Information Literacy

Use effective search strategies, select the most appropriate search tips and information retrieval systems to access the required information

What is Search Strategy?

A search strategy is an organized structure of key terms used to search a database. The search strategy combines the key concepts of your search question in order to retrieve accurate results.

Search Tips

Databases are provided on different interfaces. Most of them support the following functions:

• The advanced Search screen provides options for combining your keywords.

• Combine keywords using appropriate Boolean Operators (drop-down menu):

  • AND - to combine/narrow down; OR - to broaden; NOT - to exclude terms.

• Use synonyms, alternative terms, phrases and variations in spelling.

• Use truncation at the end of your term (*) to find variations of your search term

• If you want words to appear next to each other in an exact phrase, use quotation marks (" ")

• You can specify how close two words appear together in your search strategy. This can make your results more relevant; generally the closer two words appear to each other, the closer the relationship is between them. Commands for adjacency searching differ among databases, so make sure you consult database guides.

• Use citation searching to find articles that have been cited by other publications. You can use cited reference searching in:

  • Web of Science

  • Scopus

  • Google Scholar

• Refine results by subjects, controlled vocabulary, publication year ...

• Select/Mark relevant references and display results.

• Save, E-mail or Export selected references.

Advanced Search 

Advanced search screen provides options for combining your keywords, field searching and subject searching.

You can tell the database where to search for a certain word. Telling the database to search in one specific area for a word or words is called field searching. Common database fields include:

• Author
• Title
• Abstract
• Journal Title / Source
• Subject Terms

Boolean Operators

Combine keywords using appropriate Boolean Operators (drop-down menu). If you need more than three search boxes you can add them with  (+):

• AND – You can use “and” to combine/narrow down. The database will find articles that cover both concepts.

• OR – Use “or” to broaden. Use with synonyms or related words. The database will find articles that cover either keyword.

• NOT - to exclude terms. The NOT operator excludes results with that keyword and reduces results.

Truncation

Truncation also called stemming, is a technique that broadens your search to include various word endings and spellings.

• To use truncation, enter the root of a word and put the truncation symbol at the end.
• The database will return results that include any ending of that root word.
• Examples:
  child* = child, childs, children, childrens, childhood
  genetic* = genetic, genetics, genetically
• Truncation symbols may vary by database; common symbols include: *, !, ?, or #

Wildcards

Similar to truncation, wildcards substitute a symbol for one letter of a word.

• This is useful if a word is spelled in different ways, but still has the same meaning.
• Examples:
  wom!n = woman, women
  colo?r = color, colour

Quotation Marks (" ")

If you want words to appear next to each other in an exact phrase, use quotation marks (" ")

When you search for a phrase like library services the search engine will bring back any results that have those words in them. However, if you put quotation marks around the phrase, "library servies", the search engine will only bring back results that have all those words in them exactly in the order you have them printed.

What is citation searching?

Citation searching (finding out which articles have cited an article or book after publication) can be done on Web of Science or for articles published after 1996 on Scopus.