Skip to Main Content

BIOL 696

Library research tips for biology masters students.

Search Strategy for Literature Review

A literature review is a critical account of the methodologies and data on your research topic by accredited researchers in the field. The following is a list of search techniques to guide the process:

Identify keywords associated with your topic
- Test your keywords by using them in the recommended databases
- Are your keywords included in the titles of the results you are getting?
- If your keywords are not included in the titles, search MeSH to determine what keyword(s) to use
- Also, identify author supplied keywords in the relevant articles you find

Run keywords search for relevant publications
- Find recommended databases in the Databases tab
- Literature reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, journal articles or books

Bibliography / References List searches
- scan references sections of these materials to find additional materials
  - Set up citation alerts
- Practice bibliography / reference list searching using Web of Science.

Web of Science This link opens in a new window Web of Science provides access to high-quality research from the world's leading arts, humanities, science and social science journals. Web of Science includes the Cited Reference search. Online coverage is 1993-present. Earlier print versions can be found in the library.

Identify key journals
- scan table of contents from the past 3-5 years for material
  - Set-up Table of Contents Alerts and/or Journal & Book Series Alerts

Map the literature
- Organize literature according to key elements of the research studies such as methodology
  - Use Mendely to organize sources/materials into folder/sub-folders

Identify major authors
- Set-up citation alerts (See Citation Alerts tab)
- Use Citation linking tools and perform Cited reference searches to locate the accredited researchers (see Databases tab to learn more)