Research Guides: POLT 900: Political Science Pro-Seminar (UNH Durham): Search Strategies

Approaches to Searching and Finding Related Articles

Searching with Keywords
Very brief tutorial

Use 2 or 3 significant words or terms from your research topic

Use quotation marks to indicate a phrase

"food security"

Use an asterisk * to pick up words with the same stem but different endings

regulat* returns regulate, regulating, regulation, regulations, regulatory, regulators

Develop synonyms and alternative terms.

Example: teens or youth or adolescents

Try a broader concept if a specific term doesn't retrieve enough results

instead of brothers, try siblings

Try a more specific aspect or element if you get too many results with a very broad concept

instead of Southeast Asia, search specific countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia or Thailand

Use the connector "and" to retrieve records with all the keywords you list to focus and narrow your results

water and Sahara

Use the connector "or" indicate that any one of the terms listed needs to be in the results shown; this usually increases the number of relevant results

audience or attendees

Look for new words or terms to search when reviewing your results or reading the full-text article.

Searching by the subjects assigned to articles helps

identify articles in which the subject is a main focus and not just not just a passing reference
pull together results on same concept even if author uses different terms in title or abstract
- the subject "capital punishment" will retrieve articles using the term "death penalty" as well as those using "capital punishment"
when a keyword may have multiple meanings or a more general meaning
- the subject "flow (conscious state)" will get more relevant results than just searching the keyword "flow"

Look at the subject terms in records for articles that fit your topic closely and search those subjects for more articles

Use the thesaurus available in some databases to see if your keywords are subjects or if alternative terms are used

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts uses "Campaign Contributions" as a subject but not "Political Contributions"

Limiting Your Search Results
Very brief Tutorial

Some specialized databases allow you to limit your search in other useful ways: educational level, age, population group, research methodology, language, etc.

Limiter options vary by database:

check the advanced search screen
view the limiters to the left or right on the search results page.

Make connections through ideas and concepts rather than specific words

Look at the reference list at the end of a relevant scholarly article you found. This may lead you to earlier articles related to your topic. Search the UNH Library catalog by the name of the journal to see if we have the article online or in print.

Check "Times Cited" or "Cited By" links, if available, in databases such as Worldwide Political Science Abstracts or PsycINFO to identify some newer articles citing the article in the database record. This may lead to related relevant articles.

Use Web of Science or Google Scholar to follow citations from published articles to identify older and newer related articles across many disciplinary fields in the sciences, social sciences, and arts & humanities.

Google Scholar results include "Cited By" links to articles, books, presentations, and more. Note that not all links go to peer-reviewed publications.

What else have the author(s) published on this topic? Search their names in the relevant database or look for their CV (curriculum vita) online.

Subject-specific journals may publish articles on similar topics, so try searching within specific journal titles that you see appearing frequently in your search results.