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Bibliographic Research Skills

Build an effective reasearch strategy and discover the best ways to find and evaluate resources for your work.

Conduct your research

You have two options to carry out your research. By choosing both, you will have a better chance that your bibliographic search will be more exhaustive. 
•    Search on SearchLib and bibliographic databases using the keywords you have defined
•    Start from a relevant academic article, book or author and search for other related publications (citation search) 

In both cases, remember to log in to your Library account to be able to access online resources. 

 

 

 

Conduct your research

SearchLib is a search engine. By typing keywords into a Google like search box, this tool queries the majority of the Library print, electronic and digital collections. 

You can either use the Simple search or launch a more refined search using the Advanced search feature.  

Simple search 

  1. Type keywords, a title or an author's name in the search box. 
  2. Choose the search scope: Library Catalog, Electronic Resources, Course Reserves, Dissertations, IRIS, ASBOC Archives. 
  3. Filter your results using the left hand-side menu (availability, resource type, date, etc.) 

Advanced search 

Advanced search allows you to combine different keywords within specific search fields and set filters before lauching your search. 

Discover how to make the most out of SearchLib in our dedicated guide!

The Library also provides several databases that can be useful for bibliographic research:
 Multidisciplinary

Specialized

Refer to the databases that you find in the Library guide for your subject area.

This is a type of advanced search that starts from a specific author, article, or academic book that you feel is important and interesting for your research (e.g., an author who is an expert in that area of research or a study recommended by your professor or selected from the results of your own literature search) and allows you to find related publications through the citation chain. 
Web of Science, Scopus, Business Source Ultimate  offer you the opportunity to follow the chain of citations both forward in time (more recent publications citing in their bibliographies the author, article or book from which you started), and backward (previous publications cited in the bibliography of the author, article or book from which you started).
The idea is that publications citing the same studies deal with the same or otherwise related topic. Citation search can be useful for:

  • Expand and update your bibliographic research 
  • Determine the impact of a study in a specific research field based on the number of times it has been cited by other researchers 
  • Observe how an argument, an idea, a theory has developed
  • Discover different insights and perspectives that examine your research topic 
  • Discover relevant articles from unexpected disciplines
  • Find other keywords to use for your bibliographic research
     

Here are a few examples:


Web of Science


Citations: this is the list of the most recent publications in Web of Science that cite your source document
Cited References: this is the list of previous publications cited in the bibliography of your source document
View Related Records: it allows you to view documents within Web of Science that cite all or some of the publications included in the bibliography of your source document, and for this reason may be correlated through the same or similar topic


Scopus



Cited by: this is the list of the most recent publications in Web of Science that cite your source document
Related documents: it allows you to view documents within Scopus that cite all or some of the publications included in the bibliography of your source document, and for this reason may be correlated through the same or similar topic
References: this is the list of previous publications cited in the bibliography of your source document


Business Source Ultimate

Times Cited in this Database: this is the list of the most recent publications in Business Source Ultimate that cite your source document
Cited References: is the list of previous publications included in the bibliography of your source document


Google Scholar 

Google Scholar also allows you to search by citation, but only for the most recent publications that cite the paper you're starting from and for related ones.