EBSCO Search Guidelines
- 1. Best Practices: EBSCOhost I need to find 5 key articles on my topic Do you need to find key articles on your research topic? EBSCOhost features several useful tools to assist you in finding the most relevant articles to your research topic. Here are 8 steps you can follow to help ensure successful research when using EBSCOhost databases. Creating a Search 1. Select the Advanced Search Screen – Using Advanced Search screen allows you to refine your search by selecting a search field from the drop-down menu for each term you enter. Searchable fields include Subject Term, Author, Title, and Journal Name. 2. Use Boolean operators – Select And, Or, or Not from the drop-down menus next to the Find fields to combine your lines of search. 3. Limit Your Search – Be sure to check the Full Text limiter in the Limit your results area, to make sure you only get articles that contain the full text available from EBSCOhost. If you would like, you can also limit your result list items to: • Publication Type – including Periodicals, Newspapers, or Books. • Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals – include only articles from publications that have been reviewed and/or qualified by a selected panel of acknowledged experts in the field of study covered by the journal. • Published Date From – search for articles within a specified date range. February 2010
- 2. The Result List On the Result List, you can refine your results in several ways. 4. Narrow Your Results – Under the Narrow Results by column on the left, narrow your results by Source Type, Subject term, Publication, or Geography. 5. Re-sort the Result List – Click the drop- down arrow to the right of the Sort by menu to re-sort your result list by Date, Source, Author, or Relevance. 6. Limit Your Results again – Still too many results appearing? Under Limit your results in the right-hand column of the Result List, you can apply more limiters to your search. Click the Search Options link to access all limiters, expanders, and search modes available to you. Article Preview Hover 7. Preview Article Information – The article preview hover feature saves you time by allowing you to preview article detail information right from your result list. Simply hold your pointer over the hover icon at the end of an article’s title to read a partial abstract, access full text, add the article to the folder, or access the full article details. February 2010
- 3. My EBSCOhost Folder 8. Save your articles – The My EBSCOhost folder lets you to permanently store articles, images, and persistent links in your own personal folder. My EBSCOhost also allows you to create custom folders, which offer you the ability to organize your research and also share it with other EBSCOhost users. Creating your own My EBSCOhost folder is easy. Simply click the Sign In to My EBSCOhost link at the top of the screen. Click Create a New Account and fill in your information to set up your own free personal folder. February 2010