OARE Short Course

Short Course Table of

Contents

Introduction to OARE including background,

registration & copyright
Searching Strategies
Using OARE homepage
Searching for articles in OARE Environment Index
Searching for articles in OARE - Scopus
Searching for articles in OARE
-Environmental Science
and Pollution Management CSA
OARE Training material

Introduction to OARE
Programme Objectives
Increase access to high-quality,
relevant literature in environmental
sciences
Improve research in environmental
sciences and related disciplines
Improve the quality and effectiveness
of education and training
Increase environment-related policy
for the benefit of the population

What is OARE?
OARE =

Online Access to Research in the

Environment

OARE is an Internet based portal

Provides free or low cost access to major scientific
and peer reviewed journals, e-books, databases,
and other scientific materials in environmental
sciences .
Launched in October, 2006.
Several thousand institutions are registered from
over one hundred countries
Has 3900 journals from more than 150 of the
worlds leading academic publishers
Full-text coverage from 1997 onward in most cases

Eligible Countries

Partners R4L Programs

Major Publisher Partners - Blackwell
Publishing, CABI, Elsevier, Kluwer Academic
Publishing, Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins,
Oxford University Press, Nature Publishing
Group, Springer Verlag, John Wiley & Sons
United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP)
Yale University & Cornell University
World Health Organization (WHO) & Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO)
Microsoft

Eligibility Overview
109 countries qualify
Institutions in the public sector or with a
not-for-profit status qualify for free
access to the full-text articles in OAREs
online collection.
Institutions must register (just once) to
receive a username and password
Check with your information or
communication officer to receive the
username and password that gives you
full access to OARE and full-text articles

Country Eligibility Overview

(01 2012)
Country eligibility is based on GNI per capita or HDI
(human development index)
Free access is available to institutions in countries
with a GNI per capita of $1600 or less or HDI
(human development index) less than 0.63 are
eligible for free access (Group A)
Access to those with GNI of $1601-$5000 or HDI
less than 0.67 pay a fee of $1000 per year (Group
B)
Some publishers opt out of both option by
country and do not allow access to their journals
70 countries are currently eligible as Group A
countries and 37 countries are Group B

Institution Eligibility
Overview

All OARE users may browse collection and

journal abstracts without log in. (You may still
have full-text access through the OARE website
if your institutions subscribe to the journals.)
To view, download and print the full-text
articles, users must be registered and must
login first
Login may only be done by registered
institutions
Students, faculty and staff at eligible,
registered institutions can access full-text
articles and other OARE resources.

OARE: User Agreement

All registered institutions will sign
a User Agreement covering:
Use of the OARE password
Copyright and Fair Use
Agreement shall be available in
your institution

Use of the OARE Password

Do Please Share OARE
username and password with
colleagues, students, faculties
in your institution
Do not Share with those
from outside the institution
Do not Use outside the country

Copyright and Fair Use

Same as typical copyright and fair use
principles: It is OK, for example, to:
Download or print up to 15% of a journal
issue or book
Use material for educational purposes
(course packs or reserves)
Make copies for institution members or
students

Always credit sources

Be cautious but sensible

Abuse of Publisher
Privileges
It is NOT OK to:
Charge for documents, except for cost
recovery for teaching materials
Post content to websites or blogs that are
publically accessible
Change content
Download all articles from a single issue

Violations result in the INSTITUTION or

ENTIRE country denied access until
the problem is resolved.

