2d. Additional Search Methods#
Introduction#
When you have set up a good keyword search strategy, it can be helpful to add some additional ways of searching to your strategy to help you find more literature. We recommend you use these techniques as an addition to your keyword search and not as a replacement. This is because a keyword search is the most rigorous way to find the largest amount of relevant literature.
Techniques you could use in addition to keyword searching are: Snowballing and Similar Document Searching.
Snowballing
Track the citations of an academic article to find more results
Similar Document Searching
Use similar document searching in Dimensions to find more papers
AI Searching
Use specific academic AI tools to find additional papers
Step 1: Snowballing#
Snowballing means finding more results based on the citations of highly relevant publications. There are two types of snowballing: When forward snowballing, you can find other relevant articles by looking at which publications cite a specific key publication.
In backward snowballing, you take a very recent key article and find more relevant results by looking at the references made by this key article.
Watch the first part of this brief explainer to learn in detail how to use these additional ways of searching:
"Alternative Ways of Searching" by TU Delft Library Education Support is licensed under CC-BY
Step 2: Similar Document Searching#
Using similar documents searching in Dimensions helps to find new relevant articles based on a relevant abstract or your thesis plan.
Watch the second part (starts at 2:44) of this brief explainer to learn in detail how to use this additional ways of searching:
"Alternative Ways of Searching" by TU Delft Library Education Support is licensed under CC-BY
Step 3: AI Searching#
THESIS SUPERVISOR
Check with your supervisor if you are allowed to use AI in your thesis project. If yes, document the tools and prompts you used so you can report your AI use in your thesis.
In addition to citation searching, there are new AI-assisted search techniques emerging alongside traditional keyword-searching that can help you find additional information. Academic tools like Elicit and Undermind use AI to find papers. These tools often search open access databases like Semantic Scholar.
This technology can be used to find papers in addition to those found through a keyword search. You can use these tools by simply putting in your research question and ask it to find relevant peer-reviewed articles.
A lot of these tools also offer possibilities to build further on the information you found by connecting it to citations or similar results.
If you would like to learn more about all the ways you can incorporate AI search tools into your search strategy, visit the related section in the AI for Literature Review Guide