Sport

Journal articles are a key source of information.

When someone carries out a piece of research, a journal article is usually the format they will choose to publish their research. So, if you want to keep up with the latest research, you need to read journal articles. They also contain the high level of technical detail and nuance you will need for professional work.

Most journal articles are available online. You can search for journal articles on Library Search like books. But there are also dedicated databases which specialise in particular subject areas: because these concentrate on a single subject, they can offer more targeted, sophisticated search tools than a general purpose search engine or database, giving you superior search results.

SportsDiscus is the best place to begin any sports related search!

These databases cover a wide range of subjects, of which sport-related material comprises just a small fraction.

However, these databases are also absolutely huge, so that 'small fraction' can still be a vast number of relevant articles! Several of these databases also include advanced search features, which give you new ways of finding articles.

Many databases which search for journal articles will also search for conference papers. Conference papers- sometimes also called conference proceedings- are articles based on presentations delivered at academic or industry conferences.  They sometimes feature complete pieces of research: but they often are based on preliminary results or work-in-progress from ongoing research. Conference papers may be published in the form of journals, books or websites.

Most conference papers don't go through the quality control process of  peer review in the same way as academic journal articles. However, this is not always the case, and some conference papers may have gone through peer review: check the details of the conference to find out if this is the case.

Because they are not always as extensive or rigorous as formal journal articles, conference papers are often considered to be not such high quality sources to use in your work. However, some conference papers go through exactly the same quality-control process as journal articles: and the latest conference papers can be very valuable because they will include new information and ideas that has not yet reached the journals. This is particularly true in the case of fast-developing areas of research.

While we have a few collections of conference papers, we don't have subscription access to most conferences. However, conference papers can be obtained via the document supply service in the same way as journal articles and can be supplied for free within a matter of days. The SHULinks option that appears in many databases will give you the links to request a conference paper via DSS.

You may also sometimes encounter conference abstracts. Rather than a full article, these are just short summaries of conference presentations. If you do find a conference paper and want to learn more about the research, it is often worth using a database to search for work by the same authors: in most cases, the authors will have gone on to write up and publish their research in the form of a journal article at a later date. This will give you a much fuller account of the completed research than the abstract or conference presentation.

Split your assignment into keywords: 

To find more relevant and fewer results, think about your keywords. Make sure they accurately describe what you are looking for, and add more keywords to make your search more specific. For example for the assignment title "What role can sport play in the regeneration of a city?" keywords would be sport - regeneration - city

Think of alternative keywords: 

For example, 'young' could also be referred to as 'youth' or 'adolescent'. Or, think of the bigger picture. For example, instead of searching for 'boys' or 'girls', try searching for 'gender'. For the example above an alternative for regeneration might be 'development or renewal.'

Search for phrases in "double quotation marks": 

For example, "barriers to participation". This will search for the phrase as a whole, instead of the individual words.

If we don't have a journal article or conference proceeding in stock, we can ask another library to email a copy to you via our Document Supply Service.

While it may not be possible to get absolutely everything, the vast majority of articles can be obtained this way.