SEARCH FOR JOURNAL REFERENCES

Use this page to find and search databases for info about articles in journals.
    Google Scholar is at the top of the list, and it's free. It doesn't sort hits, but you can import them directly into a reference manager like Endnote, one at a time. Set up this feature via the Preferences page.
    SPORTDiscus, compiled by SportQuest/SIRC, covers almost every sport-science publication there has ever been. The institutional version by Ovid is unbelievably unfriendly. If your institution doesn't have a subscription, access it on the Web for $US50 per month or $US10 per day, or purchase the CD-ROM version. Ovid Technologies also have expensive pay-as-you-go access.
    Web of Science (from the Institute for Scientific Information) is average for accessibility, but it is right up to date, has links to all articles citing a given article, and saves references directly into Endnote. You can access it only if your institution has a subscription, and it doesn't index low-impact sport-science journals.
    Scirus searches journals in a selectable range of databases, but it doesn't index Sportscience and it isn't as good as Google Scholar for finding obscure references. Avoid.
    Medline is primarily for medical research, but it contains many sport-science journals. Here's my choice in order of merit, with links straight to the search forms.
  • PubMed from the US National Library of Medicine/National Institutes of Health is unfriendly.
  • Medscape is now hopeless.
  • NLM Gateway, also from NLM/NIH, is really basic.
  • BioMedNet was great, but it is now defunct.
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Last updated 4 Oct 08