Tips for searching literature

There comes a time in the life of every student that is inescapable, the time you have to write a thesis. Unless you are hiding under an table where no one can find you, this is something you will have to do. For me, this moment was early on in the study, we began practicing in the first Batchelor year. Now, four years later, I’m writing my master thesis. I’m very excited about the research I’m doing, but have to face one final obstacle. This is finding literature. For all my fellow students who dread this part of the thesis, I have some tips that helped me. Maybe, it will not be as bad after all.

I already have an article and it is beautiful

Sometimes when you write a thesis, your mentor has already given you an starting article to begin with. This can be research done on a similar topic or an global overview of the field.

An similar research question

If an article of a similar topic is given to you, it might be time to be lazy. A lot of useful literature will be used in this article. You can find this literature in the introduction of the article. While reading how these researchers sustained their hypothesis, you can check if there is literature you can use as well. More often than not, this will be the case. If you are enthusiastic and just can’t stop yourself, you can also read their whole literature-list and see if there is something for you as well. Of course, the best way to see if an article in this list is useful, is to read the abstract.

Global overview of the field

If you already have a global overview of the field, this is very useful. In such an overview, a lot of literature is used. What helps me is to read such an overview carefully, and write down the citations you find useful. These citations lead to literature used in the overview, which you can find in the literature-list. This way, you can find out what articles lead to the information you found useful. Instead of citing only the global overview  you can cite a bunch of articles and have a nice long literature-list. If one of those articles seems to have a similar research question as you, you can use the method described above.

I don’t have any articles, help me

Some days, you’re in bad luck and don’t have any article to start with. No need to panic, unless you really feel like it. These days, Google-Scholar is your friend. With Google-Scholar, you can find scientific articles (which will hopefully have free access)*. You can begin with typing a few key-words of the thing you want to research. If you don’t have a clear question yet, Google around. You can find loads of inspiration there. The articles in Google-Scholar have an indication beneath them in which states how many times they have been cited. The more an article is cited, the more prominent it is. If an article is cited a thousand times, it is likely to be an important article in the field, and it may be worth checking out.

*UvA students have access to the UvA VPN, which I strongly recommend they use. This way, they have access to almost all scientific articles.

My article is so old, I think it needs a walker

An old article is not necessarily a bad article. Some of the basis of scientific theories are cited in really old articles. If you really like a theory, but don’t know your research question yet, it can be useful to click on the ‘cited by’ option on Scholar. This gives you all the articles which cited the old one. This way, you find articles building upon the theory, and sometimes an helpful overview. Looking through these articles might also give you an updated version of the theory.

How do I ‘check out’ articles?

Good question! If you find an article you like, it is always helpful to read the abstract first. This gives you a clear overview of what the article is about. If you’re really lazy (like me searching for article two-thousand on an Saturday afternoon), you can just read the second-last sentence of the abstract. Most of the time, this sentence summarises the findings of the article. If this is something I need, I check out the rest.

I don’t want to read the whole article, I have better things to do

If you just don’t feel like reading the whole article (which isn’t the best option out there), you should ask yourself what you want to know about the article. In the last paragraph of the conclusion, the most important research findings are summarised. You can look here first, and read more if it is something you’re interested in. If it is uninteresting bogus, it is time to delete the article.

If the research findings are amazing and you want to know more, you can read the rest of the conclusion. Here, you can find more about why these conclusions are made and what exactly the researchers found.

If you’re amazed by the abstract alone and you think the article is really useful, you should read the introduction to. In the introduction, hypotheses are argued, and you can find literature that may be really useful. You can find out why they did what they did, and if you agree with their conclusions.

The result section is the part of an article I heartlessly ignore. This section is useful if you really want what conclusions are based on and the accompanying data. Of course it is wise to read this part, but it might be a waste of time when you’re just scanning an article.

I love the abstract

The very best thing to do with an article is just to read it. This is the best way to find out if the research is done well, and why they reached certain conclusions.

I don’t get it anymore, can you summarise it?

In bulletpoints, here are my tips to find literature:

• Use Google-Scholar, this is the scientific database
• If you have a good article, see which articles they use, these may be the thing for you
• In Google-Scholar, you can see which articles cited yours
• Read the abstract to find out if an article is useful
• Research findings are described in the conclusion
• Reading a whole article is the best thing to do, but only do this if you think it is useful (I’m sorry, it is a lot of work)