Doing a literature search:

a step by step guide

Faculty Librarians

Last updated March 2019

What is a literature search?
A literature search is a systematic, thorough search of all types of published
literature to identify a breadth of good quality references relevant to a specific
topic, and is a fundamental element of the methodology of any research
project. The success of a research project is dependent on a thorough review
of the academic literature at the outset - getting the literature search right will
save hours of time in the long run. Effective literature searching is a critical
skill in its own right and will prove valuable for any future information gathering
activity whether within or outside of academia.

In practice, books and journals are the main source of information for most in-
depth literature searches related to an extended essay, dissertation or
research project. However, depending on your topic, many other sources will
prove equally valuable such as newspaper archives, images, primary data
and conference proceedings.

Why carry out a literature search?

There are several aims of this kind of search:
 to review existing critical opinions/theories
 to identify current research findings
 to identify potential research methods or models
 to enable comparison with your own research findings

The literature search can be a time-consuming job, so it pays to be well

prepared before beginning.

The stages of the literature search

A good literature search entails systematically working through steps 1-5:
1. Background reading and preparation
2. Working with your title - identifying search terms
3. Identifying the resources to search
4. Searching - using search techniques
5. Collating your results

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1. Background reading and preparation

Start with some background reading - textbooks, subject encyclopaedias etc. -

to get a grasp of the context of the topic and the terminology used in its
discussion. Questions you need to ask include:
 what led to the choice of this topic as an extended research project?
 is there a seminal book or journal article on the topic?
 is the subject currently being discussed in the media?
 do you have personal knowledge / experience of the topic?

Identify a small amount of reading material informed by the above to give you
an overview of the topic. A good seminal book or journal article related to the
topic may contain useful suggestions for further reading.

2. Working with your title - identifying search terms

At the outset of a literature search it is important to identify as much of the key

terminology associated with the topic as possible. This could include:
 important authors
 theories / concepts
 key research reports or legislation
 major genres / movements

The simplest starting point for identifying such terms is to spend time thinking
about the wording for the draft title of your research; from there it should be
possible to identify several key elements. For each of the key elements within
the title think about:
 alternative terms or synonyms – words that mean the same thing e.g. an
alternative term for youth may be young adults
 related terms / concepts e.g. related words to children are girls, boys,
teenagers etc.

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This approach can be used whatever the topic.

Let’s take as an example a research project into the representation of women

in 20th Century American crime films, with a draft working title:

The changing image of women in 20th century American crime films

This title has the following key elements:

crime films - the main topic of enquiry
portrayal of women - the particular angle of the research
America - the locational focus
20th century - the time period of interest

Take each key element of the draft title in turn

Crime films
Alternative terms Related terms
crime drama crime film character types:
crime melodrama femme fatale
crime movie/s private eye
film noir private detective
detective movie/s gangsters

Women
Alternative terms Related terms
woman gender
female/s molls
girl/s femme fatale
lady/ies

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America
Alternative terms Related terms
United States Hollywood
United States of America studio names
US MGM
USA Universal
specific directors
Alfred Hitchcock
Quentin Tarantino

20th century
Alternative terms Related terms
twentieth century specific time periods
1940s
1950s

Remember, no search engine whether in a database or on the Internet, is

intuitive. Unless you think about the range of potential search terms you are
certain to miss content that could be relevant.

3. Identifying the resources to search

Unfortunately, regardless of the subject you are studying, there is no one

single source of information that will contain everything you need for your
literature search, however the library provides a single search tool called
OneSearch which allows you to search many resources in one go. This gives
access to many different online resources covering the research needs of all
the different academic subjects. In practice, however, although you will need
to give careful thought to the resources most likely to contain the relevant
content, you should only need to search a relatively small number of
resources.

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A good starting point for your search is to use the search facility in OneSearch
to perform a broad search of all the journal literature we have access to
online. However, although this is useful in identifying some initial references, it
is not an exhaustive and comprehensive search of the literature. For this you
will need to search the individual resources directly in their own right. Do this
by selecting from the A-Z list of databases.

