Database of the week
Week 5
Sustainable Development Goals: knowledge that contributes to a better world
The Hague University of Applied Sciences is actively committed to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These seventeen goals, established in 2015, form a global agenda to reduce poverty and inequality, tackle injustice and protect our planet. They fit seamlessly with the education and research at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, which focuses on social impact.
To support students and lecturers in this theme, the university library offers access to the Sustainable Development Goals Online (SDGO) database from Taylor & Francis publishers.
What is SDGO?
SDGO is a digital, interdisciplinary database that is structured entirely around all 17 SDGs.
The collection brings together scientific knowledge, practical examples and educational materials in one place. This makes SDGO ideal for both education and research.
What can you find in the database?
The database contains a wide and carefully curated selection, including:
- More than 42,000 chapters from e-books, selected for their relevance to the SDGs
- Approximately 3,500 scientific journal articles
- Approximately 350 videos, presentations, case studies, teaching guides and lesson plans
All content is easily searchable by SDG, theme or discipline, allowing you to quickly find relevant and reliable sources. See also this introduction and the content list.
Reliable and internationally supported
SDGO was developed in collaboration with the United Nations and is supported by an international advisory board of academics, policymakers, practitioners, government officials and NGO representatives. This guarantees a high-quality, up-to-date and socially relevant collection.
Example
A recent article that ties in nicely with SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production is ‘What determines sustainable food consumers? Application of a support vector machine model’ by Hannes Antonschmidt & Cindy Yoonjoung Heo.
This study within the tourism sector analyses large-scale survey data to better understand the factors that influence sustainable food choices during package holidays. The study shows how valuable machine learning techniques can be for such research and offers surprising new insights into the behaviour of sustainable food consumers.
Get started with SDGO
Want to work on issues with real social impact?
Use Sustainable Development Goals Online for your studies, education or research and discover how knowledge can contribute to sustainable solutions.
Week 4
Teacher Reference Center (TRC): useful resource for teacher training.
If you are going to take the course Navigating as Educator within Transitions TRC is a useful source for reliable literature. For example the article: Podcasting urban geographies en Indigenizing environmental sustainability curriculum and pedagogy
Content database
TRC is a research database for teachers. TRC contains 230 educational journals with information on the following subject areas, among others: lifelong learning, ongoing pedagogical research, curriculum development, information skills, educational administration, teacher training, educational technology and media. Of the indexed journals, 96% are peer-reviewed. TRC is an international database, 90% of the articles are from English-language journals. The non-English articles are provided with English keywords.
Search Options
By clicking on the three dots after relevance, you can save a search query. This is useful if you want to repeat a search later. By clicking on all filters, you can easily limit the search results by date, source type, subject, etc. By selecting Netherlands from the drop-down menu for geographical terms in the advanced search, you can select articles that relate to the situation in the Netherlands: Higher Education Netherlands
Week 4
Publinova
Currently, the results and products of applied research can still be found at both the HBO-Kennisbank and Publinova, but starting in March 2026, the products of students and researchers will be separated.
The results and products of applied research by researchers will be published on Publinova. Here, you will also find information about the people, organizations, and institutions involved in the practice-oriented research.
Student products, such as theses and other graduation projects, will remain available at the HBO-Kennisbank.
Publinova is a Dutch open access platform that makes applied research discoverable and visible to everyone. Publinova is multidisciplinary and freely accessible, primarily offering full-text publications.
Benefits of Open Access Publishing
The main advantages of open access publishing are that it increases the visibility, discoverability, and reuse of knowledge products. Open access thus strengthens the impact and consequences of applied research for education, professional practice, and society. This aligns with the core values of applied research.
Output
The Publinova platform publishes (research) products and projects by researchers and lecturers from Dutch universities of applied sciences. The platform also provides information about individuals and organizations to share their expertise with colleagues from other universities of applied sciences and professionals in the field.
These research products may include:
- Articles: professional journal
- Articles: academic journals
- Research data
- Research publications
- Dissertations
- Reports
With your own Publinova account, if you are logged in via SURFconext, you can follow organizations, researchers, products, and projects or mark them as favorites. This way, you will receive email updates about new developments. You can also leave a comment on a product or edit your profile, for example.
