Hot topics: where to find out more

If you are looking for information on cutting edge research and development to aid your studies there are a range of online resources available via Library Search.

Nature Communications is an open access, multidisciplinary journal dedicated to publishing high-quality research in all areas of the biological, health, physical, chemical, and Earth sciences. When exploring the content of Nature Communications you will find current research articles, reviews, and analysis, together with news, comments, FAQs, and editorials. Hot topics are brought together in collections like ‘Research in support of COP26’ and ‘Clean Air’ which can be extremely useful when thinking about literature and systematic reviews.

CAB Abstracts is a bibliographic database that covers significant research and development literature in the fields of agriculture, forestry, human health, nutrition, animal health, and the management and conservation of natural resources. Using targeted searching and filtering in CAB Abstracts will enable you to find information on current hot topics like climate change and Covid-19. It’s not all just about journal articles either, you will find access to videos, letters, conference proceedings, books, and reports. Collating this information and adding it to your reference management library will also help to broaden the scope of your research into a topic.

So, next time you see a hot topic related to your research appear on your social media feed, or in your favourite newspaper, head over to Library Search and use these resources to help you find out more about the current academic research and discussion.

ProQuest Resources on Trial for Social Sciences

Education Magazine Archive

An archive of magazines in the field of education, ranging from the early 20th to 21st centuries. The publications are aimed at teachers and other educational professionals and constitute valuable primary sources through which the evolution of educational policy, practice, and theory during this period may be delineated and interpreted. This content also pertains strongly to several related fields such as social history, psychology, and childhood studies.

LGBT Magazine Archive

Archival runs of 26 of the most influential, longest-running serial publications covering LGBT interests. Includes the pre-eminent US and UK titles – The Advocate and Gay Times, respectively. Chronicles more than six decades of the history and culture of the LGBT community. In addition to LGBT/gender/sexuality studies, this material also serves related disciplines such as sociology, political science, psychology, health, and the arts. Some publications may contain explicit content.

LGBT Thought and Culture

LGBT Thought and Culture is an online resource hosting the key works and archival documentation of LGBT political and social movements throughout the 20th century and into the present day. The collection contains 150,000 pages of rare archival content, including seminal texts, letters, periodicals, speeches, interviews, and ephemera

Women and Social Movements Library

Women and Social Movements Library focuses on women’s public activism globally, from 1600 to the present. Created through a collaboration with leading historians, the collection contains nearly 400,000 pages of primary source documents and more than 200 related scholarly essays interpreting these sources.

ProQuest One Business

Designed to help business researchers balance theoretical and practical learning, and acquire the research skills that will make them successful in their courses and careers, ProQuest One Business is a complete business library containing millions of full-text items across scholarly and popular periodicals, newspapers, market research reports, dissertations, books, videos and more.

To access these resources go to the following URL: https://trials.proquest.com/access?token=ZLeHkHPCFdDQQTOVtCIIEtVnU and accept the terms and conditions.
You may be asked to log in with your Newcastle University ID to access the ProQuest platform.

The trials are available until 17th December 2021.
As always, your feedback will be very welcome: you can either email it, or leave a comment on this blogpost.

E-book acquisitions

The library has prioritised the acquisition of e-books and electronic resources during the Covid-19 pandemic with a myriad of titles now available via Library Search. The number of individual e-books purchased in 2020/21 was 4,640 and the number of e-books in collections purchased in 2020/21 was 383,771. In total, the number of e-books purchased in 2020/21 stands at 388,411.

E-book collections from Cambridge University Press, De Gruyter, and IGI Global are all accessible via Library Search where you can casually browse specific subject areas to see what is available. However, by being more specific and using author, title, and/or ISBN details within these collections you will be able to quickly navigate to the e-books that you need for your research and study.

A number of SAgE specific electronic collections are available. These include Packt Publishing, which offers a range of computing and IT related resources on cloud, data, programming, and web development, and the Royal Society of Chemistry e-book collection where you can download PDF chapters, or read online, from key chemistry and chemistry related texts.

There is also substantial access to a range of SpringerLink electronic publications covering a variety of SAgE disciplines. This includes valuable 2021 collections specific to biomedical and life sciences, computer science, earth and environmental science, engineering, and intelligent technologies and robotics. Furthermore, e-books from the SpringerLink Lecture Notes Series covering mathematics, statistics, and physics, can be found and filtered using Library Search.