There are some databases that contain exclusively full text articles, but most
contain a mixture of full text and abstract only content, with the option to
restrict your search to full text results only

There are different types of databases:

Multi-disciplinary journal databases

Resources such as Academic Search Complete and JSTOR contain journal
content across the range of academic subjects. Often multi-disciplinary
databases contain professional and trade journals as well as academic peer
reviewed journals. Usually, however, you can restrict your results to those
from academic peer reviewed journals only.

Subject specific databases

These databases contain journal articles and/or other types of content
relevant to a specific subject or group of related subjects. Examples include
PsycARTICLES, Education Research Complete, Westlaw and International
Index to Performing Arts.

Publishers’ databases
Databases such as ScienceDirect, Sage Journals Online and Emerald contain
journal content published by a particular publishing company. Such resources
can be subject focused or multi-disciplinary.

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Other types of content
There are a large number of non-journal databases that may also contribute
to your literature search, such as e-books, newspapers, images, audio &
video, legal and government information and encyclopaedias. You can access
these from the Library Databases by Type list.

4. Searching - using search techniques

Having identified potential search terminology and which databases to search,

the quality of results will be improved by employing the following techniques.

As a general rule avoid using the ‘simple’ or ‘basic’ search option (only one
text box), always use the advanced search (or multi-search box) option. Only
in advanced search will you be able to use all the techniques that follow.

Word endings
Search engines won’t automatically search for derivatives of the same word;
for example searching for the word cinema won’t necessarily find cinematics.
This may even be true for simple variants such as the singular and plural of

the same word - cinema and cinemas. Inserting an asterisk * where the word
ending changes will automatically search for all the endings for that word.

cinema*

will find: cinema, cinemas, cinematic, cinematics.

Linking terms together

To enter more than one term in a search engine link the terms with the
connecting word AND or the connecting word OR.

Linking terms with AND will narrow your search, retrieving only results
containing both terms.
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Linking two terms with OR will broaden your search, finding results that
contain either or both terms. For example:

films AND crime

The above search will find only results that contain both the term films and the
term crime. It won’t retrieve results that just refer to films without any mention
of crime or crime without any mention of films.

films OR movies

The above search will retrieve results that just mention films, results that just
mention movies and results that mention both films and movies.

Variant spellings
Databases will only match on the specific word you enter. In practice this
means they may not be capable of coping with variant spellings such as
American/English variants e.g. searching for colour won’t necessarily find
results containing the American spelling color. Use OR between the two
different spellings to find either.

NB watch your spelling! Databases are notoriously unforgiving of misspelt

words. A common reason for not finding the results you would expect is due
to misspelt terms.

Exact phrase searching

Search terms expressed as a phrase, should be inserted in quotation marks
e.g. “crime films”, “United States”, “film noir”. This ensures that the words will
appear immediately next to each other in the text of the results.

“crime films”

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In the above search the word crime will always appear next to the word films
in the results retrieved. Leaving out quotation marks will retrieve results with
both words, but not necessarily with any contextual relevance. Put simply, the
word crime may appear in one paragraph, the word films in another.

Currency
If currency, or a particular publication date range is important to the relevancy
of the results retrieved, most databases will allow you to limit results to after,
before or between specific publication dates. This can be a powerful way of
limiting the results you find to those most relevant to your topic.

Think about where the database is looking for your search terms
Most databases allow you to specify where (i.e. what field) you wish the
database to search. Options offered include those as in the example below.

Searching for your search term(s) in the title or abstract fields is a good
starting point because if your term(s) appears in the title, there’s a good
chance the results will have a high degree of relevance to your topic:

films AND crime

In the above example both the term films and the term crime will appear in the
title of results retrieved.

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If this doesn’t find enough relevant material try searching in the abstract /
subject / keywords.

NB abstracts are written in such a way that key terms describing the content
of the article are always included. Therefore, if your search terms appear in
the abstract, the article should have a high degree of relevancy.

In the example below both derivatives of the word crime (such as crime,
crimes, criminal, criminality) and derivatives of the word film (film, films,
filming) will appear in the abstract of the results retrieved.

crim* AND film*

Keywords / subject terms are assigned either by the author or the database
producer to describe the main topics discussed in the publication. Again, if
your search terms appear as keywords or subject terms the result should
have a higher degree of relevancy to your topic.

film* OR movies

In the above example either derivatives of film (film, films, filming) or movies
will be found as subject terms that have been assigned to the results found.

