3 techniques to focus your literature search: Proximity searching, phrase searching, and Boolean AND
Description
The article "3 Techniques to Focus Your Literature Search" by Carol Hollier discusses three effective strategies for improving literature searches: phrase searching, proximity searching, and using the Boolean operator AND. Phrase searching involves enclosing terms in quotation marks to find exact matches, although it may miss relevant variations. Proximity searching allows researchers to specify how close search terms must be to one another, thus broadening the results while retaining relevance. Lastly, the Boolean operator AND requires both terms to be present but does not dictate their relationship, leading to a wider array of results. Combining these techniques can significantly enhance the efficiency and comprehensiveness of literature searches, enabling researchers to discover pertinent information more effectively.