ACS Publications: Literature Search: ACS Publications: Literature Search

     This video tutorial demonstrates how to search for scholarly journal articles with original research in the ACS Publications database.  It is 14 minutes long.

ENTERING A KEYWORD SEARCH

Once you begin typing in your keywords, the search box expands as shown above.  If you wanted to use this search box to search for articles in one particular ACS journal, you would have to open the drop down Journals menu and scroll to the desired journal title.

NARROWING YOUR SEARCH RESULTS TO SCHOLARLY JOURNAL ARTICLES WITH ORIGINAL RESEARCH

On the left hand side of the screen are many ways to narrow your search results.  Always click on Research Article to find original research.  The accompanying number, here it is 18, indicates how many scholarly journal articles with original research there are for your keyword search.  HINT: Each time you run a new search, you will have to click on Research Article.

WHAT ARE YOU SEEING?

Each search result in your list will have these features:

1. The title of the article (here, showing highlighted search terms, but some results may only show these in the abstracts).

2. The authors of the article, followed by the title of the journal (Langmuir), the year (2019), the volume number (35), the issue number (24), the pages (8007-8014), date of publication on the ACS website, and the Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

3. The Abstract button allows you to see the abstract and additional information.

4. The Abstract link shows you just the abstract and nothing else in a pop up window.

5. The Search for Full Text (SFX) button does just what it says.  It is there just in case there is no full text for an item in the ACS database.  Clicking the SFX button launches a search of all available full text across our more than 150 databases.

6. The Full text button takes you to the HTML version of the full text.  HINT: You can find more articles closely related to your topic by checking the references at the end of an article.  Only the HTML version allows you to easily search for the full text of any of any reference--always click on the Search for Full Text button.

7. The PDF button takes you to the version of the full text that resembles a printed version.

8. A graphic from the article along with the title of the journal.  Click here to go to the entire issue of the journal that has the article.

OTHER THINGS YOU WILL SEE

Scientists are very concerned with keeping track of how their published research has been used and what influence it may have had on other scientists' research.  Each article will be accompanied by Article Views (the number of times the full text has been downloaded), Altmetric Attention Score (a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online), and Citations (the number of times other scientists have used this article in their research).  HINT: Click on the Citations number to see all of those citing articles.  This is a great way to find more articles on your topic.

Many articles will have Supporting Information, a feature unique to the ACS database.  Supporting Information is additional information relevant to the article which has been chosen and supplied by the authors.

The ACS database will automatically generate ACS-formatted citations for each item.  The catch is that it only does this in an RIS format which requires a citation management application to open the downloaded citation and use it.  If you do not already use some sort of citation management software, try Zotero.  It is free and supported by CSUSB.  Here is the Pfau Library's guide to getting and using Zotero.

At any time, you can click on the ACS logo in the upper left hand corner to begin a new search.

The methods described below are not in any particular order.  Try them all and see which one you prefer.

METHOD 1

In the basic search box, type in your keyword search and then use the drop down Journals menu to select a journal.

METHOD 2

Select a journal on the first screen of the ACS database by clicking the journal's thumbnail image.  The search box at the top of the next screen will automatically be set to search just the one journal.

METHOD 3

Run a search and use the left hand toolbar to refine your results to one journal.

METHOD 4

Run a search, click on the title of an article, and the new search box at the top of the next screen will automatically be set to search that journal.