Lesson 17. Search Results
The proprietors of up-to-date educational and scientific bases do create convenient services to analyze search results, whereas personal registration provides access to some additional smart tools.
THUS, as a rule, users sort the list of results by relevance.
The results are considered relevant if they are adequate to informational query. If relevant results contain sources corresponding to your information need they are considered pertinent, while irrelevant sources will be referred to information noise.
Firstly, check the spelling of your query.
Thirdly, try to find similar, more exact keywords.
You should understand that documents can be not yet published in some innovative scientific issues but, probably, there are sources available reflecting the issue’s general aspects. In this case you should be creative and persistent to achieve any results.
Selecting pertinent sources, focus on the resource tools. Thus, usually the results can be sorted by times cited, or first author alphabet, or date, etc. (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Sorting search results in Scopus
Some international resources feature smart services to track, analyze and visualize search results by various criteria (authors, affiliations, countries, document types, categories, etc.) (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Results analysis and visualization in Web of Science Core Collection
Of interest are the services that show quantitative indicators of the document usage, captures, and mentions in social media (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. PlumX Metrics in Scopus
You can also use such functions as to save and email the lists or full texts of selected documents, as well to save search results in your search history and export the data to reference managers.
A fine search possibility is to create your search query or citation alerts, and overview of related documents (see Figure 4).
Figure 4. Service «Create citation alert» in Web of Science Core Collection
In the following lessons we will overview possibilities and services of specific resources delivering periodicals, dissertations, patents and other document types.