Questions tagged [literature-search]

Questions about finding specific papers, books, etc. pertaining to a topic. This includes the use of online databases such as Google Scholar or PubMed to find relevant articles.

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80 votes
14 answers
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How did researchers find articles before the Internet and the computer era?

I find it hard to write a literature review, even though I have Google, the Internet, and all free, very easy to search for information tools. I have to search for days to find a piece of information ...
asmgx's user avatar
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49 votes
8 answers
7k views

Strategies to remember papers that you read

What strategies do you use to remember papers that you read? I usually take notes, but when after a while I look at the notes, I don't remember most of the details. So I have to go back to the ...
CentAu's user avatar
  • 1,468
47 votes
11 answers
8k views

How can I find an old, obscure, or otherwise inaccessible paper when the usual methods fail?

I am trying and failing to find a particular paper. My university's library catalogue, Google Scholar, and Google all came up empty. I even tried the catalogue of the paper's institutional affiliation,...
schtandard's user avatar
44 votes
1 answer
5k views

Can I ask a publisher for a paper that I need for reviewing [duplicate]

I was asked to review a technical paper for a journal at a large commercial publisher. The paper extends on another publication that is cited several times throughout the document. The cited paper was ...
rams's user avatar
  • 543
40 votes
6 answers
9k views

How can I express "I can't find any papers written about this"?

I'm an undergraduate writing a paper for a philosophy course in logic. My paper is exploring a relationship between Leibniz' logic and graph theory. In writing the paper, I've found some material in ...
Patrick Collins's user avatar
37 votes
7 answers
14k views

I "lost" a paper: what can I do?

Half a year ago I stumbled across a noteworthy peer-reviewed article that was very relevant to my current research area. Being a noteworthy idiot, I didn't save it nor take a note (to be fair, I wasn'...
A.V. Arno's user avatar
  • 471
37 votes
2 answers
61k views

Literature Review versus Literature Survey. What is the difference?

I have read several articles about literature reviews. At the same time I found some guides about literature surveys. I am confused... how is a literature survey different from a literature review? ...
Npn's user avatar
  • 515
34 votes
8 answers
7k views

Is it normal to be suspicious of a really interesting finding but in an obscure journal and/or by authors from unknown universities

EDIT Since there are some misunderstandings regarding my question I'll try to rephrase, and also avoid posting questions late at night when I am really tired :) A typical part of my work as a ...
posdef's user avatar
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28 votes
6 answers
10k views

Where can I find a paper that has been cited multiple times but only ever appears as a citation?

I'm doing an assignment on early warning score (EWS) systems as part of a postgraduate diploma in Medical Technologies. The progenitor of the system is cited in several papers as Morgan et al. Morgan, ...
SeanJ's user avatar
  • 1,128
28 votes
9 answers
5k views

How to get academic search engines only search in open access journals?

Sometimes I work from home, and for security reasons it is not possible to connect to the campus computers. I use Google Scholar for finding papers and so, but from home, most of the journals can not ...
Open the way's user avatar
  • 2,194
27 votes
3 answers
20k views

How to export Google Scholar keyword search results to Excel? [closed]

I am looking for a reputable free tool to export results of a keyword search on Google Scholar to Microsoft Word or Excel. I am in the process of assembling a reading list for systematic literature ...
Hilary's user avatar
  • 387
26 votes
10 answers
7k views

How likely is it that an PhD examiner will find something I've missed? And if they do, how much of a problem is it?

I'm coming up to the end of my PhD. My work is industry funded, so although I've presented my work, and written technical reports and patents*, I'm probably not as experienced in 'scientific writing' ...
BeginTheBeguine's user avatar
23 votes
5 answers
10k views

How is a research direction determined between a graduate student and their advisor?

My question applies to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math disciplines (STEM). Q: By what process does a graduate student determine his or her research direction? (Assume that the graduate ...
Fraïssé's user avatar
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22 votes
5 answers
2k views

Is it right to ignore publications coming from non-top publishers?

When I look into a specific problem over Google Scholar and simple Google Search, I find many related publications from publishers other than IEEE, ACM, Elsevier, Springer etc. Usually the authors ...
Kristof Tak's user avatar
  • 3,036
22 votes
1 answer
1k views

Google Scholar vs other academic search engines

How is Google Scholar compared to other academic search engines and catalogues such as ScienceDirect, Scopus, and universities' own online catalogues--in terms of the following? comprehensiveness of ...
Orion's user avatar
  • 4,763
21 votes
3 answers
754 views

How to measure achievement in a field where large collaborations are normal?

