Introduction to the eresources available for research at the University of Cambridge

1. Research Tools in Philosophy
How to find resources
for research

2. You might want to …
 Find books and articles on a bibliography
 Carry out a literature search for your
dissertation
 Manage the information you find

3. Your research sources: 1
Books: Newton (includes eBooks)
Journals*: Newton
ejournals@cambridge
but you have to know (and search by) the journal
title, not the journal article title
Library Search is also now available:
http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk

4. Bibliographies
A list of works relating to a given subject
http://oxfordbibliographiesonline.com
Oxford Bibliographies Online
Lists of key
readings with
annotations

5. Finding Ebooks

6. OSO: ebooks
 Searching by keyword
 Advanced search
 Sorting your search
results
www.oxfordscholarship.com
OSO books are not
currently searchable in the
Library catalogue

7. E-journals A-Z

8. Your research sources: 2
• Journal articles
• Book chapters
• Conference papers
• Festschriften contributions
• Reports
• Reviews
Where can I find?
Not in the library catalogue!

9. Types of Database
 Citation Databases —They contain only
bibliographic information, and sometimes an
abstract of articles, but without the actual text
of the article. The @cam – find full text may
link to the whole article. E.g. Philosopher’s
Index, Scopus etc.
 Full-Text Databases – These databases
contain the journal articles e.g. JSTOR

10. You might start from
University Library webpage
www.lib.cam.ac.uk
Philosophy Library webpage
www.phil.ac.uk/library
Library Search
http://search.lib.cam.ac.uk

11. Find your subject area
www.library.cam.ac.uk

12. Explore your subject

13. A Brief look at Databases

14. Citation Databases
 Philosophers’ Index- Covers over 550 journals in
philosophy and related subjects, some monographs
and some anthologies. Coverage 1940 –
 PhilPapers – Free, access to over 200,000 articles.
Monitors journal archives, personal pages.
 Web of Knowledge- multidisciplinary coverage of
over 10,000 journals in the sciences, social
sciences, and arts and humanities. Coverage
1975-
 Scopus- Largest abstract & citation database for
sciences/social sciences, indexing over 3000 arts
and humanities journals. Coverage 2002-

15. FullText Databases
 Jstor (www.jstor.org)
– Archive of some dating back to 1600s. Does not
include journals from last 3-5 years.
 Project Muse (http://muse.jhu.edu)
– 355 titles from over 70 publishers in arts,
humanities and social sciences.

16. Search strategies
 Good search strategies will save you time
 Decide what you are searching for before you start. Know
what your source covers
 Be critical of the information you find

17. Thinking about your topic
Bioethics
= ethics OR morality OR behaviour
= euthanasia OR cloning OR medical ethics
OR eugenics …

18. Keywords Exercise
Know what you want: Keyword searching
1. Choose one of these:
 Can the death penalty be morally justified?
 McDowell’s moral realism
 A study of Pogge’s views on the morality of
globalisation
2. Underline the key concepts.
3. Write down alternative term(s) for the key concepts.
4. Discuss what you have written with your neighbour

19. Keywords Exercise: Anwers
 Can the death penalty be morally justified?
death penalty, capital punishment, execution, lethal
injection, ethic*, moral*, rights
 McDowell’s s moral realism
M?cdowell, moral*, antirealism, action, belief, value,
ethic*, rights,
 A study of Pogge’s views on the morality of
globalisation
Pogge, globali?ation, global justice, equality ethic*
moral*

20. More effective searching
 Filters e.g. date, source type, language etc.
 Individual source: Specific journals or publications
 Boolean operators: Using operators like AND to
narrow, OR to widen, and NOT to include or exclude
terms in your search. (see diagram above)
 Quotation marks: Enclosing terms in quotation
marks will find a phrase.
 Wildcard/truncation: Finds the root of a word and
various possible endings e.g. politi*, s?epticism.
AND OR NOT

21. Searching the Philosopher’s Index
 Navigating
 Search options
• Quick search
• Search Limits
• Advanced search
• Saving search histories
 Exporting records
An interactive tutorial
is available here:
Remember to select the
Philosopher’s Index from
the database list.

22. Get the most out of Google
Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.co.uk)
Finds articles, theses, some books, abstracts etc.

24. Intute: Philosophy
 www.intute.ac.uk/philosophy
 All websites in Intute have
been selected by a team of
academics and subject
specialists.
 A tutorial for searching the
internet for philosophy
specific sites is available
from
www.vts.intute.ac.uk/tutorial/philosophy

25. 4. Managing your information
 EndNote Available on PWF PCs. EndNote Web is
also freely available via Web of Knowledge.
 Zotero (www.zotero.com). Freely available if you
use Firefox as your browser.
 Mendeley (www.mendeley.com). Free download.
 Delicious (www.delicious.com) Save and tag URLs
More information on reference management tools is available from
www.lib.cam.ac.uk/toolbox/rmt.html

26. Plagiarism
 Express ideas and arguments in your own words
 See the University’s good academic practice and
plagiarism website. For information on plagiarism:
www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/plagiarism
 See the Philosophy Faculty's guide to 'Presentation
of extended essays and dissertations' for guidance
referencing conventions used here.

27. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwbw9KF-ACY
Entertaining video on plagiarism from the University of Bergen
Don’t forget about plagiarism!

28. Help and Guides
 Online help (within databases)
 Database guides
www.phil.cam.ac.uk/library/guides.html
 jel52@cam.ac.uk