Exercises
Complete exercises #1 in
the accompanying OARE
Short Course Exercises
(Word) document

Planning a Search
Strategy

Example (Steps 1-4) health

problems AND water pollution
1. Ask: What health problems are associated with water
pollution?
2. Need: scholarly primary research
3. Main Concepts: health, water, pollution
4. Select terms:
Broader terms: health, environmental degradation,
agricultural management,
Synonyms:
health, illness, disease, etc.
water, rivers, lakes, sea, domestic water, etc.
pollution, oil spills, chemical, biological, toxicity, etc
Alternative spellings: none
Plurals: river(s), lake(s), disease(s)
Capitals: e.g. name of a specific lake, disease, region

5. Select a Source

6. Search:

construct a search using

the appropriate commands and best
practices

Question: What health problems are associated with water poll

Concept 1

health

Concept 2

problems

1. health
3. problems
2. wellbeing 4. complications

9 = 1 OR 2

10 = 3 OR 4

Concept 3

Concept 4

water

pollution

5. water
6. H2O

11 = 5 OR 6

7. pollution
8. contamination

12 = 7 OR 8

13 = 9 AND 10 AND 11 AND 12

7. Revise
Review and refine you search

be prepared to review/revise your

search

keep your search terms in concept

sets/zones but remember to explore
subtopics

try new sources of information

save the search and citations for

future use

promote use of high-quality

resources

8. Manage Results
Download, print, save, e-mail results & search
history
Cite using a biomedical citation style
Save search, set up alerts

9. Evaluate-Who? What? When? Where?

Why?

Accuracy
Authority
Objectivity
Currency
Coverage

10. Apply Answer the question.

Boolean Operators
AND Operator
(to combine two
concepts)
groundwater

(heavy metals)

the AND operator is used to combine two

concepts e.g. groundwater AND heavy
metals results are in the combined area
of the two circles
Note: the parentheses are used to limit
the results to the exact phrase in this
case (heavy metals)

AND Operator
(to combine three concepts)
groundwater

(heavy metals)

pollution
the AND operator is used to
combine three concepts e.g.
groundwater AND (heavy metals)
AND pollution - in the combined
area of the three circles

OR Operator
(info containing one or other
term)
mercury

lead

the OR is a means of combining terms

e.g. mercury OR lead - in each circles
area with the overlap in the middle
having both search terms

NOT Operator
(in one term or the other)

mercury

lead

the mercury NOT lead option limits the

search to one term (mercury) only in the
left area; it eliminates items in 2nd term
(lead) or both terms (center)

Other search engine

functions
Phrase or proximity searching: or ()
allows you to search for an exact phrase, e.g.
diseases AND (water pollution) or groundwater
AND (heavy metals)
Truncation/wildcards: *
allow you to search alternative spellings and
plurals
river* for river OR rivers
pesticide* for pesticide OR pesticides
program* for programme OR program
Alternate spellings: ?
can be used to substitute for characters anywhere
in a word
wom?n for woman or women

Asia AND (mercury OR lead)

lead

mercury

Asia
Asia AND (mercury OR lead) in the shaded
area
The OR operator retains items in each term
and the AND operator is used to combine

More Search
Techniques
Field Specific Searching
author, title, journal, date, url, etc.
Language Restrictions, Humans or Animals
and other limits
(to be discussed in SCOPUS)
Relevancy Ranking
a grading that gives extra weight to a
document when the search terms
appear in the headline or are capitalized
every found document is calculated as
100% multiply by the angle formed by
weights vector for request and weights
vector for document found

Evaluating Web
Information

Criteria for Evaluation

- Accuracy
- Authority
- Currency
- Coverage
- Objectivity

The Google search engine

This is the Google

search engine.
Queries are typed
into the Search box.
We have searched
for OARE>

Google Scholar
provides a simple way
to broadly search for
scholarly literature.

Exercises
Complete exercises #2 in
the accompanying OARE
Short Course Exercises
(Word) document

How to Register for OARE

Step 1
Start your web browser
(Internet Explorer or
Firefox).
Step 2
Type:
http://
www.unep.org/oare
in the Address box
Step 3
Press Enter on the
keyboard or GO

Click on Register for OARE link

to access the step-by-step guide
to see if your institution is
registered or must complete this
process.

This document is a step-bystep guide to completing the

Research4Life online
registration process. You
will check to make sure your
institution is not already
registered. There is a link to
the online registration form.

To register, fill in the form. You

only need to fill this in once as
an institution. Note that an
institution can register for all
Research4Life programs at
once and that the other
programs (besides OARE) can
be added.

