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Effective Literature Searching for Research: Key Stages and Tools

A systematic review of literature searching methods to aid in research, including key stages, search principles, and bibliographic tools. Learn to identify search terms, utilize databases, and apply search strategies effectively. Understand citation indexes and how they help in tracing research trends and key authors.

danniell-klein
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Effective Literature Searching for Research: Key Stages and Tools

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  1. PhD Session Kate Purcell, Subject Librarian k.purcell@bbk.ac.uk Tel: 020 7631 6062

  2. Literature Searching • A systematic and thorough review of published literature in all formats • To establish that no-one else has already undertaken your piece of research • To find existing relevant research • To establish general patterns and areas of dispute

  3. Literature Searching Key stages • Determine and analyse concepts in your proposal • Identify search terms • Identify relevant bibliographic tools • Consider search strategies

  4. Analyse your research area • Who are the main proponents? • What are the main principles? • Were there any significant events? • What were the precursors and subsequent developments? • Are there opposing or counter theories?

  5. Identify search terms • List key words and then consider…. • Variant spellings • American English e.g.‘our’ vs. ‘or’ • Plurals • Prefixes and hyphens • Alternative terms • Related terms – wider / narrower concepts

  6. Bibliographic tools • Databases that help you identify what has been published in your subject • Which is best for your subject? • Check the scope and coverage • Become familiar with the interface • Same search principles apply to different interfaces

  7. Search principles • Phrase searching: exact phrases in quotation marks • Truncation: asterisk after the word stem • Wildcards: for variant spellings • Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT • Proximity searching: specify how close keywords are to each other

  8. Search principles Wildcards • A question mark stands for any letter E.g. organi?ation will find ‘organisation’ and ‘organization’ • A dollar sign stands for any or no letterE.g. labo$r will find ‘labour’ and ‘labor’

  9. Citation Indexes • Extensive subject coverage • Academic peer-reviewed titles • Lists who has cited an article • Useful for tracing research and development of theories • Identify key authors / journals in a field • Identify trends in research

  10. Citation Indexes • Register for additional features • Save your search histories • Set up weekly or monthly email alerts with new results of your saved search • Set up citation alerts

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