Graduate Student Resources

The FIND@NAU button appears whenever an article appears in a database without full-text.  You can also find links to it in Google Scholar (if linked with Cline Library). Clicking on FIND@NAU will search for the full-text of that article in any of the library's databases.  One of two things should happen:

1. If Cline Library has access to the full-text you should be brought directly to that article.
2. If Cline Library does not have access to the full-text a page will appear with a button that says "Request It" which will auto-fill a DDS request for you. 

Like everything, it's not perfect, if you have problems using FIND@NAU contact us for help.

McMaster University Library. (2015). Boolean cheat sheet (infographic). Retrieved from https://library.mcmaster.ca/instructional-videos

What is proximity searching?

Proximity searching is a way to search for two or more words that occur within a certain number of words from each other. Proximity search commands vary from database-to-database. Here's how you would create a proximity search in a few popular databases.

EBSCO Databases:

N# will search for words within a certain range (up to 255), it is placed between the words that are to be searched, as follows:

• N5 finds the words if they are within five words of one another, regardless of the order in which they appear. For example, type tax N5 reform to find results that would match reform of income tax.

W# 

• W8 finds the words if they are within eight words of one another, in the order in which you entered them. For example, type tax W8 reform to find results that would match tax reform but would not match reform of income tax.

In addition, multiple terms can be used on either side of the operator. See the following examples:

• (tax OR tariff) N5 reform
• oil W3 (disaster OR clean-up OR contamination)
• (baseball OR football OR basketball) N5 (teams OR players)

Web of Science

NEAR/x will find records where the terms joined by the operator are within a specified number of words of each other.

Replace the x with a number to specify the maximum number of words that separate the terms. For instance the search:

tax NEAR/5 reform

will bring back results where tax & reform are within five words of each other.

We have all gone to the bottom of an article to view papers that the authors have cited. Did you know that you can also search for the articles that cite that paper in their work? By using Google Scholar, Web of Science or Scopus you can find out how others used that article in their own work. These articles will be more recent. This is also a great way of finding out how well known that article is, the more citations it has the more likely it is a 'standard' in the field (be careful as it can also mean that the article is controversial in the field).

Google Scholar (Cited by)

Google scholar is a great place for forward citation searches as it is not as limited in scope as WoS or Scopus. To find out who has cited a work start by searching for the title of a specific article.

Look for the "Cited by" underneath the article, the number next to it is the amount of articles citing the work (this number is typically inflated as some of them are most likely duplicates). 

Clicking on "Cited by" will bring up the articles that cited that work. You are also able to search within those citations to find articles that mention specific keywords. Just click on the small "search within results" box and then put your keywords into the Google Scholar search box.

Web of Science (Cited Reference)

There are two ways of approaching forward citation searches in Web of Science. Within Web of Science:

1.  Within search results, next to the title you will see a number over the word 'citation' (this number is typically limited since WoS only shows articles within WoS) Clicking on the number will bring you to the articles that cite that title.
2. Use the Cited Reference search which is just above the main search box. This feature is best used when looking for a specific author and is useful to find multiple works by that author.

Scopus (Cited By)

Within your search results, the last column Cited By, clicking on the number that is in this column will take you to the articles that cite the original work. Similar to Web of Science, these numbers are likely smaller than the actual amount.

You can view the cited by for multiple articles by putting a checkmark next the articles you are interested in and then scrolling to the top and selecting "View Cited By"