Simply typing keywords into a database's search box can yield good results, but sometimes it pays to think more carefully about your search strategy.
Chances are your research question contains more than one concept. Use operators to combine these concepts in different ways to narrow or broaden your search. Operators are used differently in different databases (and some databases do not use operators), so check the help section of your database to make sure you are using operators correctly.
If you are getting too many results or you need a specific kind of article, try limiting your search by:
Sometimes it’s helpful to search for a particular author; for example, you may discover that a particular researcher has done a lot of work on your topic. Author searches can be tricky for several reasons:
Here are some tips for author searches:
If you already have an article that’s relevant to your research question, you can use it to find more relevant articles using citation chaining. Citation chaining has two parts: