Types of Information Sources

Scientific information is published in several types and formats:

Covers or pictures of different publication types: printed book, e-book, report published online, article in printed journal, article in electronic journal, presentation available online.

Both the type of a publication (book, article, presentation…) and the format of a publication (printed, online) have an influence from which information source you must search them for.

Books from library and databases

Books can de found from

  • Library databases, like UEF Primo Library collection.
  • Electronic books can also be browsed and searched from electronic books platforms (e-book databases, like Ebook central).
  • Google Books can search across the full-text content of a book, but the whole book is not necessarily available for online reading.

Articles from databases

Articles can be searched for from:

  • Reference databases, like Scopus or Web of Science, which collect metadata of huge amount of publications and publishers.
  • Full-text databases usually offer access and search tools to a limited collection of electronic articles, typically the journals published by one publisher only.
  • UEF Primo: internationals articles/ all e-materials can search across several reference or full-text databases in tandem.
  • Google or Google Scholar can reach articles from various sources, like full-text databases or open access archives and homepages.

Notice that there might be different versions about articles available online: pre-prints/manuscripts (the contents might change during the publishing process), articles in press/final drafts (contents are corrected) and final published versions (also layout – page numbers etc. are ready). Always aim to use the latest version of the article as your source.

Thesis from repositories and other places

Thesis are usually saved in repositories, like ERepo in UEF, which are visible also in Google search. Metadata of thesis is often saved in library databases, like UEF Primo.

‘Grey literature’ from Google

Informal publishing channels, like presentations, lectures, reports and working papers, are available through Google searches. You can also look for publications from organisations’ own web pages or online archives.

To Do:

Use at least these:

  1. Search books from library databases
  2. Use reference databases for articles
  3. Use Google for informal publications

Next page: List of search engines i.e. databases