Researching a subject takes skills. Below you will find three suggestions on how to build a search:
When searching for literature on a subject, narrowing and broadening your searches can help you get a better understanding of the available literature.
Using quotation marks [ " " ] will deliver search results where your search words are next to each other.
Searching for "social media marketing" in quotation marks will return references where the exact phrase is used.
Searching without quotation marks will return results where the words can be present independently, scattered in e.g. an abstract or the body of text.
Be aware that the search with quotation marks will NOT find "social media branding and marketing" even though a text with this phrase could be equally interesting for you.
Using an asterisk [ * ] will return results where the stem of the word is fixed but the following letters differ.
Searching for the word lobbyism will find ONLY results with this exact spelling.
The word lobb* will return documents on lobbies, lobbyism, lobbyist, and lobby. And the Danish words lobbyisme, lobbyer, as well.
Be aware that adding the asterisk too soon will make your search results fuzzy. A search on poli* will return results on politicians, politics, etc., but also on police, which may not be what you want.
Searching with Boolean operators (OR; AND and NOT) allows you to combine search words, to make the search more precise.
In Libsearch, type the operators in capital letters otherwise, they will be disregarded.
Broaden your search by adding synonymous or near-synonymous words.
Use OR between the search words to get more results.
To find texts of interest concerning payment for work, use closely related terms such as pay OR wage OR compensation.
To cover all three in one search, your search would look like this:
Narrow down the amount of results by combining words.
Adding more search terms and the boolean operator AND between the words will give you fewer and more precise references in the result list.
To find results on regulation of blockchain in Europe, your search would look like this:
The boolean opeartors can be used in combination in Libsearch´s advanced search.
The hits from this search will contain either of the search terms or phrases from the first line, in combination with either of the terms in the second line.
See "Start your topic search" for use of quotation marks and asterisk.
Usually, your research questions can lead you to your initial search words.
Libsearch has some features that can help you choose additional search words.
Each reference in Libsearch is fitted with much more information than you see immediately. Usually you will be able to find an abstract, keywords, table of content or links to related documents, by clicking the title of the reference. This information can lead you to more understanding of the document, but also to terms, that can help you develop your search.
Click these two examples and note, that they are enriched with information as described above.
Academic texts refer to other texts, and many texts are cited by others.
Sometimes you want to go back in time to look at the knowledge base "older articles".
Sometimes you want to look at how a text has been used since its publication to learn how other researchers have based their research on a specific text "newer articles".
By following the citations related to a specific text or article you can find valuable sources - older and newer than a specific article.
Libsearch has a feature that shows newer and older texts related to a specific article.
When you find a relevant article for your project, try out the citation arrows.
Often authors will write texts within the same subject field for a long time.
If you have found an interesting text, try to search for the author to get more sources.
