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Doctoral & Masters Nursing Programs: Literature Reviews & Tips

Overview

Searching Overview:  Get More or Focus

  

NOTE: The URL at the top of the EBSCO page will expire after 30 minutes.  Copy the Permalink into your document to have permanent access to an article.

NOTE 2: To keep items in your EBSCO folder or save selected searches after your session (expires after 1 hour of inactivity), create an EBSCOhost account and log in. 

Main Steps in Searching

- Database selection depends on your topic.  Searching Combined Databases is a quick way to get an overview, but some topics require the expertise of discipline-specific databases.

- Find more search terms from the titles and subject headings of good articles.

- Keep a research log; tips below.

Examples

Truncation: hospital* retrieves
        hospitalized, hospitalization, hospital-associated, etc.

Synonyms (from titles, subject headings, and abstracts) to find more articles:
         hospital* or “acute care” or inpatient

Turn Off the option to search Full Text of articles to improve relevance:

Title Field to improve relevance:

"Historical" Search Words: history or introduction or review or overview

"Landmark" Search Words: seminal or landmark or classic or groundbreaking

How to Chose Two Database to search:

How to Find Articles that Cite an Article:

  • "Cited by" link in Google Scholar.
  • "Times Cited in this Database" -- in many EBSCO databases (CINAHL, PsycINFO, Bus. Complete, etc.). See the EBSCO help file for more info.
  • Also Web of Science at the UW

Links for Full Text

  • vendors such as Gale,
  • the Full Text Finder software (everything we have access to),
  • Oscar Express - InterLibrary Loan from other libraries.

Google Scholar

Plusses, Minuses, Off-Campus Settings

+ Good way to find academic synonyms.

+ Great way to find newer articles that cite a relevant one.

+ Good for relationship between two concepts.

= Some free full text via federal research archives and preprints.

-  May not have been published in peer–reviewed journals.

- Can’t limit by discipline.

Off-Campus Settings - to link to Edgewood's full text articles, RefWorks. 

+ Can export citations into RefWorks.  From Settings: