How to Find Journal Articles: Searching EDS

Electronic Resources tab searches all the library's resources in a single Google-like search.  This includes all our online resources as well as print books.  

Remember to consider your keywords before you start searching - this is the hardest part of any search!  Think of synonyms (alternative words with the same meaning) and different spelling of words.  Consider how different concepts link together.  This will make your search a lot easier.

Let's try an example search:

action research and primary education

Go to http://libguides.ecae.ac.ae (our library home page) and type your search into the Our e-resources box.

If you do a Google-like search, you might type in: action research primary education
You will get LOTS of results....and even more if you consider using elementary as a synonym for primary!

A tip for both Our e-resources and Google searching:
Narrow down your search by grouping phrases together:  "action research" "primary education"

Your results show both books and journals and other resources, so you can limit by Source Types. If you're looking for academic journal articles, you should select the Academic Journals  limit to see just journal articles.

There are still a large number of results.... and you will see journals which are scholarly (peer-reviewed) as well as journals which are not.

Scholarly peer-reviewed journals are journals which have been reviewed by other experts in the same field before being accepted for publication.  These journals have review boards who ensure the quality of the research being published in the journal. 

Under Limit to, you can limit to just articles from scholarly peer-reviewed journals.

Let's select this.

If you still have lots of results, you might want to:

• consider narrowing down your search with a more specific term which you can add to your search (e.g. what aspect of action research are you interested in?  Are you only interested in what is happening in science education?)
• consider narrowing down by date - e.g. if you want only recent articles (see the option on the left column of your results)
• remember that we haven't even looked at synonyms so think about searching on these terms  (e.g. elementary education)
• consider alternative endings of words  (e.g. educat* will search for education, educating, educated, educates...).

When you find a journal article you'd like to look at, click on the title of the article:

This will take you to the abstract and some other useful information.

A-   The abstract will give you an idea of the usefulness of the journal article for your research needs
B-   Check out the subject terms to see if they might be other good terms for you to search with
C-   A neat link where you can get the reference in APA format to use to reference in your assignments (remember that you may need to make some minor changes though (e.g. indenting the lines after the first line of your reference) 
D-    Click here to go to the full text of the article.

Remember: if you need help in your research process, ask us @ your library!

If you are searching off-campus, you will need to log in at the time you click to go to the full text of any article.  A login screen will appear so enter your usual login and password.  If this doesn't work, try ECAE\yourlogin for the login... and then your password.

If you are having problems with access when trying to log in, ensure you clear cookies from your browser.  IE can cause this problem with OneSearch so it is recommended you use another browser.