Literature Reviews

You need to clearly define what resources you can use.

  Published or unpublished?

  Peer Reviewed?

  Currency of information?

  Primary, secondary or tertiary?

​Unsure? See your lecturer or advisor for guidance.

See more about:

There are many ways to find relevant resources, including searching journals, research databases, library catalogues, repositories and archives and the web.

The JCU Library has access to a range of databases that you can use to find information. Find them through:

Two multidisciplinary databases that are useful places to start are:

Why not just use One Search and Google Scholar?

One Search and Google Scholar have their good points and bad points, which is why you need to look further than these sources.

Advantages

Disadvantages

How to start looking for resources

• Recommended Readings

  • Start with recommended readings provided by your supervisor or lecturer.
  • Ask them for suggestions if they have not provided any.

• Secondary sources

  • Read some recent published reviews or textbooks that provide an overview of topics relevant to your research

Use a search strategy to find information more effectively and efficiently by:

Combining keywords

AND, OR and NOT are known as Boolean operators.

Modifying keywords

When modifying keywords, consider using:

• phrase searching

  Phrase searching involves placing double quotation marks ("__") around two or more words to create a search term.

  This technique narrows the search to retrieve only those results in which the exact phrase appears.

  Example:"developmental psychology"

• truncation

  Truncation is a searching technique used in databases in which a word ending is replaced by a symbol.

  The most commonly used truncation symbol is the asterisk (*). Check the database help page if you have problems.

  Example: the truncated word, psychol*, will search for results containing psychology, psychological, psychologically's etc.

• wildcards

  Wildcards are symbols used in database searches to represent a letter or letters within a word to be able to search different forms or spelling simultaneously. The types of wildcards can differ from database to database. Check the database help page for more details.

  Example:Behavio?r will find behaviour (English spelling) or behavior (US spelling)

• proximity operators

  Proximity operators work by finding words close to each other.

  Examples include NEAR, WITHIN, PRE, ADJ and a number is included to indicate how close words should be. Which proximity operators are available depends on the database you use. Check the database Help page to find out which operators apply.

  Example: Proquest uses the NEAR operator, which is indicated by N/n (substitute n with the number of words apart). A search for nursing N/3 education will find the word nursing within 3 words of the word education.

See more about developing your search strategy

Remember the long tail rule. You will find most of the key literature in your first searches but you could keep searching forever to find all the articles in the 'long tail'.

A good rule of thumb is to stop looking when you find that you keep finding the same results when you search and get few or no new information sources.

Even once the search process has been completed it is possible new research will be published that should be included in your review. You should also set up search alerts to be notified of any new articles that are published on the topic.