1. How to do a literature search
September 16, 2018
How to do a literature search
Emma Coonan
Information Skills Librarian
Welcome!
Please say who you are and what subject you’re studying/what year you’re in.

2. What is a literature search anyway? You and your topic Where to search
September 16, 2018
Session content
What is a literature search anyway?
You and your topic
Where to search
Google Scholar
Academic Search Complete
Scopus

3. What subject (and course) are you doing?
But first ...
What subject (and course) are you doing?
What topic are you doing research on?
Please take a couple of minutes to introduce yourself : )

4. What is a literature search anyway?
‘Victorian mindmapped man’ by LukePDQ, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

5. “A detailed and organised, step by step search for all the relevant material available on a topic.”
Scary? ...
It’s important to bear in mind that how you word your research question – the parameters that you set – is what defines “all the material”. You are the one who’s in charge of setting the boundaries of what you investigate. This means I can’t say to each of you “Here’s the one place you need to look; job done”. Research is about pulling in new and unexpected themes, putting together pieces of information that haven’t been synthesised before - and as you explore your research context, the parameters of your question may well change.
Definition adapted from Robert Gordon University

6. Searching for published work (mostly) about your topic
What does it involve?
Searching for published work (mostly) about your topic
Aiming to get a sound grasp of your topic and its context
Not looking for answers but for viewpoints, expert insights, useful studies
Joining the dialogue
What you’re doing isn’t trying to find a final answer (“The tomato – fruit or vegetable?”). Instead you’re having a conversation with other researchers about your topic, listening to their points of view and comparing them.

7. Authors you haven’t heard of
What will I find?
Authors you haven’t heard of
Different ways of describing your key themes
Views that you don’t agree with
Evidence that challenges your ideas
All of this will stretch your understanding of your topic, and maybe challenge it too. Research can be tough – it can make you look very closely at what you believe and why!

8. What will I find?
It’s important to know that this is an evolving, iterative process. The more you search, the more you find out about your topic; the more you find out, the more nuanced your understanding becomes; the more nuanced your understanding, the more specific your question will get (and it may slightly change direction to take account of the research context).
Graphic by Capella University

9. Free will in War and Peace
September 16, 2018
You and your topic
War and Peace
Free will in War and Peace
The conflict of free will and historical inevitability in Tolstoy’s description of three battles in War and Peace
Narrowing right down from a fuzzy-level interest, through a particular aspect, to a very tightly focused question – note that it’s now focused not just on specific (though abstract) concepts – free will and historical inevitability – but also on just three battles in the book.
Where are you on the triangle at the moment? near the top, or further along?
Take a couple of minutes each in pairs to describe where you are – partner to listen and ask questions
* Did your focus get clearer as you talked about it to someone else?
* Could your listener suggest any useful ways to narrow your focus?
Example from Booth, Colomb & Williams, The Craft of Research, p.43

10. What are the key themes, issues or concepts?
You and your topic
What are the key themes, issues or concepts?
What am I not looking at (boundaries)?
What might other researchers call my key concepts?
This gives us a blueprint for searching so that you can find interesting stuff that’s related to your topic.

11. Where to search
‘Path path path’ by Hockadilly, CC BY-NC 2.0

12. scholar.google.co.uk

13. What kind of material have you found?
Is it useful for your topic?
How are you going to save it?

14. Let’s have a quick look at Google Scholar
Let’s have a quick look at Google Scholar. Before you put in your own keywords, tell me a bit about what we’re looking at …
What sort of results are these? (Mix of books and journal articles)
How are they sorted? (Can I change this order if I want to?)
What can you do with them? (Options for narrowing date range or to see specific info types)
How many results are there?
What are the chances that I’m going to look through all one thousand of them? But what if there’s something awesome on the 25th page … ?
Take a few minutes to search for material on your topic on Google Scholar

15. September 16, 2018
Two things to notice about Scholar … Full text links (and how to get them from home)

16. Cited by…
And here are details of articles that cite that first book, so you can work forwards in time to see what impact that original article has had.
Remember to be critical in how you evaluate citation rankings! A higher number of citations doesn’t mean that the work is better, or even that it’s academically rigorous. A really badly-researched or biased article will attract a lot of citations simply because other researchers have to cite it in order to refute it.

17. Your thoughts?
Broad range
Links in with UEA subscription material
‘Cited by’ links
Too much stuff?
Little control over sorting of results
Lucky dip

18. Academic Search Complete
portal.uea.ac.uk/library

19. Academic Search Complete

20. What kind of material have you found?
Is it useful for your topic?
How are you going to save it?

21. September 16, 2018
On ASC you can start making more powerful searches that reflect what you thought about earlier:
- what you’re NOT looking at (NOT operator)
- what other researchers might call your concepts (OR operator)

22. September 16, 2018
- smaller, more manageable results set
- should always get the full text! (that’s what this resource is for)
- lots more ways to manipulate the results set using the left hand side options
- save to folder and or export all the useful results together – not one-by-one (try it)

23. More options for sorting and saving Not subject-specialist
Your thoughts?
Manageable range
Full-text results
More options for sorting and saving
Not subject-specialist
Not actually “complete”!
Only journal articles
Only full-text
Contains nearly 1,560 journals covering the social sciences, humanities, general science, social sciences.
BUT a very small slice of the pie!

24. Go back to your MetaLib list and have a look for Scopus.

26. What kind of material have you found?
Is it useful for your topic?
How are you going to save it?

27. Your thoughts? 21,000 journals 50,000 books 6.5m conference papers
24m patents
You tell me! What differences have you noticed between Scopus and Scholar, or Scopus and Academic Search Complete?
NOT FULL TEXT! : )
>How much stuff do you think is indexed in Scopus?
ASC contains nearly 2,000 journals covering the social sciences, humanities, general science, social sciences.
Scopus: over 21,000 journals; 50,000 books with another 75,000 to come in 2015; 6.5 million conference papers; 24 million patents
So you can find out about a huge amount of stuff and do some preliminary

28. Scopus
Academic Search Complete

29. Subject-focused databases

30. Rachel Henderson: SCI & Research services/students/let
September 16, 2018
Where next?
Dr Liz Clarke: SCI
Rachel Henderson: SCI & Research
Sarah Elsegood: HUM
DOS Learning Enhancement have workshops on writing your literature review further down the line.
Carly Sharples: SSF
William Jones: FMH
services/students/let

31. UEA Information Skills
portal.uea.ac.uk/library/information-skills