Literature research
Topic outline
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To ensure that you do not lose track of things during your literature research, it is helpful to document it. This means you can avoid having to conduct the same search more than once or forgetting a possible search query.
Ideally, you should already use a reference management system such as Zotero (Moodle course Literaturverwaltung mit Zotero) during your research so that you have a collection of all the documents you have found in one place.
Search protocolTo document your research, you can, for example, use the templates provided by the ZHAW University Library: -
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Where did you search?Record the search tool you used: ZHAW swisscovery, a specialist database, Google Scholar, etc.
How did you search?Which search terms did you use for your search query and with which techniques did you combine them with?
What hits did your search generate?How many hits did your search query generate? Assess whether it makes sense to look through the generated hits individually (e.g. read the abstracts) or whether you can further narrow down the search in order to reduce the number of hits.
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Problems with the number of hits and possible solutions
Too many hits?- Narrow down the topic
- Use more precise and specialised search terms
- Include AND or NOT in the search query
- Omit truncations/wildcards
- Limit your search to the latest literature
Too few hits?- Did you choose the right database? Did you use the database correctly?
- Alternative and/or more general search terms
- Check boolean operators
- Use truncation characters
- Use the snowball method
