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    Mechanical Engineering: Find Journal Articles

    A guide to resources on mechanical engineering

    Searching in Library Databases

    If you are searching for articles on a specific mechanical engineering topic, start with databases immediately below.  Depending on the aspect of your topic, you may want to broaden your search if it includes other disciplines, for example you may want to search the health sciences literature and the mechanical engineering literature for a topic on biomechanical engineering.  

    Recommended Keyword Strategies for Engineering:

    • Use OR to include alternate terms in your search. 
      • Defense industry OR Department of Defense OR DOD
    • Keep search terms to specific keywords, not questions, using AND and OR to include all the terms you need.
    • Use quotation marks around phrases to keep the words together when searched.
      • "Space vehicles"
    • Use the asterisk, * to include terms with multiple endings in your search. 
      • Flow* includes flow and flowing

    Recommended Library Databases

    Tips for Using Library Databases

    New to research in databases? View the tips below for the basics of what databases are and how they work.


    A library database is a collection of information, organized to make the storage and retrieval of resources easier and accessible to more people. Basically, it’s an electronic catalog or index for published materials. These materials most commonly include magazine, newspaper, and journal articles. Often, other items like books and videos are also included in databases. The database is like the bookcase that holds all these materials.

    Databases are highly organized and allow searching for information on a topic by keyword, subject, author, title, and short phrases. Most databases at the GCU Library provide access to full-text content, which means that you will find entire articles available, not just the abstracts or summaries of articles.

    Scholarly Resources: Scholarly resources are written with a focus on a specific subject discipline and usually written by an expert in the same subject field.  Scholarly resources are written for an academic audience.

    Examples of Scholarly Resources include: Academic journals, books written by experts in a field, and formally published encyclopedias and dictionaries.

    Primary Sources: “Original records created by participants or observers at the time historical events occurred or well after events, as in memoirs and oral histories." ( ALA 2008 ).

    Examples of Primary Sources include:Photographs, letters, historical documents, data sets, and audio recordings.

    Peer Reviewed Journals:   Peer Reviewed journals are evaluated prior to publication by experts in the journal’s subject discipline. This process ensures that the articles published within the journal are academically rigorous and meet the required expectations of an article in that subject discipline.

    Empirical Article : This type of scholarly resource is a subset of scholarly articles that reports the original finding of an observational and/or experimental research study. Common aspects found within an empirical article include: literature review, methodology, results, and discussion.

    Boolean Operators

    The Boolean Operator ‘ and’ retrieves articles that contain ALL terms
    Narrowsthe search 

    The Boolean Operator ‘ or’
    retrieves articles with either/any of the terms
    Broadensthe search

    The Boolean Operator ‘ not’ eliminates articles that have this term
    Narrowsthe search

    How They Are Used

    AND
    cat AND dogUsing AND, this search would retrieve results with cats AND dogs

    OR
    cat OR dogUsing OR, this search would retrieve results with cats, with dogs, and with both

    NOT
    cat NOT dogUsing NOT, this search would retrieve results with cats, and exclude those with dogs, or cats and dogs

    Boolean Operators in Action

    Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) can be typed into the search line with your search terms, like this: cat AND dog, cat OR dog, cat NOT dog.
    This image shows what it looks like in the database search box:

    You can also use the dropdown box the database has provided, and type a term (cat) in the first line, change the dropdown box to the Boolean term you want to use ( AND, OR, NOT ), and put your second term (dog) in the box beside the dropdown menu. This image shows what this technique looks like in the database search box:

     You can also combine the truncation technique with the Boolean operator. This image shows cat* AND dog* (truncated with the asterisk at the end of the root of your search term to include all possible endings for cat and dog).

    To broaden our search even more we can include synonyms, truncation, and Boolean operators. In this search we have searched for: [cat* or feline or kitten*] AND [dog or canine or pup*].

    Truncation

    What is it?

    Truncation is an easy way to search for multiple versions of a word.

    How does it work?

    Remove the end of the word (leaving the root of the word) and replace the ending with an asterisk *.

    Why should I use truncation?

    It saves time, and will expand your search to include all versions of the word. When you search in a database you are trying to identify keywords and subject terms; truncating a word will give you a greater chance of finding articles on your topic.

    How To Do It

    For our example , we'll use the word nurse:

    An article about nurses might say nurse, nurses, or nursing.

    We will keep the root word, nurs, and replace the possible endings with an asterisk: nurs*.

    Another example: leadership.

    An article about leadership might talk about leader, leaders, or leadership.

    We will keep the root word, leader, and replace the possible endings with an asterisk: leader*.

    Truncation In Action

    When you break your topic down to keywords, it's likely that there are many versions of that word. Including all of the possible versions will help make sure you find articles on that topic. This example shows multiple forms of the word leader (leader, leaders, leadership):

    Truncation means you shorten the word to the root, and replace the endings with an asterisk. In this example we have only the word leader*, and we will get the same results as before when we included all forms of that term.

    In this example, we are starting with multiple forms of the word nurse (nurse, nurses, nursing):

    And we can truncate the word to nurs* and get the same results:

    Don't search for full sentences. Search with keywords and synonyms instead, and always check your spelling --For example, if my assignment question is 'How do libraries help college students?' I would search for the terms library, college or university or higher education, and students - this image shows how this can be put into the search box:

    This example uses Boolean operators and truncation - two search tools you can use to improve your search technique.

    Limiting Search Results

    Many databases provide a menu next to each search box where a field limiter can be selected.  Each search box has its own field menu, so you can search different fields for each of your terms.

    In the Lopesearch each search box has select a field as a choice which allows choosing author, subject, or other choices

    This can help narrow down results by restricting your keywords to just the title, abstract, or subject tags.

    Most databases also have a set of filters to narrow down your results.

    the limit your results menu includes full text, date range, and peer reviewed

    In particular look for Published Date, Full Text, and Peer Reviewed as limits on your search results. 

    the all filters menu also appears as a sidebar after searching

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