How do authors of scientific articles find the sources they use to create their work?

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How do authors of articles and/or textbooks find their sources?
Do they use academic search engines like Google scholar?
What other steps are there in the process of finding sources?

Comments

  1. Hasefet Avatar

    … by constantly reading scientific articles in field-specific journals, through reviews, by following their field at conference, and by doing their own general or systematic literature reviews using indexed databases such as Medline (for example).

    Reading and knowing your field’s literature is one of the largest time requirements of scientific practice.

  2. lipflip Avatar

    Reading specific journals.or by attending conferences, searching for specific articles and topics on scopus (rather not Google scholar!) and sometimes suggestions from researchgate.con

  3. ImUnderYourBedDude Avatar

    Usually, you already have a good idea of the literature and want to build upon 1-2 already existing papers. Those already have dozens of citations you can read to familiarize yourself with the topic.

    Otherwise:

    Look who the recent peer reviewed papers on your subject cite.

    Ask colleagues. The more specific your question, the more likely you are to find a source.

    For bioinformatic programs, the software usually spits out all the necessary citations needed after computing.

    Look up papers that mention specific stuff you want to mention, by searching by keywords on google scholar/pubmed.

  4. BranchLatter4294 Avatar

    They subscribe to journals, use database searches, library resources, tools like Mendeley. There are a variety of ways to find documents.

  5. Comfortable-Web9455 Avatar

    Footnote mining.

    Start with one paper. Follow key citations and read those. Follow their key citations and read those. 2-3 cycles of that and you’ve got masses of material.

  6. DdraigGwyn Avatar

    Look for a recent review article. It will cite most of the relevant articles for the field.

  7. GurProfessional9534 Avatar

    About 50% of the time, I already have seen the paper I want to cite and recall at least some info about it (author, approximate title, etc), though I may need to do some googling to find it.

    Maybe 40% of the time, I find papers by following the citation trail.

    Maybe 10% of the time, I’m totally in the dark looking around on google scholar for what I need.

  8. Black-Raspberry-1 Avatar

    Contact a librarian at your academic library. They can help you with this process in general and for specific topics/projects.

  9. Friendly-Spinach-189 Avatar

    Yes, there are reference manager software, Mendeley is online and free.

  10. Friendly-Spinach-189 Avatar

    Some journals are open access, some require subscription. The abstracts are usually available.

  11. Friendly-Spinach-189 Avatar

    If they have supervisor and they are learning their supervisor will guide you to relevant material.