become a member to use the services, but registration is free" (Scribendi, 2024).

5. Public Library of Science & PLOS Journal Search: Public Library of Science (PLOS) is a big player in the world of OA science. Publishing 12 OA journals, the nonprofit organization is committed to facilitating openness in academic research. According to the site, "all PLOS content is at the highest possible level of OA, meaning that scientific articles are immediately and freely available to anyone, anywhere."

6. Bielefeld Academic Search Engine: The Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) is operated by the Bielefeld University Library in Germany, and it offers more than 240 million documents from more than 8,000 sources. Sixty percent of its content is Open Access" and you can filter for open access only. "BASE has rigorous inclusion requirements for content... Search results can be organized by author, title, or date" and free open access. Basic and advanced search.

7. EconBiz: "EconBiz is a great resource for economic and business studies. A service of the Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, it offers access to full texts online, with the option of searching for OA material only. EconBiz has an incredibly useful research skills section, with resources such as Guided Walk, a service to help students and researchers navigate searches, evaluate sources, and correctly cite references" 

8. BioMed Central: BioMed Central provides OA research from more than 300 peer-reviewed journals. While originally focused on resources related to the physical sciences, math, and engineering, plus other subjects.