Search and find research literature

Include spelling variations

Include those words that have alternative spelling. There are differences between British English and American English spelling, such as colour and color. Some search tools automatically find both spellings, but you may need to include both versions.

Use wildcards

If supported by the database, incorporate wild cards in your search to allow for spelling variations. A wildcard is a symbol used in the middle of a word, usually a question mark (?) or asterisk (*), but symbols vary depending on the search tool or database. When searching for a word like behaviour, using a wildcard symbol, for example, behavio?r finds all spelling variations.

Limit your search

Use limit options to refine your results and focus your search. Most search tools allow you to limit your results in a variety of ways, including by date, publication type, discipline and language.

Search for phrases

In some databases you can use quotation marks around multiple words to search for an exact phrase, for example "higher education". Use quotation marks in phrase searching to return more relevant results. This works best for two or three word phrases.

Find word variations

Find variations of your keyword using truncation. Adding a truncation symbol, usually the asterisk (*), to the main stem of the word, for example, teen* returns results that include teens, teenager, and teenaged.  This is an easy way to find singular and plural forms of words and their different endings.

Combine keywords and synonyms

Search with Boolean operators, and, or and not, this allows you to combine different keywords or exclude terms. For example, training and education, train not railway.

Examine references

Check the references or bibliographies at the end of articles or book chapters to identify additional resources that may be useful for your research.

Keep current

Stay up to date with the latest, relevant research by setting up keyword, journal or author alerts through your preferred library database. Another option is to set up new article alerts in BrowZine.

Find seminal research

Use library databases such as Scopus or Web of Science to find pivotal or landmark articles. After doing a keyword search, sort your results by citation count to bring the most influential articles to the top. In Google Scholar, highly cited research tends to appear on the first few pages of your results.

Remember citations can be positive, negative or neutral so you must critically evaluate any highly cited research to determine its place in your discipline.

Discover related research

Explore similar or related papers when searching in library databases. Or try using literature mapping tools to discover articles based on papers you've already read. Free options include:

• ResearchRabbit
• Inciteful.

Other tools such as Connected Papers or Litmaps may require payment.

Seek advice

Ask your colleagues, supervisors and peers for recommendations on papers you should read.