For any kind of search you have to look for this few thing to optimize your searching:
- Define what you are searching for
- Decide where to search
- Develop a search strategy
- Refine your search strategy
- Save your search for future use.
Decide the topic of your search
For searching something you have to decide the topic of search first. You have to select the search topic and have to refine the topic and formulate the search question. your search question should clearly define the objective of your search. In other words, you have to decide a broad topic then have to refine the topic by reframing the question that interests you.
For example:
- Broad topic: Services provided by libraries.
- Main focus topic: Academic libraries.
- Topic stated as a question: "What are the services provided by college libraries, how ICT helps in improvement of college libraries?"
Identify the main concepts in your question
Once you have a searchable question, highlight the major concepts. For example: “What are the services provided by college libraries, how ICT helps in improvement of college libraries?”
You should then find keywords and phrases to express the different concepts. For example, the concept “services of college libraries” covers a wide range of key terms, including library services, Academic library services, college library services.
If you are researching any topic then you might use a search model. PICO helps you identify the concepts within your research question.
- Patron: Who is the intended audience to whom information being delivered to?
- Information: What kind of information is being delivered? Is it for general audience which is basic in nature or is it for the special or scholarly use the advance kind of content?
- Comparison: How much better is this information than another? What are the alternatives? The authority, currency, scope, coverage and other factors?
- Outcome: How is the effect measured? What can be achieved?
List synonyms for each concept. You may wish to include variant spellings or endings (plural, singular terms). Exclude parts of the PICO that do not relate to your search question. For example, you may not be drawing any comparisons in your research.
The most effective way to search is use of subject-specific databases and they are helpful to search the scholarly content or articles. However, you can also search the Library for common information sources, such as government documents, grey literature, patents and statistics.
Choose a database
Each database works differently so you need to adapt your search strategy for each database. You may wish to develop a number of separate search strategies if your research covers several different areas. You have to test your strategies and refine them after you have reviewed the search results according to the lacuna you have found.
How a search strategy looks in practice: there is subject heading and keyword searches that have been carried out for each concept within our research question and how they have been combined using Boolean operators. It also shows where keyword techniques like truncation, wildcards and adjacency searching have been used.
What is Search Strategy?
Search strategies are ways of using search terms in finding required information from search tools, such as search engines (Google), the library catalogue and online databases. 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.
Your search strategy will account for all:
- possible search terms
- keywords and phrases
- truncated and wildcard variations of search terms
- subject headings (where applicable)
To achieve good search results, it is necessary to use search strategies
Search strategy techniques
- Choosing search terms
- Searching with keywords
- Searching for exact phrases
- Using truncated and wildcard searches
- Searching with subject headings
- Using Boolean logic
- Citation searching
- Parenthesis
- Field searching
Choose search terms
One concept can be expressed in different ways eg “self-esteem” might be referred to as “self-worth”. Your aim is to consider each of your concepts and come up with a list of the different ways they could be expressed.
To find alternative keywords or phrases for your concepts try the following:
- Use a thesaurus to identify synonyms.
- Search for your concepts on a search engine like Google Scholar, scanning the results for alternative words and phrases.
- Examine relevant abstracts or articles for alternative words, phrases and subject headings
As you search and scan articles and abstracts, you may discover different key terms to enhance your search strategy.
Search with keywords
Keywords are free text words and phrases. Database search strategies use a combination of free text and subject headings (where applicable).
A keyword search usually looks for your search terms in the title and abstract of a reference. You may wish to search in title fields only if you want a small number of specific results.
Some databases will find the exact word or phrase, so make sure your spelling is accurate or you will miss references.
Search for the exact phrase
If you want words to appear next to each other in an exact phrase, use quotation marks, eg “acquisition" searching decreases the number of results you get and makes your results more relevant. Most databases allow you to search for phrases, but check the database guide if you are unsure.
Truncation and wildcard searches
You can use truncated and wildcard searches to find variations of your search term. Truncation is useful for finding singular and plural forms of words and variant endings.
Many databases use an asterisk (*) as their truncation symbol. Check the database help section if you are not sure which symbol to use. For example, “librar*” will find library, libraries, librarian etc. A wildcard finds variant spellings of words. Use it to search for a single character, or no character.
There are sometimes different symbols to find a variable single character. For example, in the Medline database, “wom#n” will find woman and also women.
Use adjacency searching for more accurate results
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.
In OvidSP databases (like Medline), searching for “physician ADJ3 relationship” will find both physician and relationship within two major words of each other, in any order. This finds more papers than "physician relationship".
