Apart from the traditionally published research papers, i.e., publication in peer-reviewed journals, publication on new channels such as open archives has increased the volume of academic literature, especially in fast-growing scientific fields. This deluge of publications has only partially reflected in the research/citation databases like Web of Science and Scopus. The total number of published research papers worldwide increased from 0.65 million in 1980 to 3.16 million in 2018.1
Research, development, and innovation processes are operating at increasingly accelerated rates worldwide, promising rapid development, and higher standards of living. The integration of research-based knowledge into daily practices is a considerable challenge because not all of this knowledge can be accessed or processed easily. This makes finding research papers that are most relevant for you increasingly difficult.
Most articles are behind paywalls; researchers and broader audiences who look for research insights experience information overload; and many platforms for published research papers are not user-friendly and do not allow easy browsing. Additionally, unethical research and publication practices, including plagiarism, data falsification/fabrication, salami slicing, and predatory publishing, make it challenging to find trustworthy published research papers. Moreover, relying on only one or two databases when finding research papers increases the probability of missing relevant publications.
A strong research project requires one to stay on top of developments in the research area of interest, which in turn, requires finding research papers that are most relevant and recent in the discipline. Unfortunately, achieving this can be one of the most challenging and time-consuming tasks for academicians.
Here are some tips on how you can navigate through the deluge of published research papers and find the ones you need:
- When finding research papers, use subject directories to cut through the information available on the web and easily find relevant and high-quality literature.
- Identify keywords and phrases that will help you in finding research papers on search engines in the most efficient way. Use terms relevant to your study that are neither too broad nor too narrow down the most relevant published research papers.
- Improve search for research papers efficiency by using Boolean searches and then filtering search results by location, date of publication, citation analytics, publication venue, etc. Many search engines have advanced features that allow this.
- Save time by saving your searches/search preferences and setting up email alerts for new journal articles. This will allow you to go back to your search history whenever you want and helps in keeping up with newly published research papers that come up in fresh searches using the same terms/preferences.
- Explore citation-based searches—a method of finding research papers in an area or subject that are most relevant by looking at the literature an article has referenced and who has referenced that article, in turn, after it was published.
Staying up to date on newly published research papers has become much easier with the free R Discovery mobile app by Researcher.Life. Powered by AI and designed specially to help researchers and students, this app helps in finding research papers and bookmarking the latest and most relevant articles from a comprehensive database of published academic literature from all disciplines. It creates a scholarly article feed based on the reading preferences of users and provides daily recommendations for the top three published research papers matching users’ topics of interest. It gives a concise summary and key highlights of open access publications. It also helps users create their personalized research library and integrate it with their libraries from reference managers like Zotero and Mendeley.
Reference
- To WM and Yu BTW. Rise in higher education researchers and academic publications [version 1; peer review: 2 approved]. Emerald Open Res 2020, 2:3 (https://doi.org/10.35241/emeraldopenres.13437.1)
