Search Tips and Useful Databases

Search smarter not longer. *

Identifying relevant papers when preparing research articles, conference papers, essays, theses and dissertations can be a challenge. Not all search engines are comprehensive, or suited to your topic area, and selecting your keywords and search terms can determine how quickly you can identify ideal sources. 

For journals you will need to ensure they are peer reviewed and in certain disciplines including start and end dates for period for publication is vital as many people are asked to rewrite after a viva adding in more recent references. Remember, depending on your subject area, if it takes you 4 years to complete your PhD the research you quoted at the start could already be out of date by the time you submit:

ome quick tips for searching databases are as follow:

• Avoid searching with a single broad term, as doing so will return too many results to reasonably navigate.
• Adding multiple terms can narrow your search.
• Remember to search for alternative spellings, especially as UK and US English spellings vary in some words.
• Use truncated words in your search (i.e. inserting a symbol (usually *) to stand in for part of the word.
• Use connectors like AND, OR and NOT between your chosen search terms, to be inclusive (AND, OR) or exclusive (NOT). For Google and some other search engines a minus sign is used just before the search term rather than the word NOT.
• If you’re looking for a phrase rather than just a single word, type quotation marks around the phrase so the words are searched in a set order.  
• Parentheses also can be used to group search terms; as in (Article* AND “Search engine*”) AND (NOT Google OR Bing).
• Use advanced search options where available to limit your search to certain journals, date ranges, or languages.
• Always use more than one search engine.

Some useful databases commonly used by students include but are not limited to the following: 

For peer reviewed papers and texts from scholarly organisations: https://scholar.google.com/; for books including reviews: https://books.google.com/?hl=en; Science database covering 70+ countries: https://worldwidescience.org/; for science students: https://www.science.gov/; the computational knowledge engine: https://www.wolframalpha.com/; access to 1000s of scholarly websites selected by teachers and librarians: https://www.virtuallrc.com/; https://www.researchgate.net/search; for medical students: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/; for law students: https://signin.lexisnexis.com/lnaccess/app/signin?back=https%3A%2F%2Fadvance.lexis.com%3A443%2F&aci=la.

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