How to find primary literature

How to find articles using my favorite search engine.

I prefer Google Scholar as a way to find articles, your mileage may vary. Please explore both GS and Web of Science. This tutorial will focus on GS.

1. How to get there. Go to google.com There is a black bar on the top of the screen. Choose "More", scroll to the bottom and choose "Even More". This will bring up a page of Google services. Scroll to the bottom, the category is "Specialized Search" and on the right side, click "Scholar". Or follow this link: http://scholar.google.com/

2. You will now see this screen.

a. If you are after a simple, subject based search, then put the words in here and hit the blue button. Voila!

b. There are MORE tools available. So, click the v (downward arrow) button just at the right hand edge of the search box. This takes you to ADVANCED search. Oooooo.

From here, you can search by author, date, journal, etc.

3. Okay, search something. Anything is fine, my example is Rhyacotriton. I search this, and I get a bunch of results. First, let's pay attention to the left side of the screen. The general type of result is labeled on the left, just before the title, in brackets. This tells me, for example, if the results is a [Book] or a [Citation]. If there is no label, then the work is an article. Below each title (in blue), is a section in green. First, the authors names are listed, then the year, then the journal the article was published in, and last, the compiler who has the rights to distribute the online copy (JSTOR, Wiley, etc). Below that (in black) are the first few sentances of the abstract. Below that is another blue set of text that reads thus:

Cited by Related articles Versions Import into BibTeX More

These will be your friends. Each is a link. Cited by takes you to all the papers that cite this paper.

Related articles takes you to anything Google thinks is related to this

Versions shows you where all online this paper is located

Import is for a citation service, we'll talk about that later

More is sometimes useful, but often not, as there are sometimes choices here that will take you to a cached copy of the text, but often not so much.

Obviously, these differ depending on the article. The example I picked has some different choices. I'll trust your abilities to figure them out by experimentation.

Okay, now let's look at the right side of the page. For SOME of the articles, you will see a blue link on the right side.

(note, if you are on a networked OSU computer, you will see a link for all articles). This link will take you directly to a full text version, for free. If there is not a link, you still have options, but that is a post for another time.

The rest is up to your powers of internet use. Be creative. If you don't get what you want, try something different. Search under both common and scientific names. If you get too many results, click the down arrow and limit the search. Use what you know. Are there specific journals, authors, or areas that might get you what you are looking for? Incorporate those into your search terms.