How to do a literature search

1. How to do a literature search Emma Coonan Research Skills Librarian, Cambridge University Library

2. Session content • What is a literature search anyway? • Your research question and research context • Finding vs. discovery • Where, how and when to look • Your key concepts and how they relate

3. What do you understand by ‘literature search’ and ‘literature review’?

4. What is it? “Adetailed and organised, step by step search for allthe material available on a topic.” www.rgu.ac.uk/library/howto/page.cfm?pge=25989

5. What is it? • Searching for (chiefly) published work about a topic of your choice • Aiming to get a sound grasp of your topic and its context • Joining the academic dialogue • There is no single, simple answer!

6. Defining your research question Miller & DeJoy, 2010 (http://www.slideshare.net/praise711/assessing-collaboration)

7. Your research question and research context

9. Defining your research question "Investigation of different sample pre-treatment routes for liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry detection of caseins and ovalbumin in fortified red wine" M. Mattarozzi et al., Food Control, vol. 38, no. 1, 2014.

10. Defining your research question "Shape of a Ponytail and the Statistical Physics of Hair Fiber Bundles" Raymond E. Goldstein, Patrick B. Warren, and Robin C. Ball, Physical Review Letters, vol. 198, no. 7, 2012. www.improbable.com/ig/winners/

11. Defining your research question A precise question works better than a vague one Topic: • The impact of television advertising on children Research question: • ‘Does television advertising have any influence on children’s eating habits?’ http://www.library.dmu.ac.uk/Images/Howto/LiteratureSearch.pdf

12. Your literature search plan 1. What is your research question? 2. What issue or problem does it articulate, or what gap in knowledge does it address?

13. Approaching information:finding vs. discovering

14. Finding ... things you know exist • Work by known authors (and their collaborators) • Supervisor/peer recommendations • Bibliographies • Citations • Catalogue subject headings

17. Catalogue subject headings

18. Your literature search plan: finding 3. Which are your most useful ‘known’ sources? 4. What strategies will you use to ‘spin out’ from each one to find related material? • Work by known authors (and their collaborators) • Supervisor/peer recommendations • Bibliographies • Citation maps • Catalogue subject headings

20. Discovering ... new material (to you) • Work by authors unknown to you • New developments or radical revisions in your field • Different terminology or spellings for your concepts • Making connections with another aspect of the field (or another field)

21. Finding vs. discovering “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. “There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. “But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know.”

22. Where to look: discovering www.lib.cam.ac.uk/eresources

23. What’s a citation database? • Citation database = scholarly search engine • Began as online indexes of journal articles • Expanded to contain other document types • May offer full-text links • Not comprehensive

24. What’s a citation database? Cross-disciplinary: Subject-specific:

25. Useful features • Citation sorting (and linking) • Full-text click-through • Alerts and RSS feeds

26. Subject-specific vs. cross-disciplinary interface • ATLA Religion Database • Indexes about 2,000 journals • Citations: c. 1.8m • Scopus • Indexes over 18,000 journals • Citations: c. 47m • Still not comprehensive!

27. Your key concepts and how they relate ‘Victorian mindmapped man’ Luke PDQ Flickr.com, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

28. How to look: relating your concepts Women AND Menshows only records containing both term Women OR Woman OR Female OR Girl OR .... shows records containing any term (mayinclude more than one) ‘Fish, chips and mushy peas’ Charles Haynes Flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0

29. How to look: relating your concepts Rehabilitation NOT health excludes a word/inappropriate context “Restorative justice”shows records containing this exact phrase

30. Your literature search plan 5. What are your key concepts and how do they relate to or modify one another? 6. How many synonyms, alternative spellings, or overlapping concepts can you find for each of your concepts?

31. Explore citation databases Cross-disciplinary: Subject-specific:

32. Useful extras ?can stand for a single character • ‘Wom?n’ finds ‘woman’ or ‘women’ • ‘Globali?ation’ finds British or American spelling * can stand for any number of characters (including zero!) ‘Pastoral*’ finds ‘pastoral’, ‘pastoralism’, ‘pastoralist/s’ ...‘Pig*’ finds ‘pig’, ‘pigs’, ‘pigmy’, ‘pigment’ ...

33. When to look • As part of your initial approach to the topic or research question • Periodically throughout your research RSS and search alerts are very useful here • As part of your final writing-up process

34. Your literature search plan 7-9. Where are you going to search? 10. How do you plan to store material and citations?

35. http://training.cam.ac.uk/cul research-skills@lib.cam.ac.uk theUL Cambridge University Library