Keywords: Overview
Some form of a keyword search is the way most of us look for scholarly articles in database. It is a great approach! Make sure you are familiar with these librarian strategies to get the most out of your searches.
Figuring out the best keywords for your research topic/question is a process. You will start with one or a few words. Then you will adjust them as you start finding sources that describe the topic using other words.You can shift, adapt, and expand your search. Your words bridge between known topics and the unknowns of your research question. Sometimes one specific word will be enough. Sometimes you will need several different words to describe a concept AND you will need to connect that concept to another concept.
Boolean Connectors
| Boolean Connector | Purpose |
|---|---|
 |
ANDConnects different concepts (keywords). Narrows down the number of results. |
 |
ORConnects synonyms. Expands the number of results. |
 |
NOTExcludes a concept. Use with extreme caution (even librarians don't use this one much). |
Connect Keywords Using Boolean: Examples
It expands the number of results on the topic.
| Examples Topics of Interest | Search terms connected by OR |
|---|---|
| MC1R gene | "melanocortin 1 receptor" OR MC1R OR CMM5 OR MSH-R OR SHEP2 |
| gut bacteria | "gut bacteria" OR microbiome OR microbiota |
| frozen shoulder | "frozen shoulder" OR "adhesive capsulitis" |
It narrows down the number of results.
| Example Topics of Interest | Search terms connected by AND |
|---|---|
| influence of gut bacteria on body weight | "body weight" AND ("gut bacteria" OR microbiome OR microbiota) |
| clinical cytometry used in the diagnosis of primary immunodeficiency | cytometry AND "primary immunodeficiency" |
Use with extreme caution. You will miss articles that mention both your desired keywords and your excluded keyword!
| Example Topic of Interest | Search terms connected by NOT |
|---|---|
| MC1R gene, but not about increased risk of melanoma | MC1R NOT melanoma |
| Klebsiella pneumoniae the organism, not bacterial pneumonia caused by it | "Klebsiella pneumoniae" NOT "bacterial pneumonia" |
...uses the asterisk (*) to end a word at its core, allowing you to retrieve many more documents containing variations of the search term. Example: educat* will find educate, educates, education, educators, educating and more.
...is when you put quotations marks around two or more words, so that the database looks for those words in that exact order. Examples: "higher education," "public health" and "pharmaceutical industry."
...uses the database's own terms to describe what each article is about. Searching using controlled vocabularies is a great way to get at everything on a topic in a database.
Once you know you have a good article, there are a lot of useful parts to it - far beyond the content.
| Useful Part | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Check the author-generated keywords, the database subject headings, the title, abstract and introduction for words that may be great additional/alternative search terms. You don't have to know everything about a topic before you start searching. Let what you find introduce you to the language of the field. |
| Author(s) | If they have written one article on this topic, they may have written more. Click on the authors' names to find what else they have in the database. Or use their names (individually) as a search term elsewhere. |
| Journal | They may have published other articles on your topic. Sometimes a special issue will focus on a single topic. Consider browsing or searching within a specific publication. Oftentimes you'll end up searching in the journal's website. |
| Instruments | Authors might have already created and validated an instrument (survey, tests, and measures). Consider if you can use/adapt it for your own work. Check for details in the methods section, an original citation in the reference, and/or a copy in the appendix. |
| References | Experts on this topic have gathered and evaluated these sources. Check them for potential sources for your own work. |
Check for useful tools in the database or search engine:
The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) produces many databases containing specialized types of information. The following list provides links to specific instructions, with the NCBI databases that are used included in parentheses after each question type. Visiting NCBI at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/guide/all/ and clicking on the How To tab for each section will guide you through many additional types of searches.
Find bioassays in which a given drug is active (PubChem)
Find bioassays that test a particular disease or protein target (PubChem Bioassay BLAST, Protein, OMIM)
Retrieve all sequences for an organism or taxon (Taxonomy)
Find the function of a gene or gene product (Gene)
Find expression patterns (UniGene, GEO Profiles)
Find genes associated with a phenotype or disease (Gene, MedGen, GTR, PheGenI)
Find human variations associated with a phenotype or disease (clinical association) (PubMed, ClinVar, dbVar, PheGenI, Gene)
Find sequenced genomes, including those in progress, for a taxonomic group (BioProject)
Find a homolog for a gene in another organism (HomoloGene, Gene, Protein, Nucleotide, BLAST)
Find transcript sequences for a gene (Gene, UniGene, Nucleotide, BLAST)
View the 3D structure of a protein (Structure, iCn3D)
Find published information on a gene or sequence (Gene, BLAST)
Design PCR primers and check them for specificity (Primer BLAST)
Generate a Common Tree for a set of taxa (Taxonomy)
Find the complete taxonomic lineage for an organism (Taxonomy)
View genotype frequency data for a gene, disease or short genetic variation (Gene, SNP)