Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources Guide |
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Using CAB Abstracts to Find Journal Articles, Book Chapters and Conference papers
You can search this database from home, but you will need to authenticate using your Unikey.
Use research databases to locate references to journal articles, book chapters and conference papers. In many cases, you will just get a reference and abstract (summary). You will need to retrieve the full text of the article/book chapter/conference paper by using the library catalogue to find out whether the library holds a paper or electronic copy of the item.
CAB Abstracts is a major agricultural database that is international in scope, with lots of Australian information. It covers all aspects of agriculture, from agricultural economics to soil science.
Download the Searching CAB Abstracts to Find Journal Articles help sheet.
Searching CAB Abstracts
Some things to note on the CAB Abstracts welcome page:
General search page
Type in the search you have prepared (use the searching databases helpsheet) and click on the 'search' button.
Please note the limits available to you to search on at the bottom of the image above. Limits can be very useful for producing targeted results, and for narrowing down broad searches.
Search Results
Full record
Please note that the full record is not the full text. The full record provides all of the information that the database has on a specific item. You will note from the example that CAB Abstracts sometimes provides a link to the full text. Remember that if there is no link to the full text you need to check the Library catalogue.
Search History
We recommend that you search each concept of your topic separately and then use the search history page to combine the search sets to find the most relevant references.
CAB Abstracts allows you to display, print, and email results. You can also select particular references (using the tick boxes) and email/print/save your selected references.
Go back up to the list and choose one of the records that interests you and have a look at the complete reference. Think about other words that you could use to search for articles on this topic.
If you don't get many results think about how you could add synonyms (alternative terms) to your search or think about your topic in a different way. Use dictionaries and thesauri (and friendly Library staff!) to help you. Remember, another database may be more appropriate for your topic.
If you get too many results think about being more specific and using the limits to refine your search set.