Introduction to Papers
A scientific journal is a bit like a highly specialised professional magazine. Within that "magazine" or journal, there are a number of "articles" or papers that have all been written by different authors.
Papers are the best form of reference because they have been written by experts in that area and then have been peer reviewed (double checked and approved) by other experts in that area. They are even better than books because many new papers are published every year so they are easier and quicker to update a few pages of a journal paper instead of release a new edition of a book.
Some journals are open access, which means you can get them for free, and others you have to pay for and they only show the abstract (like the summary) for free. I would never pay for a paper though. Sometimes your university or local library will have access to them for free. Sometimes if you check for a different version of the paper on a different website, there are versions out there that are free (this is especially likely on ResearchGate). I would also try contacting the person who wrote the paper and they may give it you (again this is especially easy to do on ResearchGate).
The below is a list of the websites I use to search for papers.
StarPlus
The way in which I most frequently find papers is by using StarPlus, through the University of Sheffield library because I know that whichever papers come up on the search I will have access to without difficulty. If I do encounter any problems, I can just contact the librarians, who are very helpful and will normal reply later that same day with the paper I was trying to get to. This is not, however, a resource people external to the university will be able to use but other universities do have similar sites.A scientific journal is a bit like a highly specialised professional magazine. Within that "magazine" or journal, there are a number of "articles" or papers that have all been written by different authors.
Papers are the best form of reference because they have been written by experts in that area and then have been peer reviewed (double checked and approved) by other experts in that area. They are even better than books because many new papers are published every year so they are easier and quicker to update a few pages of a journal paper instead of release a new edition of a book.
Some journals are open access, which means you can get them for free, and others you have to pay for and they only show the abstract (like the summary) for free. I would never pay for a paper though. Sometimes your university or local library will have access to them for free. Sometimes if you check for a different version of the paper on a different website, there are versions out there that are free (this is especially likely on ResearchGate). I would also try contacting the person who wrote the paper and they may give it you (again this is especially easy to do on ResearchGate).
The below is a list of the websites I use to search for papers.
StarPlus
Google Scholar
I quite often use Google Scholar alongside StarPlus, especially if I can't find a paper I am looking for. I also like to use it when the version of a paper I have is not working, as it shows the different versions of the paper available on different websites. It is useful for beginners because you don't need to create an account to look for papers (the same as Google). You may not have access to the links that you click but you will be able to access the abstract of a paper.
Altmetric Explorer
Altmetric Explorer is a website I access infrequently but I find it to be a very helpful resource. The website gathers together all the online activity associated with a paper, including newspapers, blogs, policy, social media posts and reference managing software. This online activity forms the impact of the research (the Altmetric Attention Score) and the website then displays the papers by this research impact.
White Rose Research Online
White Rose is a resource I have used a handful of times. It is a shared repository of all sorts of documents with the University of Sheffield, University of Leeds and University of York. Included are: journal articles, books, book chapters, working papers, conference papers, discussion papers, theses and more.
Other Resources
- Web of Science - uses citation data from Web of Science to compare academic journals
- CiteScore - uses citation data from Scopus to compare academic journals
- Directory of Open Access Journals - search open access journals
- Think Check Submit - checklist of reputable journals
