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ScienceDirect is a full text database with a wide coverage of the Sciences, Technology and Medicine. It indexes about 2500 full text journals, mainly those published by the scholarly publisher Elsevier. It allows citation searching, direct export of references to an Endnote Library and enables users to set up their own RSS Feeds or email Alerts to chosen journals or topics.
The guide should take you about 30 minutes to complete. You may prefer to print the Guide so you can refer to a printed copy while you are working online. The guide is approximately 6 pages.
The guide is divided into the following steps:
Step 1 - Getting Started
Step 2 - Searching the database
Step 3 - Viewing and Marking Results
Step 4 - Saving or Emailing your Results
Step 5 - Exporting Citations to an Endnote Library
Step 6 - Locating your references in the library
Step 7 - Setting up alerts
A simple way to access ScienceDirect is to go directly from the links on the left of the Library home page. You will need to enter your Curtin ID and Password.
You can also access ScienceDirect via the Databases A-Z link or via Gecko: Gateway to Databases
You are taken to the ScienceDirect Home page.
Choose the Search tab at the top left of the Screen and you will go to the Advanced Search page.
This is the Advanced Search page for ScienceDirect
All Sources is the default option and means that you are searching across Journals, Books and Reference Works. You can search each one individually if preferred.
Term(s): is where you enter your search term(s) in the boxes. We have entered the terms 'soil erosion' and 'Australia' for our example search.(For detailed help with developing search terms and search strategies see Help with Search Strategies at the end of this guide).
Within means that the software searches for your terms within the Abstract, Title, Keywords of the sources selected. If you click on the drop down menu you can select different fields.
Subject: All Sciences means that you are searching across all the subject areas of ScienceDirect or you can select another subject area. Hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple entries.
Dates: Allows you to choose the date range as required.
Click on Search to execute the search.
Viewing
The search results are displayed in a list.
You have several options when viewing results.
Select the Article List or the Full Abstracts tab for viewing more information about all your results.
Choose a SummaryPlus view to see an Abstract, Outline, References and Citation links for an article.
Choose Full Text + Links to see the article in full text and hyperlink to other articles that have cited or referred to it. You can also link to sources that have been cited or referred to by your article.
Choose PDF Format (...K) to view the article as it appears in the print version of the journal. This format will contain the page numbers needed for your referencing when you cite from this article.
Choose View Related Articles to view articles on a similar topic.
Search within Results allows you to refine you search further by adding extra search terms.
Marking Results
Not all the results displayed will be the kind of material that you require. You can select the records you want by checking the box to the left of each record.
Select Display Selected Articles to display only your marked records.
Saving
Insert removable disk, eg. a USB into your computer.
Select File then Save As and the Save Dialog Box will appear.
From the Drop Down Save in: menu select the location in which you want to save your records. For example, you will need to save to the removable disk drive.
The default File Name that ScienceDirect gives your file is a record of your search.
From the Drop Down Save as Type menu select the format in which you want to save your file. Choose Web Page complete or Web Archive, single file or Text File.
Click on the Save button.
Your records have been saved.
Saving your Article as a PDF
Open the PDF version of your reference.
Select the floppy disc save icon
From the Save In drop down menu select the location to which you want your files saved.
The File Name should end with the suffix.pdf
The Save as Type box should be Adobe PDF Files [*.pdf]
Click on Save and the article is saved.
NB: To read or print the article you will have to open the file on a computer with Adobe Acrobat software loaded.
Emailing
If you do not have a storage device you may prefer to email either your results or the full text of your articles to yourself.
Click on the E-mail articles link at the top of the results screen.
Fill in the required fields, including the correct email address in both the sender and recipient fields and click on Send.
ScienceDirect allows you to export citations directly to an Endnote library.
Mark the references you wish to export to your library.
Click on the Export Citations 
link at the top of the results list.
Choose Citations Only or Citations and Abstract.
Select the RIS format (................for EndNote)
Click on Export
For more information on exporting citations from a database to Endnote see the Endnote View It tutorials.
If the full article is not on ScienceDirect you will have to search the the library's catalogue by the journal title, not the title of the article.
In Record number 129 of our example search only the Abstract is available.
In this record the journal title is Advances in Agronomy, the article title is The Global Impact of Soil Erosion I: Absolute and Relative Erosion-induced Yield Losses the Volume no is 81, (there is no issue no in this case), the year is 2003 and the page numbers are pp 1-48.
To find this journal in the Curtin Library catalogue, use the following steps:
From the Library home page click on the Catalogue link and then select the Journals subset from the top of the page.
On the Basic search screen in the Journals subset the Title option is the default.
In the search box, type in the exact title of the journal (Advances in Agronomy). Click the Find button.
An alphabetical list of titles will appear - click on the underlined name of the journal.
The location and shelf number will appear in the left hand side Held at column or online details will appear in the Link to column. In the case of a print journal,click the check availability link to find out which volumes and issues the library holds. A separate window will open with this information. In this case the journal is available in print at the Library's Muresk branch.
The catalogue can be accessed from outside the Library if you have an internet connection. If you have the exact title of the journal, follow the directions above. If you only have a title abbreviation and don't know the full name of the journal, you can ask a librarian for help.
In ScienceDirect you can set up your own profile and alerts which enable you to save searches, create search alerts, create journal issue alerts which notify you when a new issue of a particular journal is available in ScienceDirect, and create a favourite journal list which you can browse and search.
First you need to register with ScienceDirect using the following steps:
To set up the Alert:
The type of alerts you can get are:
To set up a pre-made Topic Alert:
Volume/Issue Alert:
Citation Alert
Deciding on Search Terms
To decide how to search you must decide what are the important, or keywords for your topic. You will develop your search terms from these words. For example, in this assignment:
Discuss the relationship between obesity and diabetes (Type 2)
useful journal articles, conference papers etc will almost certainly contain the terms
obesity diabetes Type 2
Combining search terms
Databases use Boolean logic which means you should use the word AND to search for references that contain all the search terms.
For example: obesity AND diabetes AND type 2
Alternative terms. You also need to consider alternatives that might be used for your search terms. For example the word Two might be used instead of the number 2. You can use OR to search for alternative terms within your search.
For example: diabetes type 2 OR two AND obesity.
Truncation and wildcards
Truncation is used to pick up different word endings in citations. For example there might be good information on your topic which uses the word 'obese' rather than obesity. If you truncate the word obesity and type in obes! (ScienceDirect uses an ! to truncate) your search will pick up these articles as well.
Wildcards are used to pick up different spellings of words. ScienceDirect uses a * sign as a wildcard so your search can pick up variable spellings. For example organi*ation will pick up both organisation and organization; wom*n will pick up woman and women.
For more information and help in developing search strategies go to Infotrekk Trek 2: Finding Keywords.
We hope you now feel more confident about searching the ScienceDirect database for information. If you are not sure which other databases to select, librarians can help you to get started and develop effective search strategies to find the information you need.
If you need more help with information searching on ScienceDirect or other databases please contact the Library Enquiries Desk.
