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Article search ABC: how to find articles

Academic research is often published in a form of an article. Knowing how to search articles is important especially if you are looking for academic content. This page explains how to search for articles in Laurea.

The number of Open Access articles is constantly increasing, but most articles are still not free of charge. Through the article databases ordered by Laurea Library, Laurea students and staff have access to the paid articles of thousands of scientific and professional journals.

Tools for searching articles

There are numerous different article search services. None of them is clearly better than the others in all cases. It's best to consider different types of article search services as complementary. You can often find the same article through different search services.

Google Scholar

  • Google Scholar is Google's search engine for finding academic content. It returns in most cases more search results than any other academic search tool.
  • GS searches information from e.g. universities' and academic publishers' web pages and databases
  • There are significantly fewer tools for narrowing down search results than in database-based services
  • Remember to activate library links in GS settings. This will give you a direct access from GS to articles acquired for Laurea. Read instructions.

Laurea Finna Article search

  • Laurea Finna Article search covers most of the articles acquired for Laurea and lots of Open Access articles and other content
  • Search results can be limited to e.g. peer-reviewed articles, full texts (fully readable articles) or by the publication year

Article databases

  • Laurea Library subscribes to several article databases. See the full list.
  • Most article databases are interdisciplinary, whereas some are focused on content in a particular field. You can find the recommended databases of your field in your degree programmes' own LibGuide.
  • In most cases interdisciplinary databases are best to search in biggest first order:

AI-based article search tools

  • There are numerous AI-based tools for searching academic articles
  • The basic idea is usually that AI-enabled article search services derive the necessary keywords from the search feed provided by the user and then conduct a search for some extensive article information search index.
  • AI-based article search tools may also have content-generating features. For example, they may generate summaries of one or more articles.
  • The use of artificial intelligence in the search for articles is constantly evolving. In the future, AI will probably also integrate with at least some of the article search tools that have been on the market for a longer time.
  • Read more about the topic in AI and information search LibGuide

How to access a certain article

  1. Start by going to Google Scholar. Remember to activate the Laurea library links in GS settings. [Read instructions]. Type the name of the article to the search box. Use quotation marks. E.g. "Value creation and cost reduction in health care".
  2. If you don't find the article through GS, go to  Laurea Finna article search. Type the name of the article to the search box. Use quotation marks. E.g. ”Health Care Access and Perceptions of Provider Care”
  3. If you still don't find the article, you can ask the library to have a look at the access options more closely. Contact library(at)laurea.fi

Searching for most cited authors, publications and articles within a certain field

Laurea licensed article databases

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