Saturday, March 23, 2019

Week 10 - Citation Chaining


Tell Me About Your Experience in Your Research Journal

-        What search terms or search phrases did you use to search Google Scholar?
o   Treatment restless leg syndrome

-        What limiters did you use?
o   First, I didn’t use any but then found that I was getting a wide date-range, so I decided to select the option to ‘Search within citing articles’ to look for specific concepts of treatment (vitamins, selenium). 

-        What did you find here that you have not seen in the databases?
o   Citation chaining is so much easier!!  The way I see this is that if I start with Google Scholar, then I can go into the databases and verify that they can be found there.  I know that multiple projects over the past have required we find our data in the databases found through the WSU libraries.  Also, at least 2 projects have required we find our data in a specific database.

-        How did this search process compare with the library databases you have been using?  Was it easier or more difficult?
o   Kind of building on my last comment, it was much easier since I could bounce around so much easier than in the databases.  I could check the box to search within the cited articles after doing a basic search, I could find specific words within those articles which I feel would be easier than setting up a series of limiters.  I’m not sure if that makes sense.

-        How might you use this tool in the future?
o   Again, building off my last two comments.  I think I’m going to use this tool first and then search around for articles that I feel would be useful in my projects, while simultaneously verifying them in the WSU databases.  I want to make sure that they meet the requirements, but it seems to be easier at this point than going through all the databases.  I imagine I will have to try this approach in the future as I work on other projects.

2 comments:

Brent Wilson said...

Good work. I think your strategy of starting your search with Google Scholar is sound whenever you're not sure which subject database(s) to begin with. But you may find that sources for some topics really are best discovered in a subject database, and you might be frustrated if you always start with Google Scholar. You can't assume that if you found nothing on a more obscure topic in Google Scholar that nothing exists out there in the academic literature. Google Scholar doesn't search everything there is in academia, just as Google doesn't search everything on the internet.

thespideybc said...

That's a good point. So starting with Google Scholar but also follow-up with database searches. I think I experienced a little bit of this during week 11.