Postgraduate support

As a postgraduate student your supervisor will be looking for evidence that you have used a wide range of resources in your studies.  Periodicals can provide up to date, specialised information on your research topic.  There are three main types of periodical.

• Academic Journals
• Magazines - both general and professional
• Newspapers

You must decide which is the best for your research - it may be that a combination of all three is most appropriate but this depends on the discipline in which you are researching.  

If you are looking for a particular e-journal title e.g. American Economist, then use this link:

Journals A to Z

Once you have found the journal you want you can search within it for articles.

Google Scholar can be a very useful tool for alerting you to what has been published.  Please remember that not all output listed in Google Scholar is available free of charge so you may need to apply for a copy through our Document Delivery Service.  Sometimes it can be worth contacting the author who may be able to provide you with a free copy.

Sometimes when you are doing research you may come across an article in a journal that you are unable to access at Staffordshire University in either print or electronic format.  This is usually because the Library does not subscribe to that title.  In this situation you can opt to use our Document Delivery Service.  Visit our Document Delivery webpage at  for details of this free service.

Not all research is hidden behind paywalls and subscription models. The following resources give you access to freely-available scholarly papers across multiple disciplines:

Staffordshire University Online Research Repository (STORE) (https://eprints.staffs.ac.uk)

Search for Open Access research papers deposited by Staffordshire University academics and researchers.

Click here to view the latest usage statistics for the repository.

arXiv

Over 2 million research papers and documents are available to search here for Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics.

BASE

Over 345 million documents are available to search here from over 11,000 providers.

CORE

Provides access to 275 million research papers and articles from around the world.

DOAB

The Directory of Open Access Books is a collection of Open Access books from a range of subjects and publishers. It is a good place to search if you are looking for more in-depth Open Access materials and is a useful companion to a DOAJ or CORE search.

DOAJ

The Directory of Open Access Journals provides access to over 20,000 Open Access journals with over 9.5 million articles and is growing all the time.

EThOS

The Electronic Theses Online project run by the British Library collects electronic theses from UK university and makes them available through Ethos. You can search Ethos to find results from a large collection of PhD theses. 

In addition to the information from the British Library we have created some guidance on alternatives ways to access doctoral theses while access to to EThOS is disrupted.

EndNote Click

An extension for your internet browser that quickly tells you if you have access to a version of a journal article that you are looking at. It detects when you are looking at an article’s page and if you have access, either through your library’s subscriptions or through an Open Access version, it will provide a link to the document. This extension will work in Google Chrome.

OpenDOAR

Browse a list of global institutional repositories or search for content from those repositories.

OpenGrey

Provides references to European research reports, conference papers and other "grey literature" and ways in which to access the material. Some full-text availability.

Unpaywall

Another useful browser extension. It adds an icon to the right-hand side of any page where it detects an academic article. The icon indicates whether there is an Open Access version available and clicking it will take you to the appropriate document. The extension will work in Google Chrome and Firefox.

Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. Delivering a comprehensive overview of the world's research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities, Scopus features smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research.

Once you have logged in with your university ID, please also register for an individual account, as this gives you access to more personalised features including permissions to save and download searches.

• SCOPUS

• SCOPUS tutorials

The STaffordshire University Online REpository is an Open Access institutional research repository designed to house the research and scholarly output of the University’s staff and researchers. To find out more information visit our STORE repository, also known as ePrints: 
https://eprints.staffs.ac.uk/

To find out more about the concept of Open Access, look at the JISC Open Access page. 

DeepDyve provides access to millions of articles across thousands of peer-reviewed journals and is aimed mainly at unaffiliated researchers. You can "rent"  articles from thousands of the leading scholarly journals through DeepDyve's cloud-based service.  Articles can be viewed through a browser from anywhere you have an internet connection, but cannot be downloaded or  printed.  Read the articles as much as you want during the rental period, which varies according to your account plan.

Access UK academic theses through EThOS - the British Library electronic theses online service.  You can search a database of UK theses by institution, author and keywords and order theses online

In addition to the information from the British Library we have created some guidance on alternatives ways to access doctoral theses while access to to EThOS is disrupted.

Grey literature is a wide ranging body of research information that is not produced and reviewed by commercial publishers.

Grey literature can be a very important research resource, often recording niche or emerging research.

You should make your own assessment for quality, reliability and potential bias when selecting grey literature for inclusion in your research projects.