Finding Journal Articles
When searching for journal articles in VSU’s databases, here are some important strategies to keep in mind.
Use Keywords
- Keywords help focus your search on what you’re looking for.
- Instead of this phrasing: "What are strategies to increase student motivation in Title I schools?”
Try: student motivation AND Title I
Boolean Operators
There are three Boolean operators – AND, OR and NOT.
AND
Helps narrow your search.
Take the example from above: student motivation AND Title I
We tell the search to look for all articles that contain both of these phrases “student motivation” AND “Title I”.
OR
Helps broaden your search. We tell the search that we will accept both possibilities in our search results. Oftentimes, synonyms are linked using OR.
Example: Title I OR Elementary and Secondary Education Act OR ESEA
NOT
Can help make your search more precise. If a result that is different than what you intended keeps dominating your search results, you can use NOT to remove it.
Example: If you were interested in what motivates students in Title I schools in every grade BUT sixth grade, you could search:
student motivation AND (Title I OR Elementary and Secondary Education Act OR ESEA) NOT sixth grade
Limiters
- With each result page, there is a section on the right that gives you options to limit your results. You can select limiters like:
- Full Text
- Peer-reviewed/scholarly*
- A specific journal
- Subject
- Location
- Publication date
*When searching for journal articles, your sources are most likely required to be scholarly/peer reviewed/refereed.
Experiment
- Try entering your search terms in quotations marks or parentheses.
- Quotation marks can help keep your search terms together.
So instead of: student motivation
Try: "student motivation"
- Parentheses can be useful if a keyword has different terms that can be used to refer to it. Putting these terms in parentheses tells the search to look for all of these terms. This strategy can help you get more relevant results.
Example: ("Title I" OR "Elementary and Secondary Education Act" OR ESEA)
Once you have found an article, you will probably want to read it. To access the article, you will look for symbols like these:
Click on the respective symbol to access the article.
HTML Full Text or Online Full Text
As a rule of thumb, avoid HTML Full Text when possible as it will resemble a web page and will not contain page numbers, making citing more difficult.
PDF Full Text or PDF
PDF Full Text links you to a PDF copy of the article that you can then e-mail to yourself or download.
Find It @ VSU
If you see the Find It @ VSU button, this indicates that there is an extra step to access the article. The article may be found in another database or resource or it might available through an Interlibrary Loan (ILL).
Journals by Subject
If you have a citation and you would like to know if the library has access to the article, you can use Journals by Subject to find out.
In the above example, Applied Linguistics is the title of the journal.
You can access Journals by Subject from Odum Library's home page.
1. Click on Journals by Subject.
2. Enter journal title in the Find e-Journal by Title search box and click Search.
Example: Applied Linguistics.
3. Find the corresponding journal title in the search results. Click on Online access.
4. Examine the information in the View Online tab. This shows the access that Odum Library has to the title in question. Some journal titles will be available from multiple sources but have different availability or access depending on the database or publisher.
Example: Applied Linguistics is available from Oxford University Press. Odum Library has access to journal articles between 1/1/1996 to Present.
5. Click on the blue link after Full text availability
6. In the database or on the publisher's website, use additional information from the citation (like author, year, article title, volume, issue, page number) to locate the article.
GIL-Find@VSU
You can also use the journal title to search in the library's catalog for online access or physical copies of the journal. If necessary, you can refine your results by selecting Journals under Format on the left hand side of the page.
If the journal is available in print at Odum Library, you will see the "Available at" and the location of the item in the result list. If the journal is available electronically, you will see Online Access in the result list.
Example: According to the image below, Odum Library only has access to this journal online.
Print Journals
Print journals are located on the first floor of the library. They are arranged alphabetically by title (does not include the, an, a).
Journals by Subject
Allows you to search the library collection for specific journals by title. This is useful if your professor gives you a citation for an article you are supposed to read or if you find an article while searching Google Scholar you can search the library to see if we subscribe to the journal in which the article was printed.
Searching within Journals
If we have access to an journal electronically, you may be able to perform a search within that specific journal. The process may vary depending on if we have access through a database or through the publisher of the journal.
Do you have questions about searching within a specific journal?
We want to help: Contact the Reference Desk.
Boolean Operators
Boolean Operators
- Allow a database search to be narrowed, broadened or made more precise.
- There are three Boolean operators: AND, OR, and NOT.
- AND, OR, NOT are inserted between each search term.
AND
- Used for narrowing or focusing a search topic.
- Specifies that both search terms must be present in the results.
Example: Teenagers AND Violence
OR
- Used for expanding or broadening a search topic.
- Specifies that either search term can be present in the results.
- Often used to include synonyms or related terms.
Example: Teenager OR Juvenile OR Adolescent
NOT
- Used to eliminate false hits, or get rid of that one term that you don't want in your results list.
- Specifies that the first term but not the second can be present in the results.
Example: Teenagers NOT Violence.
