The search strategy that we have learned in the previous section is called the building block. It is a common strategy in searching literatures in most databases.

What you do:

1. You explore the key elements/main ideas and search their other terms using OR.

2. Then, you combine them together with the help of search connector AND.

Let us now learn two more search strategies:

Snowballing

It is a method to trace back the papers that have been cited by your selected core publication.

What you do:

Pick a core publication
Start with recent works
Navigate through the reference list
Read relevant or most quoted publications
Check abstracts, keywords, methods and recommendations

Citation search

In this search method, you search papers that cite the core publications.

What you do:

Pick a core publication
Navigate through the citation list and look for something relevant
Check abstracts, keywords, methods and recommendations
Use a more comprehensive citation database like Web of Science & Scopus. (PubMed, Google Scholar and MS Academic are less reliable for citing searches because citations are often undercounted or inflated).

Snowball vs Citation Search.png