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Tips and Tricks
- Choose scholarly (peer reviewed) sources not popular sources.
- Scholarly sources will be more accurate, credible, and relevant than popular sources.
- Keep in mind what terminology is being used in the current field of study when creating keywords, but also be aware of what terms USED to be used.
- Some researchers will still add old terminology to their search terms to reach a larger audience
- Most researchers will always add their work using the most recent terminology as well.
- When searching break down your topic into more specific terms.
- Try to focus on one aspect of your topic
- You will get more relevant narrowed results
- This will help you create a more focused-manageable research project
- Make use of the limiters in the advanced search function within databases
- You can limit by publication date
- Subject matter
- Scholarly articles
- Full text
- Sort your results by most relevant and then use your limiters to exclude any publications outside of your publication date criteria.
- This will give you articles that are most useful but still recent enough for your project.
- Search multiple EBSCO databases at once to save time and cover more ground
- Above the search bar is an option for Choose Databases
- Click that link and you will be presented with a list of available EBSCO databases
- Choose the ones you want to search through and continue back to the search bar
- If you are stuck on search terms look at the subject headings of an article you found useful and try one of those in your search string.
- You can also look to the bottom left or sometimes the top right to find a link that says "Find Similar Articles"
- If you want to save a link to an article be sure to use the permalink or save the DOI (Digital Object Identifier).
- This will lead you directly back to the article, but you may be required to sign in to retrieve it.
- If you use the link from the address bar it is likely to change and you will be unable to find the article again
