Have you ever been overwhelmed by countless unhelpful PDFs while searching for academic research? If so, you aren’t by yourself! While the thrill of a thorough academic search usually converts into frustration due to the inaccessibility of results, increasing the scope of those results or generating results off-topic, we can switch your search from a mundane task to a well-calibrated instrument. To improve the quality of your results, you need to consider the process of searching as that of a detective, piecing together evidence through your experience, making and putting together your initial research questions before even starting to write your answers and, through your use of filters. We need to eliminate the “one-size-fits-all” mentality surrounding search boxes and look to develop a comprehensive list of sources that will be tailored specifically to meet your research requirements.

If you want to develop and refine your keywords effectively as you conduct your search for scholarly articles related to your research topic, you should first consider rethinking and reinventing these keywords before starting your search. Most of us tend to begin a search of scholarly articles by using the most obvious keywords associated with our research topic. This is a great way to get started; however, it probably will not yield enough results. For example, if you are researching, “the effect of climate change on food production”, you could also use the keywords “agro-climatic variability,” “crop yield variability,” and “extreme weather events and their effects on food production.” In addition to developing your keywords, you may want to consider strategies for using Boolean operators, which are small words that operate as a command for most databases. Using “AND” will narrow your search (for example, “machine learning AND diagnosis”), while using “OR” will broaden your search (for example, “renewable energy OR solar power”). Using “NOT” can also be used to eliminate items that you do not want to search for at all (for example, “viral marketing NOT medical”). When searching for an academic article, remember to use quotation marks around exact phrases (e.g., “social cognitive theory”) when trying to find articles that utilize this terminology. This first step of refining your keywords is the foundation upon which you will construct an effective academic paper search; it transforms a scattershot approach into a precise investigation.

Once you have a solid grasp on how to use keywords, it is time to enjoy the research possibilities available through the surrounding ecosystem of a good paper. Every relevant article you find serves as a treasure map to additional resources. Your search for academic papers now evolves into an interactive adventure as you begin to explore the reference lists of key papers, which provide a sequential history of the foundational research in that specific field. Next, flip the script by using the “Cited by” feature on Google Scholar to find all of the more recent papers that cite the original paper; thus allowing you to travel forward in time to see how the discussion has progressed and changed over time. This is an excellent way to find both influential papers and trends in recent research. In addition, pay attention to authors’ names that keep showing up; these authors may be the major players in their particular field. By looking for an author’s profile or research laboratory, you can typically find a central location where multiple publications that relate to the author’s research focus. In addition to direct research article access (backward or forward chaining), utilizing an author’s profile/bio can convert a passive search of an academic article into an active search for the scholarly discourse on the topic.

The tools you use greatly influence the outcome of your work. While Google Scholar is an excellent and resource-free place to start your search for an academic paper, it is only one of many websites available. With a library subscription at a university, researchers have access to highly sophisticated databases that are specific to their areas of research, such as PubMed for life sciences, IEEE Xplore for engineering, or PsycINFO for psychology. These databases allow for much more detailed and specialized searches than are available with a general search engine. Researchers can further narrow their search results by using filters such as date of publication, impact factor of the journal, type of document (review article vs conference proceedings), and type of methodology used. By using alert systems in these specialized databases, researchers can be notified when new papers that match their search criteria will be published. This allows for the literature to be delivered to the researcher rather than forcing the researcher to perform continual searches for new literature. By using specialized databases for your academic paper search, researchers become proactive rather than reactive in their approach to conducting research. The academic paper search becomes streamlined rather than cumbersome.

Lastly, develop an eye for quality and relevance. A good academic paper search isn’t just a matter of finding a lot of papers, but being able to identify which ones are relevant. After you’ve received your list of results, don’t simply go through and download every single one of them; first, give each result a quick scan of their respective abstracts in order to see if their content aligns with your research topic. Additionally, review the journal you received each paper from; are they reputable and have they undergone peer-review? Also, check how recent each paper is that you’ve downloaded; while having older literature is important, particularly for literature in established fields, finding more recent literature is critically important in rapidly changing or evolving fields. Lastly, be prepared to iterate through this process multiple times; the first time you search for literature may yield results that aren’t applicable to your research; analyze why this occurred; did you use too narrow of a search term or did you leave out an important alternative search term? Refine the way you’ve constructed your search inquiry and start the process over. Developing this type of iterative loop of searching, assessing how many results fall into your search criteria, revising your search terms, and beginning the search anew is the essence of a refined academic search for papers. It characterizes that refining the identification of [scholarly] literature does not occur in a linear manner; therefore you must repeat this cycle until you ultimately identify relevant [scholarly] literature to support your research inquiry.

The final goal of mastering the process of searching for an academic paper is to have an organized approach instead of a blind search. Doing this allows you to find the paper you want quickly. Having a detailed plan will help you locate your documents much faster than if you just wandered around the library looking through books. Through keyword development, citation searching, using advanced tools, and critically evaluating each source, you can create a bibliography as well as gain a more thorough understanding of the body of literature that exists on this topic. When you search using a systematic approach, you’re less likely to get bogged down and overwhelmed by non-essential information and you will therefore spend less time reading irrelevant papers. The next time you begin a research search, be sure to think through how you will conduct your search before actually beginning your search. By taking time to prepare your search in advance, you are helping to create a much more coherent and helpful conversation about all of the research available for the topic you are researching.