If you don’t specify where the database should search it will usually default to
searching all fields. This usually means that all fields, including full text, will
be searched – this is likely to retrieve very many results of only cursory
relevance to your topic.

Searching using more than one search box

Most databases will allow more structured searching by giving the option to
use more than one search box – usually the advanced search option.

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 films OR movies

women OR gender

In the above example either the word films or the word movies will appear in
the title of results. In addition to these terms appearing in the title, either the
word women or the word gender will also appear in the abstract of results.
This is because our two search lines have been linked with AND as circled in
the example above.

To help you think about planning a search strategy for your own draft title,
have a go at filling in the grid on the following page.

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5. Collating your results

Finally, it is important to analyse the material you find and group into some
order of priority. Filter out any peripheral materials and consider storing them
separately from your core references. Make use the of personalisation
features in OneSearch or within many of the individual databases to create an
account and save your favourites. Some have the option to set up email alerts
for when future matches to your search strategy appear.

If any of your core journal references are unavailable in full text from the
database you have searched, remember you can use OneSearch to see if
the full text of the article is available from any other database.

If journal articles or books you need are not available from online databases
consider ordering them via the library’s interlibrary loans service. Information
can be found at http://www.hope.ac.uk/gateway/library/

NB it is essential that at every stage you keep accurate records of all

searches, sources, and all references found and used. This will not only help
to keep control of your research, but will be vital when it comes to writing up
your final bibliography and citations. Back-up your computer files every time
you update them.

Glossary of terms
Explanations of terms you may come across when literature searching

Abstract
A summary which precedes the main text of a journal article. Brief results of
any qualitative, quantitative or scientific research will usually be included.

Citation

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Another word for reference. A journal article citation contains details of the
journal it was published in e.g. journal title, year of publication, volume and
issue number, article page numbers.

Database
An online collection of journal articles, e-books, newspapers etc.

Fields
Information on a database is divided into different ‘fields’ such as title,
abstract, author, full text. Selecting ‘all fields’ usually means searching
everywhere in the text including the reference information.

Full text
The journal article is available in full to be read online or downloaded.

Journal volume / issue number

When locating or referencing a journal article you must have the volume and
issue number of the journal the article was published in. Volume usually refers
to the year of publication e.g. 2012 = volume 1. Within a given journal volume,
numbered issues are produced throughout the year e.g. 2012 vol.1 no.1.

Keywords / subject terms

Keywords or subject terms are assigned either by the author or the database
producer to describe the main topics discussed in the publication.

Library catalogue – within OneSearch

A database of all the items held by a particular library. The bulk of the items
listed in a library catalogue will be either e-books or print books for borrowing.

Periodical
Another word for journal or magazine.

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Personalisation
The ability to set up an account to save personal favourites, search strategies
and email alerts for when new items come into the database.

Peer review
Articles published in academic or scholarly journals go through a process
called peer review where the content is critiqued and reviewed by experts in
the field prior to publication. Peer reviewed journal articles are considered the
‘gold standard’ and therefore very important to your literature search.

Popular journals / magazines

Publications aimed at the general public that, although reporting on serious
subjects, are not peer reviewed. Examples include: The Economist, New
Statesman, New Scientist, Times Literary Supplement, History Today.

Professional / trade magazines

Serious magazines aimed at practitioners within a specific field. Articles are
not peer reviewed, but may provide useful commentary and news. Examples
include: Community Care, Police Review, The Stage.

Subject favourites
Databases that are subject specific or are particularly good for a particular
subject. Library Databases by Subject

Subscribed / subscriptions
Some databases offer the option to limit results to ‘subscribed sources’ or ‘my
subscriptions’. This is similar to limiting results to full text. Choosing this option
should only retrieve full text articles.
If you need more help with your literature search contact either your Faculty
Librarian (contact details available on the library website) or email
[email protected]. Remember you can book a Personal Library
Tutorial with your Faculty Librarian at any point in your studies for help with
your literature searching.

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