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2020 Finding and managing resources

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Our finding sources page shows you how to create a good basic search strategy. This will save you time and ensure you find good quality information. 

We recommend the Open University’s short, free online course Succeeding in postgraduate study to help you refresh your search skills.

 

 

Advanced searching: sources and skills

Your first port of call should be Library Search and resources specific to your subject. We strongly recommend downloading LibKey to your browser. LibKey will make finding our subscriptions easier when using resources like Google Scholar, PubMed or Wikipedia. We also strongly recommend using BrowZine to find whole journals and receive alerts to new content. If you'd like books in alternative formats then try our accessible texts from Bookshare.

 

You should also consider including some of these resources in your research:

Open access resources

Open Access search engines Core, Unpaywall, BASE, OA Button and OAIster bring together freely available resources from across subject areas. PubMed Central (PMC) does similar for biomedical and life sciences. Content includes open access articles, books chapters, theses, dissertations and research.

UK theses and dissertations can be found on EThOS. Use DART-Europe to search for European theses. OhioLINK has some US content. OATD brings together theses from around the world. The NDLTD provides a comprehensive list of dissertation repositories globally. You will find abstracts and some full text on all these sites.

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Web of Science is a large multidisciplinary citations database. A quick reference guide and a series of training videos are available.

Citation searching helps you to find articles or books that have been cited in a book or article you have read. You can find more recent works on a subject and build up a connected trail of research in your area.

At its simplest level, citation searching means reviewing a reference list or bibliography, then copying and pasting useful titles into Library Search. Many databases now link to cited articles: look for Cited By or Times Cited. Click on the links to find further references. These resources can also help you with citations searching:

 

 

Keeping up to date

Find the latest research:

  • Use BrowZine to find whole journals, create a bookshelf of your favourites and get alerts of new content.
  • Get search results emailed to you by setting up alerts in databases you use
  • See the latest publications: use journal alerting services such as Google Scholar Alerts and JournalTOCs. You’ll receive newly published journal articles in your area of research. Individual journals and publishers also allow you to set up alerts for their content
  • Set up RSS feeds from news sites and journals. You’ll need an RSS reader like Feedly
  • Connect with other researchers: use blogs, X (formerly Twitter) and networking sites like Academia.edu and ResearchGate

 

 

Managing your references

Organise your references with a reference management tool. These help you to insert citations into your work and create bibliographies in different referencing styles. Some have other useful features such as sharing references, saving PDFs and social networking.

Contact Ask a Librarian if you'd like further referencing support, and see our referencing guide.

There are several reference managers available. We recommend Zotero or Mendeley to researchers and staff. For a basic reference generator try ZoteroBib

 

 

Mendeley

Zotero

Cost

Free

Free

Desktop or online application

Online

Desktop and online

Operating systems

Windows

Mac

Linux

Windows

Mac

Linux

Word processor compatibility

MS Word

LibreOffice

BibTex

MS Word

Google Docs

Apache Open Office

LibreOffice

Cite Them Right Harvard referencing style

Yes

Yes

Other referencing styles

8,000+

9,000+

Captures references from webpages

Yes

Yes

Captures references from barcodes

No

iphone/ ipad only 

Captures references from PDFs

Yes

Yes

Mobile app

No

No

Automatic syncing across devices

No

Yes

Free PDF storage

2GB

300MB

Free reference storage

2GB

300MB

PDF annotation

Yes

No

Sharing

Yes

Yes

Extra features

Article recommender

 

Deduplication option No Yes