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You may search virtually all of our databases off-campus. You will be prompted for your NetID and password. (This is the same as your UIS email/Blackboard/Enterprise ID login and password.)
For technical assistance with your NetID, students may contact the UIS Technology Support Center at 217-206-7357 or toll-free within Illinois at 1-877-847-0443.
Choose a Database | Phrasing a Search Query | I have a citation to articles. Now what?
Choose a Database
You are not going to want to search all 90+ databases that we subscribe to. Instead you are going to want to consider the scope and coverage of individual databases to determine which ones suit your needs. The databases are arranged by subject on our Find Articles page, as well as a list of databases alphabetically.
What kind of database you want to use depends on what kind of research you want to do.
I want to find law reviews.
- LexisNexis Academic -- click on Legal Research on the left hand side of the screen, then click on Law Reviews keyword search over 675 law reviews. Core titles go back to around 1982, while others start in the mid to late 1990s. I would suggest doing a Guided Search -- you can then limit part or all of your search to the title of the article, rather than the entire text of the law review.
- Westlaw -- you will need to log in using the password given to you in your LES class. Click on Directory at the top, then choose Journals and Law Reviews. Full text access to over 900 law reviews and legal journals, back to 1994.
- Westlaw's Campus Research -- full text articles from over 750 law reviews and journals, back to 1994. You can search all of them, or narrow to a particular state.
I want to find some recent journal articles, not necessarily law reviews.
If the article isn't available full text right there, click on the  button, or the link Find it?. This will automatically search our Journals @ UIS database to see if we have it full text in another database, or if we have a physical subscription to the journal.
- Academic Search Premier -- full text articles from around 4,500 magazines and journals and indexing for around 8,000 periodicals total; covers the most journals and magazines. You can easily limit to scholarly journals, and around half the time the entire article is available full text. Note: when you limit to journals, you will also retrieve some law review articles. For purposes of this database, they are considered "peer-reviewed, scholarly journals."
- Expanded Academic ASAP -- full text articles from around 1,000 magazines and journals, with citations from another 500 sources; fewer records, but more consistent subject headings than Academic Search Premier. You can easily limit to scholarly journals, and around half the time the entire article is available full text. Note: when you limit to journals, you will also retrieve some law review articles. For purposes of this database, they are considered "peer-reviewed, scholarly journals."
- WilsonSelectPlus -- this is another useful database for finding journal articles. All the records have the full text article attached. To limit to scholarly journals, under the Limit to: Reviewed Journal Phrase, choose Peer Reviewed. Note: when you limit to journals, you will also retrieve some law review articles. For purposes of this database, they are considered "peer-reviewed, scholarly journals."
I want to do a more comprehensive search for scholarly articles from related disciplines.
Try one of our comprehensive databases for a particular discipline. Examples:
business (ABI-INFORM); criminal justice (Criminal Justice Abstracts); economics (EconLit); education (ERIC); environmental sciences (LexisNexis Environmental); medicine (MEDLINE); political science (Worldwide Political Science Abstracts); psychology (PsycINFO); social work (Social Services Abstracts); sociology (Sociological Abstracts); U.S. history (America: History & Life).
Again, click on the button to locate the entire article. This will automatically search our Journals @ UIS database to see if we have it full text in another database, or if we have a physical subscription to the journal. For more databases, see our list of databases by subject.
I want to find the key journal articles on my topic.
- Web of Science: Social Sciences Citation Index -- indexes and analyzes citations (so one can figure out who is citing whom in their research) for relevant scholarly journals from 1,725 journals cover to cover, and another 3,300 journals selectively back to 1987. You may sort the result list by "times cited." (This option is at the top right of the search results screen in Web of Science.) To locate the entire article, either click on the button, or if it is in ScienceDirect, there will be a
 button.
Phrasing a Search Query
When looking for articles, you will want to be more specific than you were for finding books. Articles tend to be on narrow topics, and there are usually summaries of the articles in the citations, or even the entire article. If you look for a general topic, you will probably be overwhelmed with results.
Boil down your issue into keywords. Think of synonyms for your keywords. I'd suggest sticking to the nouns and ignoring verbs and adjectives. (For instance, there are just way too many words to describe the abstract concept of "effective.")
Unless you want to browse subject headings, most of the databases will want you to format your search query using Boolean logic, where you type in single words or simple phrases, combining terms with the connectors AND, OR, or NOT. (This is called Terms & Connectors searching in Westlaw. For Natural Language searching, just type in a sentence or a string of words, and Westlaw will pull out the keywords and retrieve the most relevant 20 results for those keywords.)
Example: If you want to find articles on capital punishment and DNA evidence, you would type ("capital punishment" OR "death penalty") AND DNA
Too many results?
- Try searching by clicking on the hyperlinked subject heading, though this may actually get you more results rather than fewer.
- Add more search terms. Try to think about what other aspects of the subject you want the articles to reflect.
- Keyword search within a field. You can usually narrow your search by using the Subject, Title, or Source fields within the record.
- Also, note any limiters available on a particular database: date range, language, publication types (journal article, peer-reviewed, dissertation, etc.).
Too few results?
- Try looking for more versions of your keyword, like plurals or variations of the word. To look for variations of a stem of a word in most databases, type the stem followed by an asterisk (*). In a few databases, it's a + or a ? or a $ or an !. Consult the online help for the particular database for "truncation."
- Try to think of other words to describe your topic. What words could someone possibly use to describe your issue?
I have citations to articles. Now what?
Go to the Journals @ UIS to see if your periodical is
- available full text, or
- owned in print or microfilm by us.
Type in the name of the journal, magazine or newspaper and click the search button.
If we have it full text access, the databases will be listed under the heading Full Text. You can either plug in the citation information for the article you want, or just click on the GO button to jump to that database and browse or keyword search for your article.
Print or microfilm holdings are listed under the Holding Information heading. If it's a print subscription, note the call number and the format for the year you need. (If it doesn't indicate a format, then it's in print, versus microfilm.)
All it says is "Holdings in I-Share."
This is Journals @ UIS's way of saying "journal not found at UIS." If we do not own/have access to the article you want, fill out the Interlibrary Loan form and we'll mail you a copy of the article. Please allow 1-3 weeks.
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