Complete all the

required fields
including the six
character code and
click on the Send
Registration box.

Help
Trouble registering or logging on?
Technical issues? Questions about
policy or use? Training inquiries?
For support in Africa, contact ITOCA
itoca@itoca.org

For support elsewhere, email

oare@unep.org

How to USE OARE

Step 1
Start your web browser
(Internet Explorer or
Firefox).
Step 2
Type:
http://
www.unep.org/oare
in the Address box
Step 3
Press Enter on the
keyboard or GO

Accessing the Collection

From this page, you can

login and also view this
information in multiple
languages.

From the initial pages menu, you

can find the link to journals and
databases, information about
OARE plus eligibility, how to
register, training material, etc.

Logging In
For full-text journal articles:
Users institutions must be
registered
Users must log in using institutional
user name and password.
NOTE: OARE log in does not give
access to all services offered on
publishers websites.

Type in user name and password exactly as

provided by your institution. Passwords are
case-sensitive.
Click Login

Besides access to journals and

books, the initial OARE page
includes links to Search inside
OARE full-text through
database and article
searching, Reference
sources and Free
Collections. Note also the link

The Logged in from:

message confirms that you
have completed the login.
You also can confirm login by
viewing the url (web address)
at the top of the page that
will read:
oaresciences.org/whaleco

If you do not properly login, this

message on the Contents page
will remind you!

Navigating OARE to Find

What You Need!
In the next few slides you will learn to:
Browse by journal titles and
publishers
Explore journals by subject lists
Locate journals by language
Download full-text articles (PDF and
HTML versions)

Once you have logged-in,

you will be taken to the
Contents page.

Searching by Title

Journals can be accessed by title from the

Journals collection A- Z list. For example,
to find Perspectives in Plant Ecology,
Evolution and Systematics, click on P.

A page appears
containing all the journal
titles beginning with P
listing the Accessible
Content for your
institution.

Click on a title in the list to

select a journal
Perspectives in Plant
Ecology, Evolution and

Another window will

open at the journal
publishers site with
the full list of Volumes,
issues and articles.

This is the PDF display of the

article. Most publishers also
supply the HTML (with hyperlinks)
and summary options.

We have displayed the P All

Items list for an institution
that does not have access to
all the journals noted by all
the while ! Boxes.

Click on this link to View complete list of

the journals.

This listing does not have hypertext links to

the contents of the journals. You must go to the
Journal collection A-Z list.

Searching by Subject

Journals also can

be found via the
Subjects A- Z
category list.

Choose the subject that you

are interested in. e.g.
Environmental Law,
Policy & Planning.

An alphabetical list of
Environmental Law, Policy &
Planning journals now is displayed
with links to the journals websites.

Click on a journal title to

open the journal in a new
window (the publishers
page) Environment
and Urbanization

The Environment and

Urbanization journal now
opens in the publishers
website. Note the links to the
Current and Recent Issues.

Again, we have opened

the PDF format of an
article. Note that there
are save and print options.

Searching by Language

Click on the link to the

Languages category list
to view the drop down
menu of journals by
language; choose the
language you prefer. e.g.
French.

An alphabetical list
of French language
journals
Accessible
Content titles is
displayed.

Select a journal title from

the list e.g. Biochimica et
Biophysica Acta Bioenergetics.

A new window will open at the

publishers site - with access to
the current and previous volumes
and issues.

Searching by Publisher
From the initial Journals page,
click on the drop down menu
for Publishers and choose
the publisher that you want.
Note the list of journals that
You have full access to:

Click on the drop down menu for

Publishers and choose the
publisher that you want. e.g.
Nature Publishing Group.

The All Items list notes

all the journals of a
publisher. In this case,
the institution does not
have access to the
journals.

The Accessible
Content list of OARE
journals available
from the Nature
Publishing Group
will be displayed.

Choose the specific

journal that you
want.
e.g. Nature Cell
Biology

The initial page of the journal

is displayed. Choose the
volume, issue and article that
you are interested in
e.g.
March Issue 3.

