Lung Cancer in Foundry Workers

Last update: 7 March 2011,
by Maureen Bell

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 searching, 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 the PubMed tutorial from the National Library of Medicine in the United States gives a clear explanation of how Boolean logic works.

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.

Before you begin your search you'll need to open a second search box, by clicking on Add search field.

Now you will have two boxes - one for each component of your search.

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 Check fulltext options - 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 8.
If you click on this link it will display 8 more recent articles which include this article in their reference list.

Click on the title of the article to see the abstract and list of references
This is a surprisingly useful option that may lead you to a lot of other relevant articles

If we click on the title of this article, then look at the first reference in the list, we find that it's been cited 32 times

Clicking on the link will display the list of 32 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.