In some fields of research, huge collaborations are the norm. This is especially true in experimental high-energy physics. Say I'm evaluating someone's resume, and that person is transitioning out of ...
user avatar
21 votes
2 answers
475 views

Non-English literature: should we check for prior work?

How far should we go when considering the possibility that a (non spectacular, bur relevant) result has already appeared in any other language different from English? Is it safe to ignore non-English ...
Quora Feans's user avatar
  • 4,043
19 votes
5 answers
10k views

How to search in Google Scholar within a particular conference?

Using Google's search operators, guide, we can restrict our search to that of a particular web domain, eg: site:twitter.com Paul Daniels Within Google Scholar, can we perform a similar in nature ...
Vass's user avatar
  • 444
19 votes
2 answers
672 views

How to search for list of papers citing both papers A and B?

For given papers A and B, I would like to search for all papers that cite both A and B. I guess one can generalize to papers {A,B,C,...} and find all papers that cite all of them. A quick Google ...
Victor V Albert's user avatar
18 votes
1 answer
4k views

How to search for one phrase in the title and a different phrase in the body of the paper in a single Google Scholar search?

Google Scholar is a very good source of knowledge especially with its advanced search, but the options in the advanced search is either search in the title or in the whole paper. How can I search for ...
Elmahy's user avatar
  • 818
16 votes
7 answers
5k views

How to identify the publications that cite two specific papers?

Finding the citations of any particular paper is straightforward. But how do you identify the set of publications that cite two specific papers? The reason I am asking this is because I am trying ...
Moa's user avatar
  • 1,746
15 votes
3 answers
2k views

How to choose a good research problem?

I am working to get a PhD, maybe next year this time around. Currently, this is my second year. I have published 3 papers. All of them are not about one problem but consider different problems. My ...
Frank Moses's user avatar
14 votes
8 answers
5k views

What advantages do libraries offer over the internet for doing a literature survey in Mathematics or CS

Currently my literature surveys do not involve trips to the library and I am wondering if I am missing out on something important. What sort of material/knowledge can the library provide that I would ...
Pushpendre's user avatar
14 votes
3 answers
30k views

How to find out who funded a study / research?

It has been proven that the source of funding can have an influence on the results of a research (funding bias, well documented here and here). When we check for pieces of research, for example ...
lapin's user avatar
  • 241
13 votes
5 answers
3k views

How to find out if my specific idea is really new, or if someone has already worked on it?

I started working on my PhD few months ago and I am trying to solve a problem in a particular topic. The topic is quite specific and many people have already worked on it before. I am stuck at the ...
krips89's user avatar
  • 231
13 votes
2 answers
951 views

How do you keep track of papers during a brainstorming literature review?

I am often in charge of researching new sub-topics in my discipline for short papers. I find my default technique is: Search Google Scholar for best-guess keywords Open relevant-looking resulting ...
Adrienne's user avatar
  • 4,003
12 votes
4 answers
4k views

Locating a specific German Ph.D. Dissertation from 1959

I am trying to access the following work online, but I'm having no luck finding it: Krüger, Dietrich. 1959. "Die Bildersprache des Demosthenes." Ph.D., Classics, Göttingen. Any idea where I could ...
Der Übermensch's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
3k views

Why do papers sometimes appear unlinked in Google Scholar?

I would like to download this paper: O. Faure. Numerical pathwise approximation of stochastic differential equations. Applied stochastic models and data analysis, 1992. but when I use Google ...
Educ's user avatar
  • 239
12 votes
3 answers
4k views

How to find only the papers that cite a particular article in an important way?

I'm having the following problem: There is some interesting paper (in machine learning) which is cited by 180 other papers (according to Google Scholar). From these 180, I want to find the papers that ...
cruvadom's user avatar
  • 221
12 votes
5 answers
2k views

How do you manage your literature and references?

I have many PDFs (articles, reports and other literature) in various folders, and most of them are also in Endnote, which I have always used as a reference manager. However, the references in Endnote ...
user144760's user avatar
12 votes
2 answers
1k views

How does one use a paper that's not written in a language that he can read?

For instance, if a paper is written in Russian, and a researcher wants to use this work and cite it, does he have to learn Russian? What's the typical practice? Does he try and use translation tools ...
Jeremy Lin's user avatar
12 votes
1 answer
11k views

Google scholar "sort by date" returns articles from last year only?

I am doing a pilot study for my research. When I search in google scholar, it gives me about 10 thousand results for the keywords that are anywhere in the article. I want to narrow my search down to ...
awatan's user avatar
  • 867
12 votes
4 answers
4k views

Alternative to google scholar in China

Are there any valid alternatives to google scholar? I am currently living in China. almost the whole internet is blocked, including Google. I tried to bypass the firewall, then google scholar tends ...
gastro's user avatar
  • 863
11 votes
7 answers
3k views

List of citation graph browsers?