Week 50
IEEE Xplore - Stay ahead in the fast-changing IT world
IEEE Xplore is a digital library with over 3 million full-text documents in electrical engineering, computer science, electronics, and related disciplines, published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and partners. The content includes journals, transactions, magazines, and conference proceedings.
Notifications and Search Alerts
Set up useful content alerts via IEEE Xplore to stay automatically informed about new articles and research relevant to you. By creating a free personal account, you can set up notifications for new publications in your field. Think of weekly updates on journals, conferences, or new standards – straight to your inbox.
You can also create alerts based on search queries. For example, search for a topic you're following, click 'Set Search Alerts', and receive regular notifications about new research matching your interests. This way, you stay informed with the latest research.
Overview of Search Techniques in IEEE Xplore
IEEE Xplore offers four search methods: Basic Search, Advanced Search, Command Search, and Citation Search, each suited to different information needs.
- Basic Search - Simple searching via the global search bar with keywords, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), or phrases in quotation marks. Ideal for quick, broad overviews without many options.
- Advanced Search - Build queries with multiple search bars for specific metadata fields (such as Abstract, Authors, or Publication Title), Boolean via dropdowns, and dates. Suitable for structured, field-specific searches.
- Command Search - Advanced searching with commands, data fields (e.g., DOI, IEEE Terms, Index Terms), Booleans, parentheses, and operators like NEAR; up to 25 terms. Offers maximum control for complex queries.
- Citation Search – Find specific publications using known details like DOI, author, title, ISBN/ISSN, or publication number.
For more practical tips on search techniques, see the help page.
Week 49
Eurostat: a wealth of reliable statistical information about Europe
Do you find statistics difficult and not very exciting? Then make use of the Eurostat website. In addition to hard figures, you will find ready-made interactive statistics with explanations, infographics and much more.
What is Eurostat?
Eurostat is the statistical office of the European Union. It provides up-to-date, high-quality data and statistics on Europe on a wide range of topics in the fields of economics, people and society, and labour, income and social security.
From an up-to-date overview of the reception of Ukrainian refugees to a comparison of the housing market in different European countries.
You can easily compare countries and regions and follow developments over time. This makes it an important source for both education and research.
The public Eurostat website is very comprehensive, but accessible, and you can find the data in various ways.
Statistics
- The Statistical themes present the data interactively and provide explanations. See, for example, the theme Housing in Europe.
- The Data visualisations offer attractive interactive presentations of the data, such as My country in a bubble.
- All statistics can also be found in the Database. The data can be exported for import into Excel; there are also options for downloading large amounts of data and for linking.
Education Corner
The Education Corner offers tools and explanations to make statistics easier to understand, such as Statistics 4 Beginners, which covers basic concepts and important statistical indicators.
More information
The website contains a wealth of additional information in the form of news articles, key figures, comprehensive reports and infographics on specific topics.
Week 47
Cochrane Library - most important database for Evidence-based Medicine.
Cochrane Library is the most important database for Evidence-based Medicine. Here you can find, among other things, systematic overviews of the state of medical scientific research, the so-called systematic reviews. These reviews are maintained by groups of healthcare professionals, each with their own specialization (review groups). The Cochrane Library contains the following databases:
- Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR)
The CDSR contains full-text reviews and protocols focused on the effects of healthcare. The reviews are systematically structured, including evidence and, where appropriate, statistical information. - Protocols are published to announce that these topics are being worked on, so that duplication is avoided. Protocols are full-text available.
- Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (Central)
Central is a bibliography of controlled trials identified by staff of the Cochrane Collaboration and is part of an international project to create an unbiased source of data for systematic reviews through hand searching of relevant journals. Central also includes reports from conference proceedings and other literature not available in Medline or other bibliographic databases. Trials do not contain the full text of the article, only the bibliographic details and abstract.
Cochrane Clinical Answers (CCA’s)
CCA’s provide a readable, digestible, clinically-focused entry point to rigorous research from Cochrane Reviews. They are designed to be actionable and to inform point-of-care decision-making. Each CCA contains a clinical question, a short answer, and data for the outcomes from the Cochrane Review deemed most relevant to practicing healthcare professionals, our target audience.