Research Guides
SEFS 512/ESRM 490C: Ecosystem Biogeochemistry and Earth's Critical Zone: Database Searching: The Basics
Research Question & Keywords
-
What is your research question? (Be as specific as possible.)
What is the impact of soil erosion on biogeochemical cycling in agriculture and forest ecosystems?
- Identify the main concepts—keywords—in your question.
Soil Erosion Biogeochemical Cycling Agriculture Forest
- Consider alternative terms—synonyms—for your keywords.
Synonym for Soil Erosion: Soil Disturbance
Synonym for Agriculture: Farming
Developing a Search Strategy
- Link your keywords with connecting words AND or OR. Note that AND limits your search results and OR expands results.
- Use an asterisk, *, as a truncation symbol at the end of words, to allow for plurals or alternate word endings.
- Use quotes around terms to search for exact phrases: “food web”
- Search Example:
“biogeochemical cycl*” AND (soil* AND (erosion OR degradation)) AND (agriculture* OR forest*)
Tips for Improving Search Retrieval
Not enough results?
- Reduce the number of key concepts in your search question.
- Increase the number of synonyms in your search, connected with OR.
- Make sure all search terms are spelled correctly. Consider alternative spellings.
- Try other databases.
Too many results?
- Reduce the number of synonyms in your search.
- Search for your keywords only in titles or subject headings, rather than in all fields.
- Limit your search to the most recent years.