This is the display for the HTML

version of the article that includes
hypertext links. You have the option
of printing or downloading/saving the
full text article in HTML.

This full text article

is in HTML and
must be read with
a web-browser.

Now displayed is the

PDF version of the
article. To print or
save click here.

OR you can choose

to download/view
in PDF.

Searching for Books

From the initial

Contents page, you
can open the Books
Collection A-Z list.
For example, to find
Ocean Basins, click

A page appears
containing all the book
titles beginning with O
listing the Accessible
Content for your
institution. Included is
Ocean Basins.

Another window will open at

the publishers site with the
list of Chapters that can be
viewed HTML files or
downloaded as PDF files

Lets Review What We

Learned
You should now know how to:

LOGIN to and register for OARE

Browse by journal titles and publishers
Explore journals by subject lists
Locate journals by language
Locate books by title
Download full-text articles (PDF and
HTML)

Exercises
Complete exercises #3 10
in the accompanying OARE
Short Course Exercises (Word)
document
Note: Also see Appendix Access Problems and
Solutions for Full-text Articles.

Databases & Search

Tools
Environmental Issues and Policy
Index (EBSCO)
Scopus (Elsevier)
Environmental Science and Pollution
Management (CSA)

Databases

Three useful tools for identifying

articles via keyword searching
are in the database and
article searching list.

Environmental Issues and

Policy Index (EBSCO)

To open Environmental
Index, click on the
database and article
searching list. Once
open, click on
Environmental Issues
& Policy Index
(EBSCO).

EBSCO Host notes that

OARE is the client. This
means there will be
access to full-text articles.

The default page is the Basic Search

display. We will enter the pesticides
AND water pollution in the search
box and click on Search.
Note the other options Advanced
Search, Visual Search and Search
History.

There are 1192 Results for this

search. To view the first article,
we will click on the FullTextSFX
icon. Another important option
is the Add to folder.

After clicking on the FullTextSFX icon,

there are two options for viewing the full
text article and we will click on Elsevier
ScienceDirect Complete.
Note that Ebsco recognizes that you are
logged into OARE and therefore have
access to the articles.

Via ScienceDirect,
you have access to
the article in both
HTML and PDF format.

We have returned to the Search

results and added the first citation
to the Folder. Note the option to
Remove from folder.
Once you add the citations you are
interested in, there are numerous
options in the Folder. We will click
on Folder view.

In the right column, you

now have the options to
Print, E-Email, Save as
File and Export the
citations in the Folder.

We have opened the Print Manager

page and retained the Detailed
Citation and Abstract option. To
receive a copy of the 1 item that was
saved, we would click on the Print
button.

Now displayed is the E-mail

manager option. You could send
the citation(s) to a colleague or
yourself in either Rich or Plain
Text. Note the 3 options for the
Standard Field Format.

The final option displayed

is the Save Manager.
Note that, from the
Citation Format drop
down menu, you have
various choices for the
bibliographic citations.

We now will re-open the results of

the pesticides AND water pollution
search. This can be done by
clicking on the Search History
link or using the web browsers
back button several times. To
Refine the search, we will click on
and move the Publication Date
bar.

We have moved the

Publication Date bar to limit
the search to 2000 2011
publications and also checked
the Linked Full Text box. We
now will click on the Update
icon.

Again from the search results

page, we have opened the
Source Type box, checked on
Academic Journals and clicked
the Update button. Both
limits will appear in the refined
search.

This refined search has 731

Results for the pesticides
AND water pollution search
with the publication date
Limiters and Academic
Journals Source Types that
we added.

This is the Search History page. Note

that the initial and refined searches are
listed. For each search, you can View
Results, View Details or Edit. You
have the options complete a Search
with AND or Search with OR or
Delete Searches.

We have opened the

Advanced Search page
which gives you numerous
options - to make your
search more precise. Note
the options from the drop
down menu for the initial
keyword entry. There also
are various Search modes
and Limit your results
options.

