Structured searching

By structured searching we mean applying a consistent method to your search process.

• Analyze which are the key concepts of your research question
• Find alternative search terms for those concepts
• Apply search techniques to construct a search strategy

Once your search strategy as been developed, you can apply it in an appropriate database.

Essentials of structured searching

• Applying search techniques such as boolean operators, phrase search and truncation will help yield more relevant results
• There are various ways of limiting your results, such as searching specific fields of metadata, filtering for specific kinds of publications or limiting your search to a specific time interval
• It is expected that you will revise your search strategy as you find new search terms among your results, or find that your search terms are yielding too many results that are not relevant