Refine Results
When you start a search, you may sometimes find that your initial results list is a bit overwhelming. The Ebsco Discovery Service provides many ways for you to reduce - or refine - your result list even after you begin a search. You can refine your results using the options on the left side of the Advanced Search screen in Ebsco databases. Most databases, including Google, have similar options.
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Current Search - A reminder of the limits that are already applied to your search. |
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Limit To - Allows you to add additional limits to the type of material in your list.
- Full Text - Clicking this box means your search will return only journal/newspaper/magazine articles that UMass Global has a subscription to, meaning that you can get immediate access. This is useful if you are on a tight deadline and want to view only the material that you can read immediately. However, there are a lot of quality magazines, newspapers, and scholarly journals that UMass Global does not own that may be critical to your field of study. Be sure to leave plenty of time to analyze your research material and utilize our interlibrary loan services when necessary. ILL services allow you to request copies of material from UMass Global’s vendor partner.
- Scholarly (Peer Reviewed Journals) - Checking this box means that you will only see material that is published in journals that have been identified as Peer Reviewed. Peer Review is a process by which submissions of articles to scholarly journals are systematically evaluated by others working in the same field. The peer reviewer critically analyzes the submission for accuracy of data, quality of content and writing, and appropriateness for the journal. There are quality academic journals that are evaluated by an editor (edited) rather than peer reviewed, and databases sometimes make mistakes in correctly tagging journals as peer reviewed. By checking this box, you may inadvertently exclude important material from your search. If peer review is a requirement of the journals you need to use, it is best to check a journal’s website to verify whether it is peer reviewed or not.
- Available in Library Collection - Checking this box will exclude material that UMass Global does not own or have a subscription to. This is useful if you are on a tight deadline and want to view only the material that you can read immediately. However, there is a lot of quality research material that UMass Global does not own that may be critical to your field of study. Be sure to leave plenty of time to analyze your research material and utilize our interlibrary loan services when necessary. Interlibrary loan services allow you to request articles from our library partners.
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Publication Date - Another way to limit your search when you are looking for material that was published during a specific time period. For example, you may be looking for articles or book chapters that were most recently published, or items that were published immediately following a historical event. You can change the publication date range by moving the sliders or typing in a date range.
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Source Types - Use the Source Types limiter when you are seeking material from a particular type of publication. The UMass Global Library provides access only to eBooks and electronic copies of scholarly journals, magazines (non-scholarly periodicals), newspapers, and trade publications (industry magazines that address topics of interest to a specific profession such as global trade, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals).
Other source types include industry, government, and NGO reports, patents, conference proceedings, and review articles (which summarize the current state of understanding on a topic within a discipline and are frequently published in the sciences).
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Other Limiters
- Publication - Allows you to search for material only in the journal/magazine/newspaper you select from the available list.
- Publisher - Allows you to search for materials provided only by certain publishers, such as Marketline or Oxford University Press.
- Language - If your search turns up many items in languages you can’t read, use the Language limiter to reduce your results list only to languages you can read. Also useful for language learners who want to read publications in a language being studied.
- Geography - Allows you to limit your search only to items regarding a particular region, such as a continent, country, or city.
- University/Collection - if you are searching for dissertations, this limiter allows you to look for dissertations produced at a particular university.
- Content Provider - mostly useful to librarians, this feature allows you to limit your search to materials provided by specific vendors.
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