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.
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 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.
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:
Find the latest research:
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.
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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 |