The Sign In to My EBSCOhost page

has been opened. You will need this
personal account to use some of the
Environmental Index options
including viewing previously saved
searches. Click on Create a new
Account.
You can access this page by clicking
on the Sign In option that is on the
top of the search page.

Exercises
Complete exercises # 11 12 in the accompanying OARE
Short Course Exercises
(Word) document

Scopus (Elsevier) Search

Tool

To open Scopus, click

on the databases
and article
searching list. Once
open, click on
Scopus (Elsevier).

This is the default

Scopus (Document
search) page. Note
that Scopus is Brought
to you by OARE.

From the top navigational bar on the

Search page, there is access to the
SCOPUS options. There are available at
the top of the SCOPUS website,
regardless of the page that is open. At
the bottom of the page, there are links
on the navigation bar, and a brief
description of the pages to which you are
transferred.

On the Advanced Search

page, you can conduct an
advanced search using a
large number of field names
and other advanced search
parameters.

On the Document
Search page, you can
conduct both simple and
more advanced searches
using common search
parameters.

On the Author Search page, you

can find articles written by a
specific person when the authors
name is cited in many different
ways. For example, an author can
be cited as Smith, J in one article,
but as Smith, John in another.
SCOPUS helps you find the right
author by grouping together
articles written by specific authors.

In the Search for section, we will

enter a search for ground water
AND heavy metals AND mining
and keep the Article Title, Abstract
Keywords option. In the Limit to
section, we will retain the default
Date Range, Document Type and
Subject Areas options. Finally,
click on Search.

The SCOPUS database

allows you to search
about 75% of the
scientific titles in

The Scopus search resulted in 159

citations for journal articles and
conferences. For each citation, you can
View at Publisher, Show Abstract
and open Related documents.
For the search results, you have the
following options: Download, PDF,
Export, Print, Email, Create
Bibliography plus the Sort by
options.
Note also the Web and Patents Search
options (explained below).

Scopus has the options to refine the

search by Year, Author Name, Subject
Area, Document Type and other
options. Once you refine your search (or
complete another search), you can view
your various searches by clicking on
View search history.

The Show abstract icon has been

activated for one of the citations.
There also is a View at publisher
option. Note that you also can Edit
and Save the search plus Set (an)
alert.

In the SpringerLink portal, The

Studies on uranium article
has been opened. Note that
you have the options to
Download PDF or View
HTML.

We have opened the PDF version of

this article that you can download or
print.
Note that the url (web address) has
the
oaresciences.org/whalecommwww
address. This is because you opened
Scopus from OARE and the publisher
recognizes you as being properly
logged in.

As previously mentioned from the

search results page, you have the
following options: Download, PDF,
Export, Print, Email, Create
Bibliography plus the Sort by
options.

In this slide, we initially will Refine

results by checking the 2011 and
2010 year boxes and clicking on Limit
to. In the following slides, we will
review some of the other options.

The Document results for this

revised search is 15. We have
checked the boxes for All the
articles and will click on the Print
option. Note that the specific query
and the applied limits are listed in
the turquoise box.

For the 15 selected documents, we have

opened the Export, Print, E-mail or
Create a Bibliography page. We have
clicked on Print and, from the drop down
menu, selected the Citations only
option.

We now have selected the E-mail

option - to send an email. This time
we have selected the Abstract
format with References from the
drop down menu. The message in
the Body Text describes the search.

For features such as the previously

mentioned Save a Search or to use
MY Alerts, My List and My Settings
and other features, you will need to
set up a personal ScienceDirect
account.

Using a Scopus list of citations, you can access the

full-text articles from the Journals collection A-Z list.
(Not all articles can be accessed directly from the
Scopus search results page.)

Exercises
Complete exercises # 13 15 in the accompanying OARE
Short Course Exercises
(Word) document

Environmental Science and Pollution

Management (CSA)

From the database and

articles searching list, we will
open the Environmental
Science and Pollution
Management database.

