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 terms. When building a search, use AND in-between your search concepts/topics. 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 narrows a search by removing all records that contain a particular word or phrase. Example: anorexia NOT bulimia Use NOT with caution, as it can screen out useful results.

Key Search Techniques

Quotation Marks/Phrase Searching

Using quotation marks in a search tells the database that you are looking for an exact phrase. You need to use quotation marks for any phrase 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 and capturing word variants without having to manually type them all out. Another way of thinking about it is that it tells the database to fill out the rest of the word on its own. In most databases, this is done with an asterisk *.

Examples of truncation:

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