Lung Cancer in Foundry Workers

This is our largest database which allows you to search for articles in over 16,000 journals. It includes all journal literature indexed in Medline (the United States National Library of Medicine's premier bibliographic database) from 1996 onwards.

Obviously we won't have some of the journals, but there's a database called Libraries Australia (you'll find it by title in the catalogue) which you can use to check which libraries hold the titles we don't have.

Boolean Logic

Logic is a very important element in seaching, and faulty logic can really skew your search results. The search boxes in Scopus help you to keep your logic logical. In other databases you'll need to take care of the logic without this assistance and you may find our notes on how Boolean searching works helpful.

Searching Scopus for Lung Cancer in Foundry Workers

Below is an example of a basic search in Scopus. Further down the page are some additional options you may like to try.

Notice that we've allowed for either "lung cancer" or "lung neoplasms". Using inverted commas makes sure the words are searched as phrases, not separated.

The first search box we've left set to the default which will search in Article Title, Abstract, Keywords, however we've changed the second search so that foundry is searched only in Article Title.

Now all you need to do is click on Search

When the results are displayed you'll find that each citation has a link to check for full text - to enable you to see if we have electronic access to the article

If you look at the far right of the image above you'll see the number 4.
If you click on this link it willl display 4 articles which include this article in their reference list.

There's also a link that lets you view Abstract + Refs
This is a surprisingly useful option that may lead you to a lot of other relevant articles

If we click on the Abstract + Refs link for this article, then look at the first reference in the list, we find that it's been cited 29 times

Clicking on the link will display the list of 29 articles which have cited it in their reference list.

Some Additional Options - If you're feeling adventurous

Every time you change the words you use your search results will change. Sometimes you'll need to remember to allow for synonyms, differences in British and American spelling, and singular and plural forms of words. Remember that you will be able to use truncation (there are two examples below using *), but the symbols may vary from database to database.

Here are some more search options you might like to explore

• Try searching "occupational exposure" instead of foundry in the second search box.
• Try searching smelter* instead of foundry in the second search box - using * on the end of a word allows for the word to be searched in its present form, or with any other endings
• Try searching cancer* in the first search box, and foundry in the second - using * in this search would include cancer or cancers or cancerous.