Sarah Rhodes, Subject Consultant for International Development, Forced Migration,

African and Commonwealth Studies

Online Resources & Searching Skills for

Global Governance and Diplomacy

Overview

Set up a Refworks account

Create a search strategy

Bibliographic databases

Other sources:

Grey literature

Theses

Statistical data

News

Set up a Refworks account

Create a search strategy

Bibliographic databases

Other sources:

Grey literature

Theses

Statistical data

News

Reference Managers

Reference Managers

Availability •Desktop – but

can also transfer

to Endnote web

•Web based

•Web-based •Web browser

extension and

desktop

•Web-based and

desktop (but no

automatic

syncing)

Cost •Buy from

OUCS

•Free via our

subscription

•Free via

subscription (inc

alumni)

•Freely available

(but limited

storage space)

•Freely available

Word

processing

•MS Word

•Open Office

•Pages

•MS Word

•Open Office

•MS word •MS Word

•Open Office

•MS Word

•Libre Office

Cross

platform

support

•Not compatible

with Linux

•Word processor

plugin not

compatible with

linux

•Refmobile –

mobile phone app

•Mobile apps

available

•Iphone/Ipad

interface

Database

interaction

•Web of Science

/ Web of

knowledge

•Proquest

For more detailed table see http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/content.php?pid=294548&sid=2418329

Libguide for Reference Managers

http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/reference-management

Task 1 Create a Refworks

account

Good book

on

methodology

Paper

supports my

argument in

chapter 2

Classic paper

to use in the

introduction

Useful

literature

review in this

paper

Lots of

country

data on

this site

NGO project

evaluation,

good evidence

for chapter 5

Supervisor

recommended

this book

Good

comparison

study in this

paper

Your Thesis

Approaches

to finding

the

literature

Reference ‘chasing’

You know relevant books and papers

already so follow the references, but don’t rely on this approach

alone.

Google Scholar

It is the biggest database and covers

books as well. A useful starting point

but it is hard to control and

causes frustration. The systematic approach

Plan your search, list your search

terms, hit the databases,

systematically manage your

references and papers

Ask people Recommendations are a good starting point

and you have to read what your supervisor suggests but this not a

comprehensive solution.

Start with a clear research question

Example research question

Identify the search concepts in your research

question:

Globalisation and feminist thought in

development : a case study from Lebanon

For each search concept, brainstorm keywords:

e.g. for feminist thought also search for feminism, gender theory,

women’s rights, sexual equality etc.

Research Question: Globalisation and feminist thought in development

Row 1

Concept 1:

globalisation

Concept 2:

feminist thought

Concept 3:

development

Row 2

Globalization

Multinational

Global

Market

Feminism

Gender theory

Economic

Policy

Poverty

Row 3

#1 = globali?ation OR multinat* OR

global market*

#2 = “feminist

thought” OR feminis*

OR gender theory

#3 = development AND

(economic OR policy OR policies

OR poverty)

Row 4

#1 AND #2 AND #3

(N.B. # means search number)

Building a structured search An example of one possible approach…

Search syntax: Boolean logic

OR

NOT

university or oxford

university not oxford

AND university and oxford NARROWS

SEARCH

BROADENS

SEARCH

NARROWS

SEARCH

Search syntax: wildcard characters

• Truncation may be used in a number of ways:

– * for right side truncation (e.g. plurals and

alternative word endings) • feminis* retrieves feminist, feminists, feminism

– ? for a single character (e.g. alternative spellings) • organi?ation for organisation or organization

– $ for one character or zero characters • behavio$r* retrieves behavior, behaviour, behavioral, etc

• Check the database online help (the symbols given above are common but not universal)

Task 2: Create an Advanced Search String

Exporting references from SOLO

Exporting references via the e-shelf

Articles from

OU e-journals

(link from SOLO)

Major

databases

SCOPUS Indexes journal

articles,

conference

proceedings,

working papers.

Limited coverage

of political topics

and social theory

Google Scholar

Searches journal

articles and books some other

content (but not government, NGOs, policy institutes etc.)

Proquest Platform

Searches scholarly journals, theses, news and commercial publications

Jstor full text database, lots of classic journals back

to their beginning, lacks most recent years

Databases via OxLIP+ (link tab on SOLO or

http://oxlip-plus.bodleian.ox.ac.uk )

SAGE Research Methods Online Link via OxLIP+

Proquest Platform- IBSS

Google Scholar Preferences

Libguides http://ox.libguides.com/development-studies

Task 3: Run your advanced search in Proquest

Grey literature

Key sources for development studies working papers, conference papers and policy briefs include: Oxfam ODID Dfid MigrationOxford FMO IDS Eldis CIAO PolicyFILE IOM UNBISnet

See the LibGuides for other useful links

Theses

Search for previous MSc theses on SOLO (“msc thesis global governance”)

Proquest Dissertations & Theses: The Humanities and Social Sciences Collection (full-text). Mainly US but some global content.

EThOS. UK theses digitized by the British Library (not all universities, no Oxford theses)

Statistical data services

UNdata: http://data.un.org/

UNHCR Statistical Online: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/databases.htm

MPI Data: http://migrationinformation.org/DataHub/

World Bank data: http://data.worldbank.org/

WHO: http://www.who.int/research/en/

U.S. census: http://www.census.gov/

UK National Statistics: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/

LibGuides: http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

OECD iLibrary

http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/

UK Data Service

International macro data

from Eurostat, OECD,

UN, World Bank, IMF,

IEA.

Survey and UK data via

other ESDS services.

Register and use via

Single Sign On.

www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/data

Social science data services

John Southall (Social Sciences Data Librarian) – john.southall@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

News databases: Nexis UK

Over 24000

news. Trade

and reference

sources

Searching by

source, topic

or country

Company profiles / industry news /

biographies / UK legal case studies

Newswires

(eg Reuters)

and Global

Newspapers

Searching by

source, area

or industry

31,000 sources

from more than

200 countries

News databases: Factiva

News databases

•AllAfrica's news and information archive, dating from 1996, is a growing collection containing over two million articles and documents from allAfrica.com, the leading Africa information source on the Internet. • AllAfrica collects and aggregates articles from 130 African news organizations, as well as documents and releases from several hundred governmental, nongovernmental and international institutions

http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/workshops Workshops for postgraduates & researchers Topics covered:

• information discovery and finding scholarly materials • reference management (Endnote, RefWorks, Zotero &

Mendeley) • keeping up to date • measuring research impact • copyright and intellectual property • open access publishing • managing research data

Any questions?