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Do you teach database searching? Focus on Scopus!
As a member of our library staff charged with supporting academic and research efforts of our university community, I’m always looking for better ways to teach database searching skills to students.
Alison Johnston
With the arrival of Scopus at our university, my approach to teaching has changed. I used to have to spend all my time showing students how to navigate their way around different database screens. Now, because students adapt easily to the Scopus interface, I can focus on teaching concepts. It’s the ideal database to use when introducing database searching to students, as it offers a range of options that show students sophistsicated ways to develop their searching skills.
Using Scopus as the focus of lessons allows me to discuss with students different ways to sort their results and perform citation analysis.
The importance of getting it right
Here I wanted to emphasize the usefulness of Scopus for librarians who teach. I think that Scopus is a bonus for us, because it not only makes the job of teaching database searching easier but it also helps students get it right when acquiring research skills for life.
How I organize my lesson plan
My List on Scopus helps users create individual lists of
search results
to save, print or email.
First I demonstrate Scopus, and then I demonstrate searches on topics relevant to students’ coursework or a topic of general interest. Often, when demonstrating Scopus, I like to demonstrate a search on “rapid climate change.” It seems to be a topic everyone is interested in.
These are the steps I go through with students after entering my first search terms:
- Look at important journals
Once the results appear I show students how to identify important journals for the topic and discuss with students the importance of identifying peer-reviewed scientific literature. As we now have so many journals in online-only format, it’s become much harder for students to understand what a journal is and what journals may be most useful for particular topics.
- Find review articles
Looking at review articles gives me the opportunity to talk about different types of articles. Finding review articles can also help students identify specialist review journals.
-
View search results by date
We look at the first two or three pages of results, and mark some interesting results and add them to My List. I then discuss the role of the most recently published literature and how we cannot yet tell how significant these publications are.
- View search results by relevance
Sorting the same results again gives me the opportunity to talk about how relevance searching works. It also gives me the opportunity to discuss the difference between the Web and specialist databases the library offers. I ask students to once again scroll through the first page or two of results and add more records to My List.
- View results by times cited
Now students can see articles that have made a high impact in the topic area, and they can mark and add more records to My List. I can usually identify a couple of major articles on the topic too, and we discuss these high-impact papers and the difference these papers have made to the state of knowledge in the area. If I’m teaching with a professor, this is a good time for her or him to contribute personal stories about academic life and the role of times cited in an academic career!
- View citations of high-impact articles
Students and I click on the first few interesting articles among highly cited ones and add more records to My List.
- Resort citations of a high-impact article to see additional highly cited ones
This can get a little confusing, so I go through this step very carefully. This step could be optional, but at this point I often find the most important articles on a topic. This is the last time I ask students to add more records to My List.
- View My List
Students enjoy seeing the lists of selections they have made. I show them how to open each individual record and view references used for each article. Students may decide to delete some records from their original lists and add additional records — ones cited by the most useful articles. Now students have individual lists of search results that they save, print or email to themselves.
