Finding Journal Articles & Grey Literature
You can search for your topic using Summon. You may wish to limit your search to Scholarly & Peer Review.
You can also search one of these specialized databases to find journal articles and grey literature (e.g. conference proceedings, government and NGO reports, theses & dissertations). They offer more functionality than Summon.
- Agricultural & Environmental Science Database (AESD) This link opens in a new windowThe Agricultural & Environmental Science database (AESD) facilitates in-depth research and comprehensive literature reviews across the earth, atmospheric & aquatic sciences. Includes Agricola.
- CABI Digital Library This link opens in a new windowArticles, ebooks, and data sheets on agriculture, animal health, crop protection, forestry, global health, human nutrition, horticulture, and natural resources management. Includes Cab Abstracts & Global Health databases.
- DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals This link opens in a new windowDOAJ electronic journals available in the UBC collection. This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. Journals in the directory covering all subjects and languages.
- Google Scholar This link opens in a new windowWorld's largest academic search engine providing free searching to a full range of scholarly literature (ie. peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, pre-prints, abstracts, technical reports).
- ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global This link opens in a new windowIncludes millions of searchable citations to dissertations and theses from 1861 to the present day together with over a million full-text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format.
- Web of Science Core Collection This link opens in a new windowMultidisciplinary database of journal articles and conference proceedings, used for citation analysis of research. Includes access to EndNote Basic, a web-based version of EndNote.
- UBC Theses and DissertationsUBC graduate theses and dissertations are available through the Open Collections portal dating back to 1919.
Google Search Tips
Google can be useful for searching the websites of government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community groups and companies to find press releases, reports, etc.
Here are a few commands to focus your search. You can also use the Google Advanced search if you can't remember the commands.
- Phrase search using quotation marks: “community forestry”
- Keyword search in the webpage title only: allintitle:“community forestry”
- File Format search (e.g. pdf documents only): filetype:pdf
- Restrict search to a specific website or domain (e.g. FAO): site:fao.org
- Other useful domains are country codes (ca), org, edu, com
Tips for Searching Databases
- Search for a phrase using quotation marks, e.g. "community forestry"
- Combine search terms with OR to expand a search, e.g. governance OR management
- Combine search terms with AND to narrow a search, e.g. "community forestry" AND governance
- Search variations of a word using truncation, e.g. forest* to search forest, forests, forestry
- Put it altogether using search boxes or parentheses, e.g. "community forest*" AND (governance OR management)
Wildcards
Wildcards are signs that stand in for a letter and allow you to search various spellings. For example:
col?r searches for "color" and "colour"
Note: the question mark is used for the UBC Library catalogue, but other databases may use other symbols such as ?, #, and $.
See this wiki page for a more comprehensive guide.
Search Worksheet
Before diving into your search, it's a good idea to spend a few minutes thinking about how you're going to search. This worksheet will help you identify the key concepts and databases, and create a search strategy using techniques like AND, OR, quotation marks and truncation.