General Searching Techniques
When using scholarly databases, you should apply the following general search techniques for locating relevant and high-quality academic literature.
Use Keywords Effectively
Identify Key Terms: Start by identifying key terms relevant to your research topic. Consider alternative terms or synonyms.
Truncate Keywords: Use an asterisk (*) to truncate words to search for all variations (e.g., comput* will search for computer, computation, etc.). Other symbols are also used and information about what symbol is used can be found in the help text of the respective database.
Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT)
AND: Narrows the search by including all specified terms (e.g., artificial intelligence AND machine learning retrieves documents with both terms).
OR: Broadens the search by including either term (e.g., AI OR artificial intelligence retrieves documents with either term).
NOT: Excludes specific terms from your search (e.g., machine learning NOT neural networks).
Use Phrase Searching
Enclose a phrase in quotation marks to search for the exact phrase (e.g., “deep learning algorithms”).
Limit by Date: Many databases allow you to limit your search to articles published within a specific date range, helping you focus on the most recent research.
Filter by Document Type: Narrow your search by limiting it to specific types of documents, such as peer-reviewed articles, conference papers, theses, or reviews.
Use Wildcards: Use wildcard symbols like the question mark (?) to replace one character in a word. This helps find variations in spelling (e.g., “wom?n” will find both “woman” and “women”).
Subject-Specific Databases
Use databases specific to your field of study for more targeted results (e.g., PubMed for biomedical sciences, IEEE Xplore for engineering, and ACM Digital Library for computer science).
Use Citations for Further Research
Once you find a relevant article, explore its references to discover more related studies. Tools like Google Scholar provide a “Cited By” feature that lists all papers citing the article you’re viewing.
Advanced Search: Use the advanced search options available in many databases to combine various search terms, filter by authors, journals, and other criteria.
Provides access to open-access articles in electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics.
A repository for research articles in various fields, including electrical engineering and computer science.
Indexes high-quality, open-access, peer-reviewed electrical and computer system engineering journals.
Offers open-access articles from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
Provides open-access books and journal articles in engineering and technology.
Publishes open-access journals in various disciplines, including electrical and computer engineering.
A research and publishing network offering open-access content across various disciplines, including electrical and computer system engineering.
An AI-powered research tool with over 200 million academic papers provides free and open resources for the research community.
A professional network for scientists and researchers to share papers and results in various fields, including electrical and computer engineering.
provides a comprehensive bibliographic database of the world’s scholarly literature, collecting and indexing research from repositories and journals.
The University of California’s open-access publishing platform, providing access to a wide range of disciplines including electrical and computer engineering.
TechRxiv (pronounced “tech archive”) is an open, moderated preprint server for unpublished research in the areas of engineering, computer science, and related technology
A repository where researchers can share their data, papers, and other research outputs openly.
