ENGL 128 Research Writing: Science, Engineering and Business

Tracking down Citations

Be a Power Researcher

Full Text

ProQuest, Academic Search Complete, and other research databases include article abstracts and citation information without full text. This is useful to you as a researcher!

You may check the filter for Full Text only results (usually at the top or to the side of the results), but if you leave it unchecked, you will learn about highly relevant articles that you can track down elsewhere, whether in another GRC database or in WorldCat.

You can borrow articles we do not have in full text for free through Interlibrary Loan.

The image below shows results from a sample search.
  • The first featured result shows the access to the full-text, PDF of the article. 
  • The second featured result shows the option to "check for full-text at GRC" - which will either take you to the article housed in another database, or it will connect you to the record where you can then request an interlibrary loan. 
(Click on image to enlarge)

This screenshot shows a list of search results, highlighting the "Access options" that allow you to a) click on the full-text PDF option, or b) to click "Check for Full-Text at GRC"

Again, the second option shown in the image above allows you to "check for full-text at GRC" and will either connect you to the full-text PDF of the article in another database, or it will take you to a page that looks like the image below, a record in Primo OneSearch. 

  • This is the page you will see if the library doesn't have the PDF. Click on the InterLibrary Loan link to borrow the article from another library. Articles are generally available electronically and they will be emailed to you quickly.

(click on image to enlarge)

a screenshot of the record in OneSearch, showing that the article is listed as "not available" and the option to "request through interlibrary loan"

Citation "Mining"

Effective researchers "mine" or look through the references of a relevant book or article to find additional sources for their own research. This can be a productive technique!

To track down sources from a references list:  

  • Type the title of the source into search box of the library's One Search Tool.
  • Put the title in "quotes" to keep all the words together. If the title is very long, you might do best with just the first part.
  • If we have it, you'll find it easily this way. If we don't have it, you can use InterLibrary to borrow it for free.
  • If you know the title of an article you can search for that title in the main search box on the library's website as shown in the image below.

(Click on image to enlarge)

image of a search for a title in Primo

  • In this case we had the article in Holman Library, and my search returned this result: 

(click on image to enlarge)

image of the results, showing the article that was searched for by title