Quick Start Research Toolkit

Google Scholar

Google Scholar allows you to search the full-text of journal articles, conference papers, dissertations, academic books, pre-prints, technical reports, court opinions, patents, and other scholarly literature across all academic disciplines of research. Because you're searching full-text in Google Scholar, you can often identify relevant research that might otherwise be hidden in standard bibliographic databases, most of which only provide citation-level searching (titles, abstracts, author keywords, etc.). 

To access articles in Stanford-owned journals (including Lane Library and main campus libraries) be sure to set your library preferences to "Stanford" as shown in the following screenshots. 

Select Settings from the upper left pull-down menu.

Select Library Links and run a search on Stanford. Select both Stanford links.

After running a search, 1) click on "<<" to display the Find it @ Stanford Med and then click the link to access the article via Lane Library's collection; or 2) click on the Find it@Stanford to access the article from the main campus libraries' collection.  

For more tips on how to search Google Scholar, visit the about Google Scholar page. 

Google:

While many searchers of Google simply type search terms into the search box, hit enter, and hope for the best, it's possible to run more effective searches using Google's advanced query options.

site:

If you find yourself frustrated by a particular website's internal search engine, use Google’s site option to search the website from within Google. All you need is your search terms, the URL for the site, and the search "tag" site: Note the colon that follows the word site: Click on the following search string to see the results

pediatric grand rounds site:stanford.edu

To search a broad internet domain such as .edu or .org or .com, simply use the domain suffix as the target of your search. Click on the following search string to see the results

guideline school reopening site:.org

To exclude a particular website or domain from your search, place a minus sign "-" in front of the URL. For example, if you want to exclude all .coms from your search, try the following:

peanut allergy -site:.com

filetype:pdf

Filetype:pdf is an extremely powerful way to supplement searches of traditional literature databases and search engines like PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. Where Google Scholar searches the full text of scholarly literature, Google allows you to search the full text of a multitude of publication types, many of which might not be considered "scholarly" but are useful nonetheless. These publications could include federal and state reports; policy documents from think-tanks like Rand; training materials and syllabi from educational institutions; guidelines from medical societies; etc.

To tap into this huge corpus of information, use filetype:pdf preceded by your search terms.

adolescents obesity bariatric diabetes filetype:pdf

You can use additional filetypes as well,  e.g., ppt, docx, etc. 

"sleep pods" residents filetype:ppt

For more information on how to search Google, visit the How to search on Google page.

Web of Science

Web of Science is a multidisciplinary database of over 10,000 high-impact journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities, as well as international proceedings coverage for over 120,000 conferences. Web of Science includes a variety of multidisciplinary databases, including CAB Abstracts and Global Health; Inspect (engineering); BIOSIS (life sciences); and Zoological Record (animal biology). 

In addition to covering all academic disciplines, Web of Science allows the search to re-sort the results of a search by Times Cited. Citation count is often an indicator of the relative impact of a particular research paper.

To search Web of Science, first, pick a particular database from the drop-down menu or all databases.

After running a search: 1) click on Times Cited to re-sort the results of your search from most to least cited; 2) view the number of times a paper has been cited; and 3) use the filters on the left of your search results to refine your search. 

For more information on how to effectively search Web of Science, visit the WOS training and tutorials page.

Lane Medical Library and Stanford University Libraries have an extensive collection of hundreds of different literature databases. For help choosing the right database for your research topic, contact Lane Library for research help or submit a literature search intake form. Below is a list of some additional, popular databases:

Cochrane Library: The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases including the Cochrane Database of systematic reviews and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. Cochrane Library is often used in conjunction with other bibliographic databases when developing a systematic review. Cochrane Library training and tutorials. 

CINAHL CINAHL: (Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health) provides authoritative coverage of the literature related to nursing and allied health. CINAHL training and tutorials.

Embase: Embase is a powerful biomedical and pharmacological bibliographic database. Thorough searches of Embase are considered an integral part of most systematic reviews and metaanalyses. Embase training and tutorials.

Scopus: Scopus is a large multidisciplinary citation database of peer-reviewed literature in the life sciences, social sciences, physical sciences, and health sciences. Similar to Web of Science, the coverage is quite broad and the search results can be filtered by times cited. Scopus training and tutorials.