Literature searching - advice please.

[jay.d]

I'm in my 3rd year studying at sunderland university and we've a lot of critical appraisal work to do and atm I'm spending a lot of time searching the literature for evidence and not so much time getting the work done.

It's doing my head in....I've been working for 2 hours now and have approximately 200 words typed!!

So to find out where I'm going wrong it may be worth mentioning I'm searching using sciencedirect.com and I'm finding the advanced search isn't letting me get enough specificity in there and the only way to weed out the rubbish is to tick box for 'exclusion' and 'inclusion'.

So, any hints, tips?

oh and one last thing, I've tried using boolean phrases and sciencedirect doesnt like them.

[Nik]

Does your university library not have an online portal for doing literature searches ? It may be worthwhile getting some advice from them about doing literature searches. Sciencedirect is not a comprehensive site for searching for research articles - you can't get BMJ articles but you can get Lancet articles. Have you also tried Wiley online ?

[johnep]

I used to use pubmed.
johnep

[jay.d]

Does your university library not have an online portal for doing literature searches ? It may be worthwhile getting some advice from them about doing literature searches. Sciencedirect is not a comprehensive site for searching for research articles - you can't get BMJ articles but you can get Lancet articles. Have you also tried Wiley online ?

They don't have an online portal, I managed to speak to a lecturer today about my work and the amount of time I've spent searching and apparently the issue has been raised with the 'higher ups' many times about the fact we only have subs on sciencedirect and nothing else.

On a positive note I did however find the 'expert' search function on sciencedirect which does allow searches using boolean terms.

I used to use pubmed.
johnep

I've used pubmed a lot in second year and tbh I cant just rely on the abstracts for evidence, so I'm rather limited to the few free papers.


I'm going to head in to the library next week and hopefully see if there's any kind of help I can get, after all I've still got at least 4 more reviews to do this year.

[Nik]

I've found pubmed a bit difficult to use although the links to other relevant articles is useful. Your uni should have someone who can give tips on how do to effective literature searches and the best places to use. When I was at uni, our lib used to hold sessions where they went through this - they also had timetabled sessions in 2nd year and 4th year for our dissertations.