Remember - your main tasks during the literature searching phase are:
You may also be refining your topic, keywords, and search strategies based on what you are finding in the literature.
Click on the tabs to your right to review some important tips for making your searches more efficient and productive!
A significant part of your work while searching for articles will be distilling your topic down into searchable keywords, and generating and trying lists of possible alternate keywords as you go. You might need to change your keyword language or spelling, or use connecting terms to combine keywords to get the best results.
Keyword mode searching works because the database or search engine is matching in your search terms to content in either an article or a website.
The three words that you can use to connect and combine your keywords are and, or, and not. You may see them in pull-down menus in databases.
AND tends to narrow searches because all words must be included in results.
OR tends to broaden searches because one or other terms (or all) can be present in results.
NOT selectively eliminates any results containing a specified word.
The two symbols you can also use to alter your keywords are "quotation marks" and the asterisk *.
"Quotation marks" searches for groups of words together. This works best if you are looking for a title or phrase.
The asterisk * is usually found above the number eight on most keyboards. Use the asterisk * to abbreviate words so you can find all possible spelling variations in your search results. It will also make your search results increase, typically.
Subject headings are specific terms that are linked to articles in databases and function at times like tags or categories. Use subject searching to find all the articles that carry a certain subject in the extended article description.
You can find a database's subject headings in databases list using the database's thesaurus. You can combine subject headings using the thesaurus using the same 3 connecting words (AND, OR, NOT) you use in keyword searching.
Subject headings are not standard across different databases. Also, be aware that your subject area or discipline may have specialized subject headings. An example would be APA Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms, depicted in the image above in the PsychInfo database. If you were doing a literature review in Psychology, this would be a significant set of subject headings to be familiar with.
Subject heading searches can also be combined with keywords in searches, too.
Creating a personal account in databases (when available) is an advantage for advanced researchers, especially if you are working on multiple long-term projects. Some of the features available when you create an account in a database include:
Databases that allow you to create an account include:
Google Scholar lets you set up an account and a researcher/scholar profile to list your publications and profile, among other things!
Backward Citation Searching
Backward citation chasing is a research strategy that mines a source article’s works cited or references list to find related sources that were cited in the source article.
Web of Science is a citation analysis database that can be used for backward citation chasing. Or you can always search for each article by hand in Google Scholar or the library's Quick Search.
Forward Citation Searching
Forward citation chasing is a research strategy that relies on finding a list of all other articles that have cited a source article in either Google Scholar or Web of Science.
Google Scholar is a popular, accessible tool for forward citation chasing. One important consideration: very new articles may not have been cited yet.
Journal Searching
Need to find out if the library has access to a journal? Or do you just need to find articles from a single journal? Click on the Journals button on the library's home page to search by journal title or ISSN number. 
If the library has the journal online or in print, it will display a link to either the online text or the location of the print journal in the Bell Library. You can then search within the journal.
What is Interlibrary Loan?
Interlibrary loan is an online service to connect you with items our library doesn't own, are checked out, or in non-circulating collections: If the item you want isn't available from our library, you can order it through interlibrary loan and we'll ship it to you once it arrives. It's fast and quick, and best of all, you already have an account - just activate by logging in to Tipasa with your IslandID and password!
Typically journal articles are available in electronic format - and come through your interlibrary loan account. Typical delivery time for an online article is 1-3 days. If it is an item in print, it may take a little longer and the item will be delivered to your home address. Typical delivery time for a print item is 4-7 days average.
Are you a Texas Resident?
TexShare is a state-wide consortium of university and public libraries that allows for inter-library borrowing in the state of Texas.
TexShare allows you to check out materials from over 1,000 Texas libraries free of charge. You can stop by the Bell Library Circulation Desk in-person to get your TexShare Card.
Any literature review article searches should include core databases from your particular subject area or discipline. Use the library's database A-Z list to find subject-specific databases or try browsing your subject's Research Guides.
Web of Science is a highly recommended database for literature reviews. It covers a wide selection of topic areas and journals, allows researchers to explore relationships between published articles by liking papers to the articles cited in the paper, but also other papers that have cited a certain article, search for all publications written by a certain author, and more.
The other databases listed cover different subject and discipline areas, and may also be useful.
Grey literature tends to be content or literature that is not published or distributed in "traditional" ways like books, magazines, or journals. The term also can refer to content that is not formally peer-reviewed or evaluated. Grey literature can also refer to content in different formats such as reports, internal, institutional, or statistical reports, research memoranda, market research reports, and scholarly content like dissertations, theses, conference proceedings, and such.
Dissertations and Theses may be useful in literature review for their content but also for mining citations and sources. The library has several databases for searching Dissertations and Theses.
Consider which resource(s) search as a way to broaden or narrow your search in addition to broadening or narrowing your search keywords. If your topic is very focused, Google Scholar covers many resources and may be a broader search than you need. Or if you are still exploring or not finding enough sources, you might benefit from a broad search.
Google Scholar is free to use on the internet, and has lots of full-text articles included. Google Scholar also allows you to search explore papers that have cited a certain paper, and includes Web of Science citation counts and lists when available.
Google Scholar also contains much more content in languages other than English and English content from more geographically diverse areas. You can also connect Google Scholar to TAMU-CC resources (see video below for a demonstration).
Watch the entire video below to learn about how to personalize and maximize Google Scholar for research.
