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Writing Your Research Papers

Choosing Keywords

When searching, try to identify the main topics.  Use no more than 3-4 words or phrases.

For example, you'd like to find articles on the effects of air pollution on children in the United States.

  • Topic 1 - air pollution
  • Topic 2 - children 
  • Topic 3 - United States

See below for more ideas on how to refine this search!

Top 6 Search Tips

1. Keywords not working?

Find synonyms (similar words):

2. Too many results?

Try AND: combines different terms when both must be present

  • Suicide AND Adolescents
  • Air pollution AND effects AND children

3. Not enough results?

Use OR: combines terms when at least one must be present

  • Teenager OR youth OR adolescent
  • theater OR theatre

4. Getting the wrong results?

Use NOT (or – in Google): Eliminates terms from a search

  • Apple NOT fruit (-fruit)
  • Java NOT coffee (-coffee)

5. Looking for a phrase?

Add quotation marks

  • “song lyrics”
  • “First and Last Name”

6. Want to search for different forms of a word?

Add an asterisk (*) to look for all endings for the root of a word

  • Educat* will find educator, educators, education, educational
  • Child* will find child and children

Add a question mark (?) to represent a character within a word

  • Colo?r will find color and colour
  • Wom?n will find woman and women

Find Articles Faster: Boolean AND, OR, NOT

Using Boolean Operators
Boolean Operator Examples Results
AND children
AND
poverty		 AND combines different terms when both must be present. Use AND to narrow a search.
OR teenagers
OR
adolescents		 OR combines terms when at least one must be present. Use OR to broaden a search.
NOT Java
NOT
coffee		 NOT eliminates terms from a search. Use NOT when you want to exclude all records that contain a certain term.