Academic Search Premier

Jackie McFadden
Reference Librarian
Winthrop University
June, 2008

Academic Search Premier is the world’s largest scholarly, multi-disciplinary database, containing over 8,000 publications, including more than 3,600 peer-reviewed publications and nearly 4,700 full text publications.  Coverage spans virtually every area of academic study and offers information dating back to 1975. This database is updated on a daily basis.

How to Access Academic Search Premier:

From the Dacus Library Online Web page, choose the Databases tab or List of All Databases under Find Resources.  Scroll down and select Academic Search Premier from the alphabetical database list.

How to search for Journal Articles

Advanced Search is the default search.  Enter a keyword or phrase (use quotation marks for exact phrase) in the Find field.  Define your search by selecting a field from the drop-down list on the right.  Select a Boolean operator (and, or, not) to combine the search terms.  Enter other keywords if needed in the additional Find fields. 

You can limit or expand the search under the Refine Search tab located below the search form or click the Refine Search tab on any results page.   Options include: Full text, Peer Reviewed Journals, Books Review, Case Study, Primary Source Document (helpful when searching court cases or other documents), etc.  Check the Expanders boxes at the end of the search page to search the entire text and to find related keywords.

When the settings have been selected, click Search to retrieve the results.

The results list shows All Results.  Articles can be viewed by Document Type (Academic Journals, Magazines, Newspapers, or Books/Monographs) by clicking on the blue links over the title list.  Available formats will be shown for each article, such as Citation, HTML Full Text, and PDF Full Text.  If the article is not full-text, check Dacus Library holdings to see if full text is available from the Dacus Online Catalog.  Click the article title links for more information or go directly to full text if available.

The results list can be sorted by Date, Source, Author or Relevance using the Sort by drop-down list.  On the left-hand side of the screen, a listing of Subjects, Journal Titles, and Authors allows you to narrow the current search results by these categories. 

How to search for Journal Titles

To search for individual journals or to browse or search the publications list, click Publications on the toolbar.   A list of all publications included in Academic Search Premier will appear.  Enter all or part of a publication name in the Browse Publications field.  Select a search type by clicking a radio button beside Alphabetical, By Subject & Description, or Match Any Words. 

• Alphabetical - displays journal titles in an alphabetical list beginning with the letters entered.
• By Subject & Description – displays journal titles which include the search terms in the subject, description, and title fields of the journal. 
• Match Any Words – displays journal titles containing one or more search terms in order of relevance.

Click Browse to view the Results and choose a publication title for detailed journal information.  Results may include the publication title, ISSN, title history, publication type, publisher’s address, description of contents, whether or not the publication is peer-reviewed, and dates of coverage (including dates of full-text coverage). 

From this page, you can view an expandable listing of all publication entries from a journal. Locate All Issues on the right hand side of the screen.  Choose a year to get a listing of issues available for that year.  Click on an issue to get a listing of articles included in that issue.  To view an article, click the blue title link.  If full text is available, a link will be listed after View for the HTML or PDF version.  If full text is not available, click Check Dacus Library Holdings to be taken to the Online Catalog.  Library holdings for the publication will be listed along with full-text links to other databases if available.  Remember to check the article date against the list of library holdings to make sure the article is available.  If an article is not available through Dacus Library, it can be requested through Interlibrary Loan.

One or more publications can be searched at once by using the Mark Items for Search feature. Check the boxes to the left of the publication titles that you want to search.  Click Add to place the titles in the Find field on the Search Screen, and then click Search to search within those publications.  Additional search terms can be added in the Find fields.

How to find Subject Terms:

Click the Subject Terms link on the toolbar to search the subject authority file. Enter the search term or terms in the Browse for field.  When searching for a person’s name, list last name first.  Choose Term Begins With to get an alphabetical list of results.  Choose Term Contains to find the keyword in a title. Choose Relevancy Ranked to list results according to the frequency of appearance of the search term.  Click Browse to view the results.  Click on a subject term to view a hierarchy of related subdivisions. When you find a term that you want to search, check the box beside it and click Add.  This will add the subject term to the Find field. More than one subject term can be chosen.  Click Search to enter the terms into the Advanced Search form.  Add any additional limiters and choose Search to view subject specific journal articles.

How to locate Images

To find images, click on the Images link.  Enter the search term or terms in the Find field. Limit the search by checking one or more predetermined Image Types: All, People, Natural Science, Places, History, Maps and Flags.  The search term has to exactly match words in the title or caption of an image.  Results will be displayed as thumbnail images.  Click on the image to print or save to a storage device.

Helpful Hints and Other Search Options

• If more search terms are needed than there are Find fields, the terms can be combined in one box by using Boolean operators.  For example, type cat OR feline in the same find field for results containing either term. 
• If a keyword is misspelled, the Spellchecker will provide alternate spellings.
• Singular or Plural Searching – if a singular search term is entered, the plural is also searched.  If a plural search term is entered, the singular is not searched.
• Wildcard and truncation symbols can be used.  A question mark ? can be used to replace an unknown letter in a word.  For example, wom?n will retrieve women and woman.  To find all forms of a root term, use the asterisk *.  For example, comput* will retrieve computer and computing. 
• Be careful when limiting the search to Full Text.  Many of the citations in Academic Search Premier will have full text available in other databases that can be linked to through WebBridge.  Full text will limit you to only full text articles provided by Academic Search Premier.
• Use Choose Databases to search multiple EBSCOhost databases.
• If the search returns too few results, click Expanders at the top of the results list.

Printing, Saving, or E-mailing Records

Results can be printed, e-mailed or saved after opening a title link.  To save multiple results, add them to a folder, then print, email or save the contents of the folder. 

To print a HTML document, open the document and click Print beside the printer icon located within the Academic Search Premier page.  This will bring up the Print Manager.  Choose Field or Citation format and click Print.  Check include when printing HTML Full Text (when available).  You can check the number of pages to be printed by clicking Estimate Number of Pages below the print button. To print a PDF document, open the document and click on the Adobe Printer icon in the article window.

To e-mail a HTML document, click E-Mail beside the envelope icon.  From the Print Manager choose Field or Citation format.  Check include when sending HTML Full Text (when available).  Add your full e-mail address and a subject title that you will recognize. To e-mail PDF, check send PDF as a separate attachment (when available) or open the document and click on the e-mail icon in the article window.  When an e-mail is sent from the EBSCOhost Web site, a popup message will note that the message has been sent.  The e-mail will arrive from ephost@epnet.com.   PDF e-mail will arrive from (a multi-digit number).pdf.

To save a HTML document, click Save next to the floppy disk icon.  Choose Standard Field Format or Citation Format and make your selections from the dropdown list.  Check Save HTML Full Text (when available).  Click Save.  To save a PDF document, open the document and click Save a Copy beside the floppy disk icon in the article window. 

• For a quick citation guide or more information, click Help to access the Online Help Manual.

For assistance, please go to the Reference Desk or call 323-4501.