LibraryGuides: Evidence-Based Practice: Search Strategies

Citation Searching

Scopus
An abstract and citation database of research literature and quality web sources, including journals, conference proceedings, trade publications, abstracts, and patent records from the humanities, sciences and social sciences. Allows users to locate the most highly cited items and the articles that cite them.
Google Scholar
A simple way to search scholarly materials on the open web. To view links directly to CU Libraries' resources when searching Google Scholar, be sure to make us your library. You can do this by navigating to the menu at the top left > Settings > Library links > add Creighton University.

PubMed

PubMed Basics
NLM handout
Searching PubMed with MeSH
NLM handout

Using Boolean Operators

	The AND operator narrows a search, retrieving only records containing both term. AND is used to narrow a topic to a specific aspect. Example: anorexia AND "college students"
	The OR operator broadens a search, retrieving records that contain either term, but not necessarily both. It is used to combine synonyms or related concepts. Example: anorexia OR bulimia
	The NOT operator also narrows a search by removing all records that contain a particular word or phrase. Example: anorexia NOT bulimia The NOT operator is rarely used. It often screens out useful records.

Search Strategy Planner

Key Search Techniques

Quotation Marks/Phrase Searching

Using quotation marks in a search tells the database that you are looking for an exact phrase. Because of this, you only need to use quotation marks for a concept that is two or more words. For example if you were researching Social Security, using quotation marks ["social security"] would tell the database that you only want search results where Social Security appears as a phrase.

Without the quotation marks, the database actually reads your search as [social AND security]. Library databases will interpret strings of terms without any quotation marks or Boolean operators as being connected by the term AND. This is likely to return results unrelated to your research question.

Truncation and Wild Cards

Truncation refers to shortening a word or eliminating characters in order to pick up variant terms in a database. Symbols are used for truncation. The most common symbols are the asterisk (*), the question mark (?), the pound sign (#), or a dollar sign ($). These symbols vary from database to database but are often indicated on a database's "Help" page. Examples of truncation:

child* - includes child and children
disab* - includes disabled, disability, disabilities
environment* - includes environment, environments, environmental, environmentalist, etc.

Wildcards are used for internal truncation. This will replace a single character in a search term. This is useful if a word has a letter difference between American English and British English or if a word is irregularly pluralized. The symbols used are different from regular truncation, but can be determined on a database's "Help" page. Examples of using the wildcard:

wom?n - includes woman and women
colo?r - includes color and colour