Refining search results

Search strategies

When you search, you're searching for matches for your search terms. The search can only focus on the information that the database provides about the source. For example, in JYKDOK it is not possible to search from the contents of books, while many e-book services allow this.

The same search statement may not work equally well in two different databases. Not all databases contain the same amount of information about articles or books that a search could hit.

Databases contain search fields, such as:

title, author, summary, publication type, keywords, subject terms, full text.
In addition, there may be discipline-specific search fields, such as age group.

Hits can be found in different search fields, and some databases have few spots that a search can find.

Open one of the databases that you are using.

Look at the drop-down menu next to the search box: from the drop-down menu, you can choose which fields to search.
For example, you can search for abstracts to get search results where the word you're using appears in the article’s abstract.

In some databases there are many options, common ones are:

abstract, summary
subject heading, subject words or keywords: refers to database-specific keywords. Check the database’s thesaurus.
anywhere except full text: search from article keywords, abstract, etc., but not from article content.

If a systematic literature review is carried out, the aim is to produce one search statement. In this case, it is necessary to take into account the limitations of the databases and explain them openly in the text.

The search area is the information available for each article or book and what the search can cover. Where does the database look for matches? This affects your search strategy.

If the search area is small,

Keywords should usually be broader and should be checked in the thesaurus.

If, on the other hand, there is a lot of search area,

You should be more specific in your search and, for example, focus your search only on summaries.

Let's imagine two different databases:

Database 1 contains little information about each article

The search is focused on the title, author and official subject terms.

Database 2 contains a lot of information about each article

The search is focused on title, author, official subject terms, free keywords, abstract, full text, etc.

Database 1 might give fewer results and you would have to be more precise with search terms as only subject terms would have been used to describe the articles. In database 2, there would perhaps be more search results because the search has more to grasp. If the search can be focused on the entire text, then the content of the articles will also be searched. That is, if your search term is mentioned in the text itself, even if only in a subordinate clause, it will be found in the search results.