Finding journal articles & papers
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Reviewing your search: What if I didn't find what I want?
Check the success of your keywords and strategy in each database. This is a very important step for two reasons :
- Rarely is the original design of a search strategy the best that could be done. By looking at records from different databases and the terminology used in the databases, you can adjust your search to try to ensure you are not missing any valuable references.
- Each database is different - they are covering different subject areas and are using different keywords or descriptors or terminology to describe your topic. The terms in the 'descriptor' field are standardised for each database. So they will be consistent within a database, but will vary between databases.
Each database will also have a different record structure.
For example, some databases provide an abstract field which describes the content of the article and others do not.
Search tip
In each database you search, browse through some of the references found with your initial search. Do they look appropriate for your topic?
Look at the indexing or subject terms (often called descriptors) to see what terms the database is using.
If you find a very good article for your topic, check the keywords used and re-do your search using those terms.
Strategies for broadening a search
If you are not getting many results you will need to broaden your search (change your search so you will get more results).
Spelling
Finding very little in a database where you expected to find a lot could mean that you are using Australian spelling in an American database. Some databases support wildcards that allow you to substitute letters within a word.
For example when using EBSCOhost datbases:
organi?ation will find organisation AND organization
Terminology
Your terminology or search terms could be poor for the database you are using.
Look at some of the references found to see the terminology being used in the particular database. Are there other terms that could be used for your topic? Go back to your list of keywords and think about alternative terms. As with spelling some terminology can be specific to a particular country.
For example:
Global warming OR greenhouse effect OR greenhouse gases
Acronyms
Remember to search on the full name as well as the acronym. Do not assume that the database will interpret your acronym or initialism and search on its meaning.
For example:
goods and services tax OR GST
Strategies for narrowing a search
If you are finding too many results you may need to narrow your search (change your search to find less results).
Terms too broad
Are your terms too broad for the database? For example, there is no need to add the term accounting to your search if you are searching a database which already has this as a focus, like the AATD ( Australian Accounting & Taxation Database) database.
Include another concept
in your search, that is another "AND" statement. This will further refine your search.
For example:
(global warming OR greenhouse effect) AND climate AND crops
Check truncation
Perhaps your stem word is too short.
For example, if you are searching for articles about "cars" and you type car* , you will find not only "car" and "cars", but also "carburettor", "carpet", "carrier" etc. The stem is too short and is retrieving too many irrelevant terms.
In this example, you could get around the problem in two ways.
1. Specify the alternative terms in your search statement, for example your search statement could be:
car or cars
2. Investigate whether the database has a truncation symbol that specifies the number of characters that have been truncated. These symbols are sometimes called "wildcards". For example, in the Web of Science database the $ symbol is a wildcard and can be used to substitute for characters.
The search vapo$r retrieves vapor and vapour
Restrict to the subject field
Consider restricting your search to the subject or descriptor field. Most databases will allow you to do this in the advanced search screen.
Restrict to a time period
Consider restricting your search to a particular time period, eg. the last two years.
You can dramatically reduce the number of results you get and remove information that may now be out of date.
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