Was the Information Retrieval Successful?

• Think about whether your search terms are too common and use more concise ones if necessary to describe your topic more accurately. For example, specifying observations -term to visual observations.
• Remove general terms with multiple meanings if they retrieve too many irrelevant results. For example, removing management term from the search query.
• A truncated word may refer to too many things (unless there are other words limiting the topic in the query). For example, using pel* -term in Finnish brings e.g., pelko, pelot, pelto, pelti, pelaaja, pelkistää -inflected forms and variants to search results.
• Add words that limit the search (use the AND operator). For example, youth AND gaming — a third keyword can be added to the search query: youth AND gaming AND sleep.
• Sometimes it may be useful to limit the search with a term broad enough to outline the entire subject area. For example, therapy methods can provide too many results, while therapy methods AND psychology would refine your search.
• Use phrase search instead of the AND operation. For example, mental AND well-being – search query provides more results than “mental well-being” -phrase.
• Use fewer synonyms and related terms (but don’t change the OR operation to AND operation, as that would result in a defective search). For example, motivators OR incentives OR rewards — the search query could be used without the last term: motivators OR incentives
• Try excluding some words from the search with the NOT operator. For example, teachers NOT “kindergarten teachers”.
• Limit the search to the index term field if possible.
• Limit the search to the title field.
• Limit the search by year of publication, its language or type(e.g., peer-reviewed / scholarly journals).
• The search can be limited with for example, year, language or type of publication (by selecting e.g. academic/scholarly journals only) or article type (by selecting only e.g. systematic reviews or randomized controlled trials), but not all databases offer such delimitations.

• Check for spelling errors and correct written forms (compound or separate words, abbreviations etc.). For example, wellbeing, well-being or both?
• Think about the search terms you are using; perhaps you have searched with an overly specific word: what broader subject area is the subject a part of, and can a broader search term be more useful? For example, naps -term could belong under the broader sleep  concept.
• Seek synonyms and related terms for your search terms (added with the OR operation). For example, rest -term could be broadened to sleep OR rest OR relaxation -query.
• Use fewer AND operations in the search query. For example, applicability tests AND development -query could be used instead of recruiting AND applicability tests AND development -query.
• In case you have used a phrase, try disassembling it into an AND operation. For example, “psychic load” -phrase could be modified into psychic AND load -query.
• Truncate the search term to find its inflected forms and derivatives. For example, perfectionism -term’s uninflected form perfection* covers the words perfection and its inflected forms in addition to its derivatives.
• Use free-form search if you have previously used index term search (or other such restrictions). Also, remove restrictions based on years etc.

Is the search word rare?

Sometimes an individual word can be so rare in a database that no other search terms should be used alongside it. You may test how common the word is by performing a simple word search.

• try a different database
• ensure that the connections between search terms are logically correct

If there is at least one full hit, i.e., a very relevant reference, it is worth extracting the keywords used in the index term field of this reference and reorienting the search using them. You may find more suitable literature on the topic of your search from the list of references of a good article or other publication.

Did someone give you a text to read, and you know the author, title, and year of publication, but don’t know if it is an article or a monograph or some other type of publication? Briefly: you have the reference markings — how to find the full text?

Always try this first: search Google with the publication’s name in quotation marks.