Critical Reviews

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Introduction: Critical Reviews in LexisNexis Academic

Critical reviews such as book reviews and theater reviews are important for many kinds of researchers. LexisNexis Academic is a great place to find reviews that appear in newspapers and magzines. It is not a good source for reviews published in scholarly journals.

Using the All News Search Form

Click on the News tab, then the All News for in Academic. There, you will see check boxes for different types of critical reviews. This is, by far, the easiest way to find critical reviews in Academic. However, if you have a specific source that isn't a newspaper that you would like to find a source within, use the Power Search form as instructed below.

Finding Reviews Using Index Terms

The LexisNexis SmartIndexing subject taxonomy includes terms for book, movie, theater, and video reviews. The Source Selection method described below limits your search to specific sources. The index term method will find reviews in sources, such as local newspapers, that may not be covered by these predetermined sources.

Power Search Form

Navigate to the Power Search form, then follow these steps:

First, pick your source.
In the Power Search form use the “Add keywords” option to pop up the index terms tool. Select the Subject taxonomy
Click the "Find" button at the top and type "Reviews" in the box provided. Scroll to the bottom of the list
Select the term(s) you want to add to your search and click the “OK” button at bottom right
This will return you to the Power Search form ready to add your search terms and date restriction

Advanced Technique: Once you have learned the index terms, you can type them directly into the search box instead of looking them up. The trick is to use the TERMS segment. In the example below, the query uses the HLEAD segment to find all book reviews in the last five years that mention David Lodge in the title, section headings, or lead paragraph. The w/3 operator is used to handle variations name such as having the last name first or using a middle initial. Finally, if you wished to look for only book reviews about David Lodge and not book reviews written by him, you could add the following to the end of the query: AND NOT BYLINE(lodge).

News Search Form

Navigate to the News search form, then follow these steps:

Select “Terms & Connectors” search
Enter your search terms in the first search box; accept the “Anywhere in document” option in the dropdown or restrict to “Headline and lead paragraph”
Enter “review” in the second search box; use the dropdown to restrict to “In indexing”; if you want to restrict to a particular type, enter "book review" or "movie review" etc.
Pick your source
Add a date restriction and search

Finding Reviews Using Source Selection

Choosing Sources

You can choose a source that focuses on reviews. Some of these are individual titles (Kirkus Review), others are group sources that pull together many book reviews from different sources (Movie Reviews), and some are slices of specific sources that pull out just the book reviews (Library Journal’s Reviews). Use one of the two methods listed to choose a source, or the direct links. This will take you to the Power Search form, ready to add your search terms and date restriction.

You can look up these sources in the Source Selection tab by searching on “reviews”

You can browse to these sources, select the Industry radio button at the top of the Source browse, then select the Entertainment & Arts folder to list all the sources in this category. Select the sources you want to search, then click "OK continue" to start searching.