Frequently Requested Research Tutorials: Bioengineering
Interactive Database Tutorials:
- PubMed Essentials: Getting StartedA guided walk through of PubMed covering creating effective searches using filters, natural language terms, and MeSH terms.
- Web of Science: Getting StartedAn interactive tutorial created by the Northeastern University Library on the fundamentals of searching Web of Science.
- Google Scholar (Interactive tutorial)An interactive tutorial that covers ways to both search Google Scholar effectively and customize your settings to make Google work most efficiently for you.
- PubMed: Online TrainingTraining available from NCBI on using PubMed
'How-To' Research Tutorials:
- How to use MeSH terms in your PubMed searchA guide to using PubMed's MeSH Database and searching with MeSH terms
- How to build a MeSH searchA handout sharing the steps to identifying and adding MeSH terms to your PubMed search
- Keeping up with the conversation: Setting up alerts for new research publicationsStep by step instructions for setting up search alerts and publication alerts in PubMed as well as setting up publication alerts in BrowZine, JournalToCs, and Web of Science
For other useful tutorials and selected webinar recordings, including Search Tips and Strategies as well as the Bite-Sized Webinars series, visit the library's Research Tutorials guide.
Journal Citation Reports
The established source for locating information on journal rankings and impact factors is Journal Citation Reports, accessible through ISI Web of Science.
Journal Citation Reports® is a comprehensive and unique resource that allows you to evaluate and compare journals using citation data drawn from over 11,000 scholarly and technical journals from more than 3,300 publishers in over 80 countries. It is the only source of citation data on journals, and includes virtually all areas of science, technology, and social sciences. Journal Citation Reports can show you the:
- Most frequently cited journals in a field
- Highest impact journals in a field
- Largest journals in a field
Citation and article counts are important indicators of how frequently current researchers are using individual journals. By tabulating and aggregating citation and article counts, JCR offers a unique perspective for journal evaluation and comparison.
- Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate) This link opens in a new windowJCR is a widely used source of citation data, used to compare and evaluate scholarly journals. For example, the most well-known indicator in the JCR is the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). This measure provides a ratio of citations to a journal in a given year to the citable items in the prior two years. Journal Citation Reports can show you the:
Most frequently cited journals in a field
Highest impact journals in a field
Largest journals in a field
Includes virtually all areas of science, technology, and social sciences. Covers 1997-present.
You should not depend solely on citation data in your journal evaluations. Citation data are not meant to replace informed peer review. Careful attention should be paid to the many conditions that can influence citation rates such as language, journal history and format, publication schedule, and subject specialty.
The number of articles given for journals listed in JCR include primarily original research and review articles. Editorials, letters, news items, and meeting abstracts are usually not included in article counts because they are not generally cited. Journals published in non-English languages or using non-Roman alphabets may be less accessible to researchers worldwide, which can influence their citation patterns. This should be taken into account in any comparative journal citation analysis.