Searching

[NOTE: Materials partly inspired by original contents by Lloyd Jenkins]

Having smart and intelligent ways to look for relevant literature is nowadays almost as important as reading the found references. Literature search is a bit of an art as much as it is a science, and expertise and mastery comes with time and experience. However, there are a few basic rules and tips that can help you in starting off in the right direction.

In this page, you will find listed resources where you can perform such searches, as well as tips to be able to select among the list of results you will obtain.

Resources

Physical resources:

• Library/ies
• Inter-library loans
• Book reservations
• …

Digital:

• FindIt@Bham
• Google Scholar
• Microsoft Academic Search
• Thomson Reuters Web of Science

Relevance of Articles

The problem nowadays is not to find articles related to a discipline as much as to select, from the large amount of references that come up in a search, those that are relevant. There is not a single recipe for evaluating the relevance of an article but some of the following indicators can collectively help you evaluate how important a publication can be.

• Type of publication. journal articles are typically the most important ones as they have gone through a peer-review process. Books are relevant in collecting the main ideas and advancements in a field and summarizing them in an organized way. Reports can be good if they are very close to the topic you are researching but typically have less recognition.
• How close the text’s topic is to your research interest. The closer the more relevant.
• How old the publication is. The older, the more chances of having an impact it has (i.e. it might be more cited), but it also has more chance of being outdated or obsolete.
• Number of overall citations the manuscript has received, particularly in relation to how old the publication is.
• The prestige of the journal where it is published. More prestigious journals and publishers are harder to get published in and hence, everything else equal, apply a more strict filter that results in better quality publications.
• How often it is referenced by other articles/books/reports in the close circle of what the publication is about.

Relevance of Journals

Besides finding articles, it is usually useful to have a sense whether the journals where they are published has a good reputation. It is very hard to get an exact quick answer, but it is possible to get an impression by looking at some of the following factors:

• Impact factor. Typically explicitly mentioned in the journal’s website, or available through providers (for pay) like Thomson Reuters. Mostly useful to compare with other similar journals, hard across disciplines.
• EigenFactor. It tries to get at some of the problems of impact factors. Better to compare across disciplines.

Exercise

Pick one of the following topics, perform an online search and compile a list of ten journal related articles that, to your view, are among the most relevant in the field.

• Consumer amenities and cities
• Urban spatial structure and urban sprawl
• New economic geography