• What is it that you are looking for?
• Do you need a few articles that provide an current or historical overview?
• Do you need to do exhaustive research on a focused topic?
• Are you wanted to see what others have done in a particluar topic area?

For in-depth literature searching:

It often helps to frame your research topic as a question; consider the who, what, when, where and how or how much.

Identify each major concept of your question. You can use these concepts to forumulate  your search strategy.

For each concept, consider the most specific terms or key words that you could use to describe that concept. Each of these strings then becomes a single search statement.

A literature review is a survey of current (you determine time frame) literature relating to a particular issue, problem, theory, etc. The review involves a comprehensive search of all of the known/findable scholarly literature related to the issue or topic. The written review provides a summary of this literature and can be a publication in its own right, or may be part of a larger academic research publication.

• Conduct preliminary search of the literature using broad terms related to your topic to help you:
  • identify similar research that has been published
  • broaden or refine the scope of the topic
  • bring to light new issues or questions related to the topic
  • provide models or frameworks to inform your research
  • identify experts or scholars in the field
  • provide background or context for your research

• Refine your research question based on what you have learned

• Conduct a comprehensive review of the literature using appropriate databases

  • Identify key concepts from the research question
  • For each concept, consider keywords or subject terms that best represent the concept
  • Craft search statements using those terms
  • Use OR to combine synonyms;
  • use AND for terms/concepts that must be represented in the results
     

• Review/evaluate/analyze results

  • Glance at the title; if you think the publication may be relevant look at the abstract.
  • If the abstract indicates that the article will be important go to the full text and skim the introudction, methods and results. Structured abstract make this process easier.)
  • Save citations/full text for all potentially important literature.

For more about searching, see: Literature Search - Search Tips

It is important to track your entire search process to ensure the rigor of your research, and to provide all necessary data for a PRISMA Flow Diagram if needed.

At a minimum, documentation should include:

• databases and resources search
• search strategy for each database/resource (search terms, limits, etc.)
• data of each search
• number of results from each search
• record and notes of hand searching