With the abundance of information available on the internet today, it is important for researchers to know how to search for research papers effectively online.
Online searches are an indispensable component of research for any researcher; right from researching relevant research topics in your field to publishing your research in journals, you need to perform countless searches for online research papers. Today, a majority of journals are accessible online, and there is an abundance of research papers, books, videos, infographics, presentations, and manuals online for you to choose from. There are many a website for searching research papers, and skimming through the large number of sources will eat up your time. Hence, it is increasingly important to learn how to search for research papers effectively so that you can filter the correct information from a sea of unnecessary information.
It is crucial for early career researchers to learn to refine their research paper search to save time and maximize their efforts.
There are a few things you can do to get the most out of your online search. Here is a list of five simple yet effective answers to this common question by researchers, how to search for research papers effectively .
- Private browsing and playing around with different search engines
For the same search term, different search engines return varying results; each has their own strengths and shortcomings. In order to avoid missing any pertinent research in your field, it is advisable to try out multiple search engines. Using different search engines to search for research papers will expand the variety of articles you can read. The most popular ones are Yahoo, Bing, and Google. Researchers can find research articles and more using specialized search engines like Google Scholar, which is an excellent resource for accessing research articles. Other options include Microsoft Academic, Pubmed Central, Science.gov., Worldcat, and Refseek, to name a few1.
A great tip here is to search for research papers in a private browser to prevent Google from using information about your device, past search history, and data from other Google services to determine and influence the search results.
- Common commands to use on the search engines for improved results
Millions of websites are indexed by search engines for research papers, and the words and phrases you enter while you search for research papers can bring up a list of several websites that might be relevant to your search. However, the outcome of your search query can be improved by using some commands to fish out the most applicable information and websites for searching research papers. Quotation marks (“) can be used to search for specific phrases to narrow down the search results. For instance, a search for “research paper” would only return results that included this phrase in the same order. Others are, when a word is preceded by a plus sign (+), it must appear in all search results. When a word is preceded by a minus sign (-), it is excluded.
With some little tricks like these, you can learn how to search for research papers online easily.
- Adding asterisks between search terms
This is another important command you can use to optimize your search results. When two search terms are separated by the symbol *, the search engine can retrieve pages that contain not only the two search terms but also websites that contain these terms spaced out by one to five words. When you enter the search term “climate*change,” the following pages will come up: “What is climate change,” “Climate change: evidence and causes,” and “Cities and Climate Change.” Here, the asterisk serves as a wildcard or simply a placeholder that can be changed to any word or phrase.
- Changing the order of search terms
Another cool hack for improving your results while you search for research papers is to use a different order for your query term. For example, if you have previously used “blood pressure caffeine effect” and it did not fetch satisfactory results, you can try using “caffeine effect blood pressure” to receive different outcomes.
- Restricting searches by dates
To quickly get the relevant research paper, search websites by date because, by default, search engines use the term “anytime” to determine how recent the information is. You have the option to change this default setting to the most recent time, the previous 24 hours, or any other time in the last week, month, or year. On Google, users can access these options for various time periods by going to the settings option, clicking “advanced search,” and then clicking “last update.”
An effective online search can not only save time but can also advance your productivity as a researcher as you would have access to a wide range of information, including occasionally the precise information you seek. Therefore, it is crucial for researchers to learn these tips and tricks for searching for research articles and other helpful resources.
To simplify your online search for research papers, tools and apps are there to help you. R Discovery can be your go-to app the next time you find yourself wondering how to search for research papers effectively.
Use and download the R Discovery app, which simplifies your online research paper search by creating a personalized reading feed for you. Just put in your preferences and get daily research recommendations on the most relevant literature online. It’s simple to set up, keeps you updated on the latest research and is absolutely free to use. Click on the link below to get started.
References
- 15 Educational Search Engines College Students Should Know About. Rasmussen University. Accessed September 6, 2022. https://www.rasmussen.edu/student-experience/college-life/15-educational-search-engines/.
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