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Library Guides

Doctoral Researcher Development: Literature Searching

A guide for Doctoral Researchers at University of Westminster

Journal articles

Tip: when searching for articles on Library Search, click 'Expand my results' on the left hand side of the results page to include results beyond our collection. If you see an article you want to read but we don't have access to it, put in a request via our 'Can't Find What You Need?' form.

Tip: do forward citation tracking using Google Scholar or Web of Science on journal articles you are interested in. In doing so, you will (i) identify more recently published research on the topic, and (ii) be able to see in what context the original article was cited. Not all citations are endorsements!

Tip: use Altmetric Bookmarklet on articles with a DOI to see their Altmetric data. (Altmetrics - alternative metrics - are complementary to traditional citation-based metrics and measure the attention an article receives online e.g. on social media, in policy documents and in mainstream media coverage. Learn more about Altmetrics on altmetric.com).

Open Access Research

open access padlock

Searching native interfaces of databases

Google Scholar

Google Scholar Search

BrowZine

Literature Searching training session

SCONUL Scheme, British Library and More

Finding unpublished material

This guide by University of Wolverhampton Library has an extensive list of resources to use when searching for grey literature.

Search for conference outputs:

Use Library Search filters: Resources Type > Conference Paper; Conference Poster

Use Zetoc: Search > Conference Search

Search for theses:

EThOS contains over 500,000 doctoral theses that you can either download instantly or order a scanned copy of.

Use Library Search filters: Resources Type > Thesis

Note: Ethos is still down since the cyber security attack on the British Library last year.

Systematic reviews

Using Archives