Science Direct is a database of full text
articles from leading scientific journals.
Luckily for us, that includes content from
several marine biology publications.
The quick search box is available at the top
of the page.
From here, you can use one or more of the
fields to formulate your search.
Keywords lets us search for articles based
on terms which may appear anywhere in the
document.
For example, I can search coral reef.
This gives me over 34,000 results, which is
a lot.
I’ll want to narrow that down.
To perform a more detailed or precise search,
select Advanced search.
Here, you can use one or more of the fields
to formulate your search.
Let's search for articles about coral reefs
again.
Quotation marks can be used to specify terms
which must appear next to each other in the
document.
For example, we can put “coral reef” in
quotes to exclude results about other types
of non-coral reefs.
This doesn’t give me as many results as
Google, but there’s still a lot.
I will need to narrow down my topic to a specific
issue, such as coral reef bleaching.
Our search criteria displays above the search
results.
Here, we can edit our search terms.
We can use Boolean operators to include or
exclude additional terms in our search.
Boolean operators are a fancy name for three
words: AND, OR, and BUT.
We use them to tell a database how we want
to structure our search.
AND narrows down your search by retrieving
sources containing all of the terms.
For example, a search for “coral reef”
AND bleaching would return only articles that
include both terms.
OR expands your search by retrieving sources
containing any of the terms.
Let’s search for "coral reef" AND (bleaching
OR whitening)".
Notice that I’m using parentheses around
bleaching or whitening.
This tells the database to return articles
referring only to coral reef bleaching, only
to coral reef whitening, or to both coral
reef bleaching and whitening.
Finally, NOT narrows down your search by excluding
sources containing the 2nd term.
For example, a search for "coral reef" AND
(bleaching OR whitening) NOT "Great Barrier
Reef" would return articles referring to coral
reef bleaching that do not include the Great
Barrier Reef.
You can also use a minus sign to exclude sources.
Make sure to type your Boolean Operators in
all caps.
Other databases will include Boolean Operators
as a drop down menu in their advanced search.
For example, the Advanced Search interface
for GREENfile allows you to enter keywords
separately.
So, what else can we do to make our search
more specific?
Well, we can enter a publishing year or date
range for the documents.
Or leave the field blank if we want documents
from all years available.
Using a hyphen, let's specify a date range.
We can limit the search to particular types
of documents, such as research articles or
encyclopedias.
If we don't select any document types, all
types will be automatically included.
Remember that research is a cyclical process.
You may need to try several combinations of
keywords or even look in a different database.
