BIOL 483: Senior Thesis

1. Go to your most relevant source and look for subject terms or keywords listed near the introduction. Click on them to initiate a search of articles that use those terms. (In Science Direct, highlight a word to create a "search" option.)

2. On Biological Abstracts, use the "method & equipment" field to search for similar experiments. You can try to find similar studies done on other organisms by switching fields to "organism" or "super taxa"

3. Try switching one of more of your fields to subject instead of keyword to find more relevant searches

4. Look at the sources cited in the introduction or literature review of your most relevant article. Click on the links to the sources that are cited there, and see if they lead to any other useful research.

5. If you need to narrow your results, add “and” and "not" fields in your search. If you need to widen, add “OR” fields.

Speak to your professor or a librarian if you feel stuck– they can help you figure out if you should expand, narrow, or refocus your search.

A great way to find sources is to use the existing web of citations between academic sources, called backward and forward citing. 

• Backward citation means looking at the references page of a book or article and visiting the articles your source cites that are relevant to your topic. This is a great way of getting a handle on the scholarship surrounding a topic. 
• Forward citation means finding sources that cite the article you're currently reading. Google Scholar has an excellent tool to do this: just copy and paste the title into the search bar, then select the "cited by" link beneath the result. (See image above.) This will generate the articles that have cited this article in their references page.  

You can find more details in this video: