1. Develop a research question
What is the topic of your research?
Establish which aspect of that topic you are particularly interested in
State your topic as a question
2. Identify the main concepts in your research question.
3. Develop a list of alternative terms.
Concept 1 | Concept 2 | Concept 3 |
Transmission vector(s) | hantavirus | species barrier |
Disease vector(s) | orthohantavirus | cross-species transmission |
Pathogen vector(s) | zoonosis |
4. Perform a keyword search.
Keywords are the words or phrases that you enter into database search boxes. A keyword search usually only looks for your words in the titles and abstracts of references in the database. Many databases will only find the exact word or phrase that you type, exactly as you spelled it. This is part of why it's so important to use synonyms while searching.
5. Truncation and Wildcards
Truncation is useful for finding variations of the ending of a word. Most databases use an asterisk (*) for truncation.
Wildcards are useful for finding alternative spellings, and can be used anywhere in a word. Most databases use a question mark (?) for wildcards.
6. Boolean Operators
Boolean operators consist of "and," "or," and "not."
OR increases your number of results and is generally used to combine synonyms.
AND decreases your number of results and is generally used to combine concepts and make your search more relevant to your research question.
NOT reduces your number of results by excluding a search term. This is especially useful if you're searching in a multidisciplinary database and using a term that has different meanings in different disciplines. For example, a vector in virology is very different from a vector in mathematics or physics.
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