General resources
• ASSIA
– Health, social services, economics, politics, race
relations, education
– Indexes 650 journals from 16 countries
– Covers 1987 onwards
• IBSS
–
–
–
–
Economics, politics, sociology, anthropology
Indexes over 2,600 journals
Covers 1951 onwards
Good for non-English language coverage
Wiser Social Sciences: OxLIP+
General resources
• SCOPUS
– Social science coverage includes development
studies, SPSW, education, business and
management
– Indexes over 2,800 social science titles
• Web of Science/ SSSI
– Indexes over 1,400 titles in behavioural and social
sciences
– Provides references to 130,000 articles each year
– Covers 1970 onwards
Wiser Social Sciences: OxLIP+
Subject-specific resources
• Development Studies
– ELDIS – published by the IDS at Sussex; offers
18,000 full-text documents, subject-focused resource
guides, and country profiles
– World Development Indicators (statistics) and World
Development Reports (full-text) from the World Bank
• Economics
– EconLit – abstracting and indexing service covering
journal articles, books and dissertations from 1969
onwards
Wiser Social Sciences: OxLIP+
Subject-specific resources
• Politics and IR
– PAIS International – A&I service with over 553,300
references to articles, books, reports, and grey
literature from 120 countries
– Worldwide Political Science Abstracts – indexes 1,500
publications in politics and related fields; 67% of
these titles are published outside the US
• Sociology
– Sociological Abstracts – indexes over 1,800 journals,
plus conference papers, books, and dissertations
Wiser Social Sciences: OxLIP+
IBSS
• See www.ibss.ac.uk for guides,
information about coverage, etc.
• When using the database, click on the
question mark button for context-specific
help
Wiser Social Sciences: OxLIP+
IBSS – basic searching
• Click on the
button to access the basic
search screen
• Enter search terms and select the desired
search mode:
– Boolean/ phrase – to run a search using Boolean
operators, or to search for terms entered as an “exact
phrase”
– Find all… – assumed AND (narrower search)
– Find any… – assumed OR (broader search)
Wiser Social Sciences: OxLIP+
Click on this
icon to access
the Basic
Search screen
from anywhere
in the site
Choose search mode –
Boolean/ phrase, find all
terms, or find any term
Type in search
terms here
Options to limit search
by date and/ or
publication type
IBSS - search tips
• Boolean operators:
– Use AND to retrieve records that include all the terms entered
(narrower search)
– Use OR to retrieve records that include any one of the terms
entered (broader search)
– Use NOT to retrieve records that include one term but not the
other
• IBSS also allows proximity searching:
– Near operator – ‘tax N5 reform’ will find records where ‘tax’ and
‘reform’ appear within five words of each other
– Within operator – ‘tax W5 reform’ will find records where ‘tax’ and
‘reform’ appear within five words of each other, and in that
particular order
Wiser Social Sciences: OxLIP+
IBSS - search tips
• Use wildcard (?) and truncation (*) symbols to
allow for variant spellings and word endings
– e.g. ‘wom?n’ will retrieve records containing ‘woman’
or ‘women’
– e.g. ‘politic*’ will retrieve records containing ‘politics’,
‘political’, ‘politician’, etc.
• Use the search limits available to narrow down
your search results by date and/ or publication
type
Wiser Social Sciences: OxLIP+
Use proximity searching (Near and Within
operators) to retrieve results where your search
terms occur within a specified number of words
of each other
Enclose two or
more words in “” to
search for them as
an exact phrase
Use * for truncation to find all
forms of a particular root – e.g.
bank* will return records
containing banks, banking, etc.
IBSS – visual searching
• Presents search results in an interactive
visual map
• You can group results by subject or
publication, and follow the path of your
choice to narrow down results
• Preview records by clicking on the title link
Wiser Social Sciences: OxLIP+
1. Group results by
subject or publication
2. Subheadings for your initial set of
results appear in the first column –
click to select a path to follow and
narrow down your results
4. Click on an article title to see
a preview of the full record in
the right-hand side bar
3. The number of results retrieved
after each selection is shown in the
lower half of the column
IBSS – advanced searching
• Allows you to specify the fields in which
your search terms should appear
• Combine search terms using Boolean
operators AND, OR and NOT
• Additional option to limit search by
language
Wiser Social Sciences: OxLIP+
Combine your search terms
using Boolean operators
(AND, OR, NOT)
Use the drop-down menu to
select the field in which your
search term should appear
Additional option to limit search by language
– tick ‘English only’, or select language(s)
from the drop-down menu (hold down the Ctrl
key to select more than one)
IBSS – search results
• Narrow by subject, publication or author
• Sort by date, author, source or relevance
• Hover cursor over magnifying glass symbol to
preview full record
• Click on title link to see full record
• Use
to check for full text
• Add results to a folder to print, save, email or
export
Wiser Social Sciences: OxLIP+
Options to narrow results by
subject, publication, or author
Options to limit results to
those with linked full text,
and/ or English only
Hover cursor over magnifying
glass symbol to preview full record
Click ‘Add to
folder’ to set
results aside
for saving,
emailing,
printing, or
exporting
Click on ‘PDF full text’ link to go directly
to full text, or ‘Find it at Oxford’ link to
check for full text availability
Click on title link to
access the full record
Options to save, print, email, export, or add to folder
Full record
provides
detailed
information
about the
article
Select items in the folder to
print, email, save, or export
Create an EBSCOhost user account to
save IBSS search results and set up
alerts on IBSS searches