We have opened the Quick Search

(default) page of CSA. Enter pesticides
AND coral reefs in the Search box and
click on Search. Note the Date Ranges
option and the selection of Earliest to
Current.

Displayed are the results for this

search All Publication Types
(74) with lower numbers for
Journals (42), Peer-Reviewed
Journals (24), Conferences (20)
and Books (4). Note the option
for FullTextSFX. For the 1st article
we will click on View Record.

The citation (author, title, source,

etc.), abstract and other
information is displayed. You
also can create a New Search
using AND/OR or add the search
terms to a Current Search.
We will look at the Save, Print
and Email options.

The Save, Print and

Email page has all
three options for this
citation. We will Save
this article for a PC.
Besides checked
boxes, note the
narrow results by
column

For this record , we have chosen to

save all the records, use the
Short Format display chosen the
APA 6th edition citation style and
Text document format. At the top
of the page is a Return to
Results link.

We have returned to the

search Results page and
now will click on the
FullTextSFX link.

We have displayed the

Advanced Search page.
Similarly to the other
databases, this is a tool to
create a more precise or
limited search. Note that you
Browse by Author, Journal
Name or Publication Type.

The full-text article from ScienceDirect

has been displayed. Besides this HTML
version, a PDF file is available for
downloading and also the option to E-mail
the article. Note that ScienceDirect
displays the OARE symbol to confirm
that you have access.

Another useful option is the

Search History page. We
have displayed the details
of the pesticides and
coral reefs search.

Exercises
Complete exercises # 16 17 in the accompanying OARE
Short Course Exercises
(Word) document

Training Material
The OARE Training
page has detailed
information that can be
used for training
courses and further
learning.

Access to the
Training Materials
also is available from
the Contents pages
horizontal bar.

There are links to PDF

documents PowerPoint
presentations that are an
in-depth discussion of many
of OAREs features.

Note that the Basic Training

Packages contains modules
on using the OARE website
and searching for articles in
two of the databases.

The IMARK project has a number

of courses on the effective
management of agricultural
information (but would apply to
other disciplines).
Material is available online or via
CD-ROM.

INASP has developed

a series of courses on
the use of electronic
resources in lowincome countries.

AuthorAID is an invaluable
resource for publishing
including a library with 150+
documents and a mentor
service.

Authorship Skills Webbibliography

Contains annotated links to 35+ WWW
based/ full-text information on how to:
This webConduct ethical research
bibliography has
Write a scientific paper
annotated links to 35+
Write a structured abstract scientific publishing
related Internet sites.
Prepare manuscripts for submission
Write footnotes and bibliographies
Avoid plagiarism

http://www.who.int/hinari/training/
authorshipskills/en/index.html

Appendix : Access Problems and

Solutions for Full-text Articles

Via OARE, the Journal of

Forest Research has
been opened.

When attempting to
open a full-text article,
the publisher (Springer)
has requested a fee to
purchase the article. .

Possible Problems
Access problems can be caused by:
1)failure to properly LOGIN with the
institution's User Name/Password
2) technical problems at the Publisher's
website
3) Problems with local systems
(configuration of user institutions firewall,
configuration of browser) or
4) The publisher has not authorized access
mostly for Band 2 countries

The Logged in from: message

confirms that you have completed the
login. You also can confirm login by
viewing the url (web address) at the top
of the page that will read:
oaresciences.org/whalecomoare.oare
sciences.org

In OARE, the Journal of Forest

Research is in the J section of the
Journal collection A-Z list. We
have confirmed that you should
have access to this journal.

This is a sample email

to send to
oare@unep.org

Screen
Captures
To create screen captures:
display the screen you want (from the Internet)
click on the print screen key
open the paint program and paste the image
(control/v)
edit the image (use the select icon to limit
content)
copy again (control/c) and paste in document
or slide

Note: you can skip the paint program step and

paste the screen capture directly into the
document.

You have completed all

the components of the
OARE Short Course
updated 2013 07