Try the new Web of Science

Web of Science homepage with advanced search

Over the summer we moved to the newly revitalised Web of Science platform and the consensus amongst the Liaison Team is that it’s great! When asked the difference between Scopus and Web of Science and why you would use one database rather than the other, it is largely a question of personal preference and you when engaged in more advanced research you may need to use both databases.

If you are new to Web of Science the name may imply it is a science database, however it provides access to current and retrospective multidisciplinary information from approximately 21,000 peer-reviewed, high-quality scholarly journals published worldwide (including Open Access journals); over 205,000 conference proceedings; and over 104,000 editorially selected books within their Social Sciences Citation Index®, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index™ collections. 

Web of Science also allows cited reference searching where you can navigate forward, backward, and through the literature, searching all disciplines and time spans to uncover all the information relevant to your studies.

Where to find Web of Science

You can access Web of Science from Library Search. This will help you to access the database successfully as you will be prompted to log in with your University username and password. Simply search for it by name from the Library website.

You will also find a link to on the Journals and Databases page of your Subject Guide, which provides a list and links to the recommended databases in your discipline.

Web of Science content

As we alluded to above, Web of Science includes much more than ‘science’ information, including:

  • life sciences, biomedical sciences
  • social sciences, arts & humanities.
  • strongest coverage of natural sciences, health sciences, engineering, computer science, materials sciences.

What’s new about Web of Science?

Start with this quick introduction to the new Web of Science to find out about the improved user interface and search functionality.

Get started with Web of Science with these advanced search tips tutorial and find out how you can be use the techniques most effectively in Web of Science. 

Help with Web of Science

As the platform is new you may find that the database automatically begins with a guided tour, taking you through the main features as you begin your search. This is a great way to get to know Web of Science. There are also lots of tip sheets, videos and training resources to explore.

Resource on trial: Westlaw Academic Books

The Westlaw UK logo

Westlaw is one of our highly-valued legal databases and can be accessed via our Law Subject Guide and Library Search, logging in with your Newcastle University Campus ID & password. One of the lesser-used aspects of Westlaw is its Books collection.

Westlaw Books gives access to invaluable titles such as the White Book and Archbold, alongside comprehensive and authoritative coverage of common law through titles from the Common Law Library series (e.g. Chitty on Contracts, and Benjamin’s Sale of Goods).

Until the end of November 2021, we also have access to the academically-based books available in the Sweet & Maxwell Academic Collection to support your studies. These include Duxbury’s Contract Law (Textbook Series), Winfield & Jolowicz on TortTreitel on the Law of Contract, and Elliott & Wood’s Cases and Materials on Criminal Law (the latter being written and edited by former academics of Newcastle Law School).

An image of the selection of Sweet & Maxwell Academic titles available within Westlaw Books.

To access this content, log into Westlaw and click on Westlaw Books in the menu at the top of the page.

An image of the Westlaw homepage screen with the 'Books' menu option highlighted.

You can browse through the 350+ titles included in the Library’s subscription plan, but if you know the book you are looking for, search by a title keyword, e.g. criminal.

An image of the Westlaw Books screen with the 'Search by Title' field highlighted.

If you want to browse those student-focused books which are currently on trial, use the filters on the left-hand side of the screen. Scroll down and select ‘Sweet & Maxwell Academic’ in the Publisher/Series filter section.

An image of the Westlaw Books screen with a Sweet & Maxwell Academic filter selected.

This short Thomson Reuters video (1:56 mins) gives tips on using Westlaw Books effectively in locating bibliographic information (essential for referencing these titles in your work), searching the materials using keywords, saving your favourite titles for repeated use, and how to email, print, download, save into a Westlaw folder or simply view the material on the screen (in reading-mode too).

If you’re not a fan of videos and want a handy guide to download or print, then this Westlaw Books PDF will help.

An image showing an excerpt from the Westlaw Books support leaflet, and how to annotate and save text, download and print.

If you have any comments or questions about Westlaw Books, or any other library resource, please contact libraryhelp@ncl.ac.uk or leave your comments here.