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URSI: Undergraduate Research Summer Institute

Key Databases

In addition to searching with the best keywords, increase the effectiveness of your search by using:

  1. Boolean operators
  2. Phrase searching
  3. Truncation

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators, AND, OR, and NOT, are used to combine your keywords. 

And Venn Diagram with an arrow pointing to the area where the two circles overlapAND is used to connect different concepts: "social media" AND "protest movement"

Using AND to connect keywords will decrease your search result numbers, or narrow your search, because the database is searching for sources that contain all of the keywords connected by AND.

OR Venn Diagram with arrows pointed to both circlesOR is used to connect similar concepts: "social media" OR "social networking site" OR Facebook

Using OR to connect similar words will increase your search result numbers, or broaden your search, because the database is searching for sources that contain at least one of the keywords connected by OR.

Not Venn Diagram with an arrow pointing to just one circleNOT will remove any search results that contain a particular keyword: "social media" NOT Pinterest

Using NOT will decrease the number of search results, or narrow our search, because the database will exclude resources with the specified keyword(s) from the results list. 

Phrase Searching

quotation marksEnclose your keywords in quotation marks to search for an exact phrase:

  • "social media"
  • "supermassive black hole"

Truncation

asteriskTruncation allows you to account for words with variations.

The asterisk(*) is commonly used to truncate a keyword. Place the * where you would like to account for variation: 

  • educat* will retrieve: educate, educated, educating, educator, and education
  • *caution will retrieve caution, precaution
  • behavi*r will retrieve behavior, behaviour 

Article & Source Types

Source Type Description
Primary Source
  • Sources that that represent first-hand experience or report on original research findings
  • Includes empirical journal articles and some books (monographs)
Peer-Review
  • Process by which an article submission is reviewed by experts in a field (i.e., peers) who accept, provide comments and recommendations, or reject an article. 
  • Peer-review aims to ensure that only high quality research is published by determining the validity, significance and originality of the research and improves the quality of submission.
Secondary Source
  • Summarizes, analyzes, or reports the work of other researchers (no new research is presented)
  • Includes literature review articles, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, newspaper articles, some books, etc.
Review Article
  • Review empirical articles on a specific topic to analyze the current state of research including the major advances and discoveries, ongoing debates, and where there are gaps in knowledge.
  • Provides the current state of research in an area, and identifies the major researchers are in that field.
Tertiary Source
  • Summarizes well-known and well-accepted information on a subject.
  • Includes textbooks, encyclopedias, websites, etc.
Grey Literature
  • Materials published outside of scholarly, peer-reviewed journals; quality standards for grey literature may be less stringent.
  • Qualifies as a primary source if the source reports original research. 
  • Includes government or organizational reports, lab notebooks, blogs, pre-prints, conference presentations, etc.
Preprint
  • Preliminary reports or articles that have not been certified by peer review; works may be under consideration for publication or under peer-review.
  • Authors can deposit their work in preprint servers to expedite the dissemination of research findings.