First, organize your research topic into concepts. Concepts are typically nouns or noun phrases.
- For example, if you are researching Apartheid legislation in South Africa, your concepts would be
- South Africa
- Apartheid
- legislation
Using a databases's Advanced Search, enter each concept and its synonyms into a separate search line.
- "South Africa"
- apartheid OR segregation
- Legislat*
Use quotation marks around phrases, these are typically noun phrases that you would find a definition of in a dictionary.
- "petty apartheid"
- "racial segregation"
Use * for truncation.
- legislat* will find legislation, legislative, legislature, etc.
Limit to peer-reviewed articles if necessary.
Limit by date if necessary.
Too many or too few results?
- Use the thesaurus or Subject Index to find related, broader, narrower, and similar terms OR specific terms that the databases uses to describe a topic.
- Too many results? Use a narrower term.
- Too few results? Use a broader term.
Find an article that looks interesting?
- Click on the article's title.
- Look at the subjects given to an article to find related terms and run additional searches using these terms.
- Click on the references, cited by, or see similar documents links to find related articles.
