Most resources included in reviews should be primary resources, such as research articles or first hand accounts.
Having a well developed search strategy is key to putting together a great literature review without wasting time. Before you start your search you’ll need to consider what type of information you’ll find, and where and how you will find it.
Don't know where to begin? Try your
You need to clearly define what resources you can use.
- Published sources including journal articles, books and audiovisual materials will usually comprise the bulk of your sources
- Unpublished resources such as dissertations & theses, government documents, reports, clinical trials, conference papers and working papers are known as grey literature.
- Limit results to peer reviewed sources as much as possible.
- Some disciplines do not use peer review as much so it is ok if you cannot always find peer reviewed sources for these.
- The peer review limiter will not find books as books are not usually considered as peer reviewed. However they are a valid source of information in many fields.
- Some topics have a specific timeframe that needs to be adhered to.
- In fields which have lots of change, more recent materials should be used, such as medicine or information technology.
- Some fields have little change over long periods so older materials may continue to be useful, for example history or literature.
- You should try to identify seminal works that show the origin of a concept or area of research. This shows you have an understanding of the history of your topic.
Primary, secondary or tertiary?
Most resources included in reviews should be primary resources, such as research articles or first hand accounts.
​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.
- Simple and easy to use search
- Results are usually quite relevant to the keywords searched.
- Helps you to brainstorm alternative keywords and phrases.
- Highlights where your topic may cover multiple disciplines.
- Provide options such as ‘related articles’ or ‘cited by’ to help you find more resources.
- Gives too many results.
- Finds keywords anywhere in the whole text of each result so many results may not be particularly relevant to your topic.
- Results are too multidisciplinary so will show results that are not relevant to your discipline
- Do not include all resources that the university has available to you.
- Do not offer advanced or subject specific search options that discipline specific databases may offer, such as subject headings and search limits.
How to start looking for resources
- Start with recommended readings provided by your supervisor or lecturer.
- Ask them for suggestions if they have not provided any.
- 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.
- AND (find all these words) - E.G. psychology AND learning
- OR (find any of these words) - E.G. "child psychology" OR "developmental psychology"
- NOT (do not include results with this word)
Knowing when and how to use Boolean operators effectively can greatly improve search results.
See more about using Boolean operators.
Modifying keywords
When modifying keywords, consider using:
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 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 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 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.
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