Library tutorial for agricultural, animal & veterinary sciences

Why you should search databases for journal articles

Journal articles are essential for discovering original research, or for surveying recent developments in a topic.

You can search for journal articles by using Summon. Summon lets you search online and print content from the Library's research collections.
This means you will find books and journal articles in the one search. Summon is available from the Library home page. For more information, see What is Summon.

Summon is a good place to start, however you need to also search subject specific databases, such as CAB Abstracts or multidisciplinary databases such as Scopus which allow more complex searching and index many more journals than are covered in Summon.
For example, the database Scopus includes article references from over 15,400 peer reviewed journals. A search in Scopus will cover over 37 million article references.

Where to search databases

To find databases from the Library home page, you can:

• click on the Databases tab to view a list of general databases or subject specific ones.

• choose the Resource Guides from the Library's website and then find your subject or course to see the recommended databases.
  

• Click the Catalogue link and do a title search for the database.

If you are accessing a database from a computer that isn't on the Uof A network, such as a home computer, you will be prompted to enter your username and password.

Databases differ in their commands, but if you follow the principles in the next section, you should be able to search most databases.
Remember to use online help screens for detailed commands.

Key search steps are:

• choosing an appropriate database(s)
• choosing search terms and deciding how to search them
• searching and displaying references
• evaluating references
• using the Library catalogue to locate the references you have found