Using this adjacency retrieves papers with phrases like "physician patient relationship", "patient physician relationship", "relationship of the physician to the patient" and so on.
Searching with subject headings
Database subject headings are controlled vocabulary terms that a database uses to describe what an article is about.
Using appropriate subject headings enhances your search and will help you to find more results on your topic. This is because subject headings find articles according to their subject, even if the article does not use your chosen key words.
You should combine both subject headings and keywords in your search strategy for each of the concepts you identify. This is particularly important if you are undertaking a systematic review or an in-depth piece of work
Subject headings may vary between databases, so you need to investigate each database separately to find the subject headings they use. For example, for Medline you can use MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) and for Embase you can use the EMTREE thesaurus.
Use Boolean logic to combine search terms
Boolean operators (AND, OR and NOT) allow you to try different combinations of search terms or subject headings.
Databases often show Boolean operators as buttons or drop-down menus that you can click to combine your search terms or results.
The main Boolean operators are:
- OR
- AND
- NOT
OR is used to find articles that mention either of the topics you search for.
AND is used to find articles that mention both of the searched topics.
NOT excludes a search term or concept. It should be used with caution as you may inadvertently exclude relevant references.
For example, searching for “self-esteem NOT eating disorders” finds articles that mention self-esteem but removes any articles that mention eating disorders.
- And combines search terms so that each search result contains all of the terms. For example, travel and Europe find articles that contain both travel and Europe.
- Or combines search terms so that each search result contains at least one of the terms. For example, college or university finds results that contain either college or university.
- Not excludes terms so that each search result does not contain any of the terms that follow it. For example, television not cable finds results that contain television but not cable.
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Citation searching
Citation searching is a method to find articles that have been cited by other publications.
Use citation searching to:
- find out whether articles have been cited by other authors
- find more recent papers on the same or similar subject
- discover how a known idea or innovation has been confirmed, applied, improved, extended, or corrected
- help make your literature review more comprehensive.
You can use cited reference searching in:
Cited reference searching can complement your literature search. However be careful not to just look at papers that have been cited in isolation. A robust literature search is also needed to limit publication bias.
Parenthesis
You can use parentheses to build a search with a combination of Boolean Operators.
Take a look at the illustrations below - the search terms and Boolean Operators are identical, but the parentheses create two very different searches. Using parentheses in your Boolean search, is a lot like using them in arithmetic - the search inside the parentheses is done first.
The blue area in the first illustration represents the results that would be returned for the search (Cetacean OR Whale) AND Pacific, which yields 633 results and gives us articles with the following combinations:
Note that Cetacean and Whale may or may not be present, but Pacific will appear in every search result. This is because Cetacean and Whale are linked with OR while Pacific is added to the search with AND.
The blue area in the second illustration represents the results that would be returned for the search Cetacean OR (Whale AND Pacific), which yields 1718 results and gives us articles with the following combinations:
Note that Whale and Pacific must always appear together, or not at all, while Cetacean may be the only term present. This is because Whale and Pacific are linked with AND and Cetacean is added to the search with OR.
Ways to restrict and widen your search
If your search only finds a few references, or most of the references are irrelevant to your research topic, consider the following:
- Check your spelling: databases will not usually auto-correct, so they will only find what you type.
- Use a broader search question.
- Do you need to search more databases?
- Could you add more search terms? Look for variations in spelling and alternative words.
- Discuss your topic with your supervisor.
If you have too many results, you may have to focus your search and make it more specific. Ask yourself:
- Have you used Boolean operators correctly? For example, have you used AND when you should have used OR?
- Could you limit it by date range?
- Could you limit the search by language eg English only? Using non-English papers helps to minimize bias, but only if you can translate them accurately.
Use search limits
Each database offers a different range of limits. Many databases allow you to limit your searches by publication year, language and publication type. Some may even allow you to restrict your search to specific types of query.
Limits should be applied at the end of your search after you have retrieved all the results relevant to your topic. Apply limits one at a time so you can see what effect they have on your results.
Using too many limits may make your search too narrow. In this case, you could use search filters instead.
Search by hand to catch anything you have missed
Handsearching involves selecting key journals in your subject area and searching each one individually, by hand or electronically, with specific criteria in mind. It can also be used to search for sections/chapters in books.
It helps you to pick up material that might otherwise be missed. No database search strategy is perfect, as there may be items that are not indexed or are improperly indexed, and not all materials you need may be indexed by databases. You might also have made some mistakes in the search.
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