The following techniques can be used in most search engines to narrow, broaden or eliminate results.
Boolean logic can be used in search engines to narrow or broaden search results, using the words AND, OR and NOT
If you don't know the specific title or author of an item, or if you are searching for literature on a topic, you will probably rely on keyword or subject searches.
Keyword searches use natural language, similar to Google. Using the keyword search will look for you search terms in multiple fields, including title, author name, abstract or summary, and full-text.
Subject searches, use controlled language and only return results in which the term being used appears in the subject field. Databases have different interfaces and use different terms, but most will provide these two options for searching.
What citation searching is good for:
Limitations of citation searching:
Starting Citation
Assume you have found an article that is very relevant to your research explorations.
Example:
Citation Chaining
This will show you all indexed articles that cite your starting article.
Next, you can combine with keyword searching.
See all citations by an author
The author may also have written other articles relevant to your research topic(s).
To find these in Google Scholar, you can:
The information in this box is adapted from Brown University's Citation Searching guide.
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