Search Strategies
Literature search
You were always wondering how to conduct a systematic overview search or how to start your literature search for your dissertation? You want to know if there are any quality criteria for specialist journals? You do not know what an original publication is? If that is the case, please continue reading!
Literature search - strategic tips
Ten steps to success
1. Analysis of the topic: Simply type "scholar" into the search box of Google and you will get the search engine as the first hit link (scholar.google.de). This search engine filters articles and books from the internet, which are available on scientific websites or on publishers' servers. This also includes the Open Access offers of universities. Now, enter your topic very briefly (two keywords maximum), and you will get several hits, often as PDF. Please make sure that you only chose articles from specialist journals or books. University websites or websites by scientific organizations or professional associations are also valuable sources of information. With the PDFs or DOCs, you proceed as follows: print and highlight keywords in the text as well as authors and titles in the literature references or in the table of contents with a text marker. In doing so, you will get a good overview of the specialist vocabulary in your topic. As soon as you find author names which are repeatedly mentioned regarding similar topics, you can be sure that they are experts in the respective field.
2.-3. Search keywords and building blocks (categories/subsets): You can now develop a search strategy with the keywords collected from the publication titles and texts, using the search model (PICO or MIP). In order to do so, you will enter the keyword in the respective category. Translate the keywords into English/German and think of synonyms and variations for each keyword.