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Finding journal articles in sports science sports science, journal articles
Suggests databases and tips for sports science students
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(c) Swansea University
Susan Glen
Swansea University
15/3/12 rev 14/8/14
This presentation will help you to:
• Find the best databases to use for sports science
• Use search techniques effectively
• Know how to access journal articles
• You will also find guides to individual databases within this Blackboard course
& you are welcome to contact the team for help with any of this.
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You will need your university username and password (as for email, blackboard etc.) to access many of our databases and e-journals, especially off campus. It is best to go through one of our services: iFind, iFind Research or iGetit as that will take you to the correct login point. If you are not able to do this check the information in the
Using Online Resources and Database Guides sections of this course.
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• iFind Research is a gateway to useful databases and websites in your subject area.
• Choose your branch of engineering from the Engineering menu to see recommended resources for your subject. To find out more about a resource, hover your mouse cursor over the ‘i’ next to the title.
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Web of Science is a large database covering all the main academic subjects and is a good starting point for many sport science topics. An alternative is
Scopus which is a rival to Web of Science. The coverage of the two overlaps but it can still be worth trying both if you are having difficulty finding useful material.
If you are doing sports psychology the PsycInfo Database is a good starting point and for medical topics try PubMed .
These databases index the journal literature but do not include the full text.
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Science Direct is a full text database. It only covers journals by the publisher Elsevier so does not give a thorough search but it is a good way of getting some full text material fast.

There is some material in Science Direct which is not covered by our subscription. To exclude this from your search go to Advanced search and select the options below:
Open Access articles are free to everyone so you can select that option as well as the ones we subscribe to.
The first step in a successful search is to think about the keywords you will use.
There may be synonyms, alternative spellings and acronyms used in a database. For example, if your topic is:
The biomechanics of sports injuries you might need to think about terms such as biomechanics, kinematics, dynamics, sports, particular types of sport such as football, rugby etc., injuries, trauma
If you need ideas about terminology you could try looking at reference books such as subject dictionaries and encyclopaedias. You will find a selection of these in Bay
Library. For example:
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Sports science handbook
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The Oxford Dictionary of Sports Science and Medicine
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A dictionary of sports injuries and disorders
You can also try searches of online tools such as Wikipedia for terminology. This shouldn’t be relied on for an assignment as Wikipedia articles are anonymous and not considered reliable enough for academic use but they can still be helpful in giving you an idea of the terminology used in a subject.
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Some databases, including Web of Science, allow you to carry out a simple search then add in another term to refine your results.
For example, a search for sports injuries has found 15,729 results in Web of
Science, far too many to look through. We can therefore use the Refine Results box to add in another term biomechanics .

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This results in about 922 results. You could then add in a further term if you wished to narrow it still more. For example you could add in football to narrow results to a particular sport.
It is also worth exploring the other options in this refine box, for example you may wish to pick out particular subject categories by checking the box next to the area you are interested in then clicking Refine .
It may also be worth looking at the languages box and selecting English or any other language you are able to read as not all the articles indexed by Web of Science are in English although the titles and abstracts are translated for the database.
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In most literature databases using the command AND tells the database to search for results including both your terms. You can do this in one step instead of using the search within options or use a combination of both.
The search above would look for articles which contain both the terms Patellofemoral pain syndrome and runners.

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The command OR allows you to look for alternative terms so in this case results can include squash or football in the same record as anticipation.
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You may notice that if you put in terms such as sports injuries databases may separate them so you can find articles which say “injuries in sports” for example.

This may not matter for your search but if you want to keep your terms as a phrase enter them in quotation marks e.g.
“sports injuries”
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Most databases have a truncation or wildcard symbol which you can put on the end of a word to avoid having to type out different endings.
In this example injur* would pick up injury, injuries, injured etc.
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If you find that you are getting an unmanageably large number of references try restricting your search to the titles of articles as this is usually a quick way to reduce the number. If a word appears in the title of an article that article is also likely to be relevant.
In Web of Science change the option in the right hand box to title. This tip also works for other databases such as Science Direct.

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Most of our databases index a wide range of journals which are not all available at
Swansea. Look for the iGetit@Swansea link or button:
This will link into our systems to see if the article is available.
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Alternatively you can check iFind to see if we hold the journal you need. Change the search option to Journal title.
If the journal is online, you can find out which years of the journal are available by clicking on the Online tab. Make sure it includes the year you need before going into the journal site.

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If an article is particularly important for your project but is not available in Swansea your department may authorise an inter-library loan. You can pick up a request form from library desks or download one from our document supply web page .
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Web of Science and Science Direct are good starting points for sports science topics.
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Think carefully about your search terms.
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Try using search techniques such as AND, OR and truncation to improve your search.
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If you cannot find the material you need for your topic contact the subject team for help.