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Basics of Science Literature Searches

Provides literature research guidance for students in STEM research programs at Georgia Southern University

Developing an Effective Search Strategy Involves: 

  • Identifyng the key search concepts

  • Identifying related terms to the key search concepts

  • Using standard search structures to broaden and narrow your search results

While there is not ONE right way to do a search, the strategies identified on this page will improve your results!

Limiting and Expanding Your Search Using And, Or, Not...

Boolean searching involves adding or subtracting terms to your search to either broaden or narrow your search. It uses three terms (AND, OR, NOT) to tell the search engine or database whether to include or eliminate certain terms.                                  

 

                                                                                                                            Set of Ven Diagrams showing the relationship between Boolean Operators AND, OR, and NOT as used in a literature search query                                                

AND/OR The Difference

Remember, OR is going to expand your results. It is great for the following situations:

  • To retrieve all members of an entire class of items - be sure to include the name of the class!  Citrus OR Oranges OR Lemons OR Tangerines OR Grapefruit.
  • Search both the acronym or initialism and the full name:  HPLC OR high-performance liquid chromatography
  • Search both Common and Scientific Names: Poison Oak OR Toxicodendron diversilobum
  • Search similar concepts *like in the video!   Salty OR Salinity
  • And sometimes you can actually use acronyms to fully express your concept:  dehydration OR hydration,   fertility OR sterility

AND will narrow your results! 

Salty AND Sweet:  The database will pull items that only deal with both of these in the same source! 

Using Quotation Marks in Your Search:

Quotation Marks can be used to identify Phrases.

By using quotations marks, you can tell the computer to only bring back pages with the terms you typed in the exact order you typed them.

"skin cancer"

Instead of 

skin AND cancer

"green technologies" 

Instead of 

green AND technologies

 

Using Truncation in your Search:

Truncation allows you to search various forms of a word by finding alternative endings.

The character (*) is placed at the end of the first few letters of a search term or at the end of its root.

Chemi* retrieves

Chemist/s

Chemistry

Chemical/s