Research services

Strengthening your research

The Library provides resources for your research. Its extensive holdings of e-journals, e-books and other resources as well as extensive holdings of print materials are available in most disciplinary areas and can be searched for through the Catalogue and our specialized databases.

When McGill doesn't have what you're looking for

• We can buy it for you. Fill out our online form to suggest a purchase.
• The Library’s Interlibrary Loan service will locate materials you need that are not held by the Library.
• McGill graduate students and faculty members are entitled to borrow materials on a long-term basis from the Center for Research Libraries. You can search for and request CRL materials through COLOMBO.

Finding data and information to support your research

Specialist resources

The Library makes available a broad array of specialist resources.

• Electronic Data Resources Service (EDRS) provides access to data resources and statistics.
• Government Information Service is a depository library for the Canadian government, United Nations, International Labour Organization, European Union.
• McGill's IT Knowledgebase page, Licensed software products and eligible users, provides you with free access to software such as Trend Micro antivirus software, the citation management tool EndNote, and MATLAB, an interactive environment for data visualization and analysis.

Locating theses and dissertations

• Use the McGill Theses Sub-Catalogue to find a McGill thesis.
• eScholarship@McGill contains the full text of a growing number of McGill theses.
• Proquest Dissertations and Theses includes full-text of over 100,000 dissertations and theses from 1997 onwards as well as citations and abstracts for many more.

Keep up to date

Many journal publishers now offer table of contents alerts in RSS format which can update you in your chosen sphere of interest. Most links are available from the individual journal home page, and some offer groups of journals as a single feed. Databases such as Academic Search Premier, Applied Science and Technology, Art Retrospective, International Political Science Abstracts, MedLine, Scopus and many others enable you to save searches and receive updated results in RSS or via email.

Keeping track of your reading

Citation software such as EndNote or RefWorks can make managing your research easier by allowing you to create your own database of references.

"EndNote greatly helps us organize our articles, reports and patents database... it’s a joy to retrace an article in a breeze."

Prof. Sylvain Coulombe, Department of Chemical Engineering

Publishing your research

You will wish to publish your research in journals which are well-read and highly cited. Librarians can help you locate the most appropriate editors to approach. Many researchers are now publishing their work in open access venues, either on blogs, in refereed journals that are available on the internet or making their articles available either pre- or post-publication in institutional repositories. Some funding authorities are stipulating the availability of research results in open access sources. You can find a list of open-access journals in your field in the Directory of Open Access Journals. Otherwise try to publish in a journal that allows open access self-archiving. Search journal policies in the SHERPA/RoMEO database.

Journal impact factors
See the number of citations for the average article in a given journal.

• Journal Citation Reports are used to establish the impact factors of journals in your field.
• EigenFactor measures a journal's prestige based on per article citations as well as the overall value provided by all of the articles published in a given journal in a year.
• See Garfield, E. The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. JAMA. 2006;295:90-93.

Citation analysis
Who is citing you? Track the impact of individual articles (number of times cited by other researchers, who's citing them).

• Web of Science (ISI Web of Knowledge)
• Scopus
• Google Scholar

Sharing knowledge

The McGill Library stores, preserves and promotes the scholarship of McGill faculty and students through the University’s digital repository, eScholarship@McGill. Deposit your research publications or thesis in this open access repository to ensure the scholarly output is made available to researchers and peers all over the world.

• Secure your rights as the author when publishing by using the Creative Commons license or the SPARC Canadian Author Addendum.
• E-theses are submitted to eScholarship@McGill via the Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Office.

Presenting your findings

Use our online reference listings to find a conference which might be of interest.

Spaces for you

The Cyberthèque in the Humanities and Social Sciences Library provides glass-encased group study pods which may be booked online, and booth-like banquettes which can be utilized for group work. Group study facilities are available for booking in most branch libraries.

Graduate students who are currently writing theses and do not have office space may book small rooms or desks in some libraries. Graduate facilities are available in the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Macdonald Campus Library, Nahum Gelber Law Library, Marvin Duchow Music Library and Schulich Library.

Graduate students may access the Nahum Gelber Law Library and Schulich Library of Science and Engineering when the libraries are closed. Access is usually restricted to graduate students and staff in the departments served by the individual branch library. Contact your branch for more information.

Consultations and assistance

Liaison librarians can help track information on particular topics, locate difficult to find information for you, and can assist with resources required for the preparation of research funding applications. You can email, chat online or drop by and visit our knowledgeable staff at any branch library or during your librarian’s office hours. Don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Workshops and classes

Information skills programmes include workshops to help researchers build and refine their research skills, as well as training in software programs used to organize references and format bibliographies.

Upcoming workshops

MyResearch graduate seminar series

MyResearch is a suite of workshops tailored to graduate and postdoctoral students. MyResearch is designed to better equip you with essential research skills, and knowledge about the various ways the Library can support you during your research.

For more information on the date, time, and location of these seminars, please visit MyResearch.

Other workshops

For a complete listing of all upcoming workshops being offered by the library, please visit Classes, workshops, tours.