Searching is more than just throwing in a few words in a search engine or database. You can apply various strategies to improve the efficiency and quality of your searches and results. Several strategies are mentioned below, but to name a few, you can use these:
Brainstorm keywords and alternate keywords (synonyms) you might want to search. You may not necessarily search all of these terms, and you'll likely come up with more once you begin searching, both new concepts and alternative keywords.
For example, if you start with a search on fracking, you will find many articles and other sources use the phrase hydraulic fracturing instead.
Another way to brainstorm is by creating a mindmap.
Autonomous Vehicles
cars, trucks, aerial/drones, underwater, driverless, self driving, robotic
Safety
hacking, accidents, security
Technology
lidar, GPS, INS, radar, IoT, Wifi, machine to machine, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, data processing systems
Use "and" and "or" to connect your search terms, to expand or narrow your search results. These may be called Boolean operators, and can be combined to make a more effective search.
Example: (marine OR sea spray) AND (aerosols) AND (organic OR bacteria OR viruses) AND (spectroscopy OR spectra)
| Boolean Operator | For Example | What Happens to Your Search Results? | Visualized |
|---|---|---|---|
| AND |
aerosols AND spectroscopy aerosols AND organic |
Retrieves results that include all/both words or phrases More targeted, but also fewer (maybe too few) results |
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| OR |
viruses OR bacteria marine OR sea spray |
Retrieves results that include at least one of your words or phrases, but not necessarily all of them More (maybe too many search results), including a greater number that may be less relevant |
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Truncation (usually with an asterisk, *) allows you to search for words with multiple endings without having to write each one. For example, biofuel* would search for biofuel or biofuels, and alga* for alga and algae. Or spectr* would search for spectra OR spectroscopy OR spectrometry OR spectroscopy OR spectroscopic. HOWEVER, truncating NANO* (or MICRO*) brings back everything from nanotechnology, nanoparticles, nanotubes, nanostructured, and nanomaterials, to nanodiamonds, nanorobots, nanofish, nanodaisies, nanosponges.... You may need to narrow your focus to something more specific (nanoparticles) and/or add more keywords to restrict your search, such as specific materials or applications. |
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Each database offers options to narrow your search results, saving you time by excluding results that don't meet your search criteria. For example, you may only want to see English-language peer-reviewed journal articles published in the last five years. Common limits (along with using the Boolean and operator) include publication date, document type, language, peer-reviewed (scholarly) articles only, and by subject or descriptor. Some of options for those limits vary between databases. For example, the document limiter in Web of Science includes an option to see only review articles (rather than research articles), while Academic Search Complete lets you limit results for trade publications, magazines, or newspapers along with journal articles. |
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Every record, whether it's for a book in the library catalog, or for a journal article in one of the databases, has been assigned one or more subject headings. Even if you don't know the best subject headings when you start searching, they will come up as you find relevant books and articles from your keyword searches. The subject headings are usually hyperlinked, so you can click to them find the other articles or books where that subject was assigned. |
An abstract is a brief summary of the article: what the authors did and what they found out. It also serves as marketing, because it's a chance for the authors to tell you why you should read it. Abstracts also provide additional keywords and phrases to include in your searching, as noted here in black (the red indicates phrasing that identifies this as a research article as opposed to a review article).
| When you find a relevant article, another way to find additional, potentially helpful articles is to look at what articles were cited in the paper. and what articles have cited that paper since it was published. These may appear in the database as Cited Articles or Bibliography, and Citing Articles or Times Cited. |  |
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When you find a good article, you can try the database's "Related Records" or "Similar Articles" feature to find articles that may be similar to your article. The related articles are often based on common subjects, descriptors or keywords assigned to the articles. Web of Science uses common cited references, retrieving papers whose authors cited the same papers cited in your article. |