What are good ways to explore/discover literature visually, e.g. a visual interface for Google Scholar? There are a few tools to explore the citation graph ("which papers cite which papers"). Some are ...
root's user avatar
  • 319
10 votes
2 answers
2k views

How to export the reference list for a given paper using Google Scholar?

Google Scholar allows you to do forward search via cited by - that is, you can get a list of references that cite a given reference. Is there any way to do backward search, i.e. get a list of ...
baixiwei's user avatar
  • 203
10 votes
1 answer
809 views

How do I pick good keywords for literature alerts?

F'x has made a very informative post here about staying up to date with current research. My question concerns the "publication alert" part of it. To be clear: I am asking about setting up an online ...
Superbest's user avatar
  • 8,175
10 votes
4 answers
4k views

Is there a way to find review articles by the keyword?

When I search for papers using some keywords in academic databases (like Google Scholar), there are lots of papers, but I would like to read literature reviews first because I’m new in that area. (By ...
huammmm1's user avatar
  • 103
10 votes
1 answer
457 views

Literature review and originality

Everyday there are hundreds of papers published worldwide in every single area of study. I am mostly interested in architecture and environmental psychology. A question arises how to assure that we ...
Fatemeh khozaei's user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
320 views

How does one ensure their knowledge of a field is complete when doing a literature review

I am a new grad student who is both excited and scared as I embark on this transformational journey. One concern that I have is establishing a current snap shot of my field and identifying boundaries ...
TheCodeNovice's user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
682 views

Is there a way to get rid of "enhanced pdf"s?

It has become increasedly more common that when I try to access an article from the publisher's website I get redirected to a sort of online reader instead of a plain old pdf file to download. ...
Federico Poloni's user avatar
9 votes
2 answers
504 views

Find papers authored by a specific number of authors

For some concrete study, I need to find for some keywords, papers that have just one author. I used PubMed, Scopus and ISI Web of Science, but in any case, I could not find a way to filter ...
Open the way's user avatar
  • 2,194
9 votes
2 answers
211 views

How can I get copies of library of congress's archival manuscripts?

I require photocopies of "Archival Manuscript/Mixed Formats" from the Library of Congress. They have a collection from one author which has otherwise unpublished technical documents that are very ...
sciencenewbie's user avatar
8 votes
4 answers
1k views

Search techniques for finding references at the start of reviewing the literature for your research?

Whenever we start new research, we need to do a literature review first in order to both get acquainted with the context and the concepts related to our research as well as to situate our research ...
Anafandon's user avatar
  • 101
8 votes
2 answers
9k views

Why is my published article seemingly not indexed by Google or Google Scholar?

I am a Masters student, in the Faculty of Science in Canada. I have a question to ask regarding literature review. I am doing a bit of studying to find protocols for my experiment (where I hope to ...
Somdeb's user avatar
  • 83
8 votes
1 answer
2k views

What is the "chain search" method for literature search?

I am working through a tutorial about literature search, reading, and writing. It says: Chain Search: A chain search consists of finding suitable literature by letting one text lead you to the ...
Martin's user avatar
  • 83
8 votes
3 answers
8k views

How to develop your own argument in a literature review?

In a literature review, we look at recent publications and put what other researchers have said in this context. However, how can I develop my own argument? Should I write it with my own words or ...
Saqqaf's user avatar
  • 1,127
8 votes
1 answer
420 views

Why might only some papers from a conference be included in Google Scholar?

Why some publications are not included in Google Scholar, while some are, for the same conference? For example, there are a number of papers on Black Hat: https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-15/...
WindChaser's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
438 views

How to locate most important literature in an unfamiliar area

I'm a pre-doctoral researcher (does it exist?) figuring out my true interests and learning the craft. When I start exploring a new (that is, unfamiliar) area, I try to find the most influential ...
ba_ul's user avatar
  • 363
8 votes
1 answer
3k views

How to find book titles in other languages?

I received a major task from my professor and I was wondering what approach is academic custom to take in such a case. My supervisor wrote an article on a certain topic (I prepared already some ...
Patric Hartmann's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
458 views

What strategies are there for finding literature for a literature survey when the terminology used is diverse?

I want to write a literature survey on a topic, let's say it's risk of crime due to a new technology, let's say due to the Gutenberg press. However, when I search for the overall theme (crime and "...
Dr. Thomas C. King's user avatar

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