Research Methods: A Student's Comprehensive Guide: Search Strategies

Optimizing Your Search

• Enhance Precision: Use fewer search terms or try synonyms to refine your results.
• Search Terms: Incorporate relevant subject terms suggested in the sidebar to focus your search.

Refining Your Search

• Narrowing Results: Be specific to reduce the number of hits.
  • e.g., robotics instead of engineering
• Add Depth: Include additional keywords to tailor your search.
• Exact Phrasing: Enclose exact phrases in double quotation marks for precise results.
  • "climate change"
• Use Facets: Refine your search by using filters like publication type, date range, or subject headings.

Peer-Reviewed V Non-Peer-Reviewed

Also known as refereed, scholarly, academic, or juried articles, peer-reviewed articles undergo a rigorous evaluation by experts in the field before publication. This ensures their quality, credibility, and relevance to academic research. 

• Reliability: Peer-reviewed articles are scrutinized by experts in the field for accuracy, methodology, and validity of findings.
• Credibility: They are considered credible sources of information due to the rigorous review process.
• Relevance: Scholarly articles contribute to the advancement of knowledge within specific disciplines.
• Access: Many academic databases prioritize refereed content, making it easier for researchers to access credible information. 

Reference Collection

Make Citation Management Easy: Using citation management software is a game-changer for organizing, formatting, and keeping track of your references. Collect references from library databases and websites to streamline your writing process. Start early with a tool like EndNote, Zotero, or RefWorks to boost your research efficiency. Check out the Research Guide to find the right tool for you:

Monitoring Research

Stay Updated with RSS Feeds: Keeping track of all the new information in your field can be challenging. RSS feeds can help you stay on top of things effortlessly. Subscribe to RSS feeds using services called "aggregators" or "feed readers," which compile and organize your feeds in a readable format. This saves you from visiting multiple websites daily. There are many feed readers to choose from, with Feedly being a popular option. 

Advanced Search Techniques

These advanced search techniques are designed to help graduate student researchers refine their searches and retrieve more precise and relevant academic information.

• Phrase Searching: Use quotation marks to search for exact phrases.
  • e.g., "climate change"
• Boolean Operators: Combine keywords with AND, OR, NOT to narrow or broaden your search.
  • AND:  Finds documents containing both terms.
    • e.g., "climate change" AND "renewable energy"
  • OR: Finds documents containing either term.
    • e.g., "climate change" OR "global warming"
  • NOT: Excludes specific terms from your search results, returning items that contain the first term but not the second
    • e.g., "climate change" NOT "politics"
• Truncation and Wildcards: 
  • Truncation: Use an asterisk (*) to search for multiple endings of a word
    • e.g., enviro* for environment, environmental, environmentally.
  • Wildcards: Wildcards allow you to search for variations in spelling or singular/plural forms.
    • Asterisk (*): Represents zero or more characters.
      • comput* for computer, computing, computational, etc.
    • Question mark (?): Represents exactly one character.
      • wom?n matches woman or women
    • Hash (#): Represents a specific number of characters.
      • neighb#r matches neighbor or neighbour
• Field Searching: Specify where to search within a database, such as title, abstract, or author fields
  • Title Search (ti):
    • ti "artificial intelligence": Searches for the exact phrase "artificial intelligence" in the title of the article.
  • Author Search (au):
    • au "Garcia, Maria": Searches for articles authored by Maria Garcia.
  • Abstract Search (ab):
    • ab "sustainable development": Searches for the exact phrase "sustainable development in the abstract of the article.
  • Subject Search (su):
    • su "renewable energy": Searches for the exact phrase "renewable energy" in the subject headings.
  • Publication Search (so):
    • so "Journal of Climate": Searches for articles published in the "Journal of Climate".
• Limiters: Use database features to limit results by publication date, language, document type, etc.
• Subject Headings: Use controlled vocabulary terms assigned to articles to find more relevant results.
  • e.g., Education:
    • "Higher Education"
    • "Educational Technology"
    • "Curriculum Development"
    • "Inclusive Education"
    • "Educational Psychology"
• Nested Searching: Use parentheses to clarify the order of operations in complex searches
  • e.g., (climate OR weather) AND (change OR variation)
• Proximity Searching: Find terms within a certain number of words from each other
  • e.g., "economic" NEAR/4 growth
    • Finds documents where "economic" appears within four words of "growth"
• Combining Techniques
  • e.g., "climate change" AND (policy OR legislation) AND (renewable NEAR/5 energy)