There are 8 central concepts that are important to grasp, in order build an effective search strategy in any article oriented database:
- #1: If you have a MULTI WORD PHRASE you need to treat it differently - treat it like a mathematical expression, and put it inside a set of PARENTHESES: For example: Military Industrial Complex ===> (Military Industrial Complex)
- #2: Meaningful use of synonyms - do not search for just one word, to cover your core concept. Try to include synonyms & unique phrases that are closely allied with your prinicpal area of focus. Separate each of the synonyms with the OR command: For example: Child abuse ===> (Child abuse) OR (Abused children) OR (Sexual abuse) OR (Sexually abused) OR (Physical abuse) OR (Physically abused) OR (Emotional abuse) OR (Emotionally abused)
- #3: Using WILDCARDS for variety of words that have similar starting point of spelling - do not search for just one word, if there are an entire family of words that all have the same base word. The ASTERISK "*" is the wildcard to use most article oriented databases. For example: Econom* will automatically pull in: Econometric OR Econometrically OR Economic OR Economically OR Economize OR Economizing
- #4: If you are trying to focus on a specific Geography, you really need to search for both the Name of the country / city / region, as well as searching for the People of that county / city / region, and sometimes adding in the name of their language. For example, if you want to only focus on your topic in Holland, then you should formulate that component as ==> ( Holland OR Netherlands OR Dutch )
- #5: If you have a HYPHENATED WORD you need to search for it both WITH and WITHOUT the hyphen:: For example: Multi-National Corporations ===> (mutli-national corporations) OR (mutlinational corporations)
- #6: Understanding the searching options of that particular database -- if your database has the capability of specifying a unique field to search, try looking for your topic under the SUBJECT umbrella. For example: an ordinary "default" search as contrasted against a subject only search
- #7: Understanding the difference between a FULL TEXT search and an ordinary or DEFAULT search -- if your database has the capability of conducting a Full Text search, you will always retrieve more results, but there will also be more fuzziness within the results, since you will be pulling in noise from every instance where your choice of keywords have been used in a totally different context. If you are searching for APPLE (the electronics equipment maker), you might find hundreds of articles about New York City, since its nickname is "the big apple".
For some research topics, the difference in the number of articles retrieved between a DEFAULT search and an ALL TEXT / FULL TEXT search options could be enormous. Here is a case where a full text search yields 6.7 times the number of results, as an ordinary "default" search:
This example is looking for articles about EXPATS or EXPATRIATES to demonstrate the enormous difference on the number of results that you might get by making a slight change to a search strategy.
First is the "basic" or "default" search conducted in EBSCO's BSC database. Even though the details are not visible, the default search for EBSCO includes:
- Titles and subtitles of each article.
- The full name of each journal / magazine source.
- Names of each author & co-author (some journals and some databases never reveal an author's first name).
- Employer's name & location of employment of the of lead author (some journals will also include employment affiliation for each co-author)
- Abstracts that summarize what each article is about (typically supplied by the authors)
- Subject headings that describe what each article is focusing on.
- Additional keywords, acronyms or abbreviations suggested by the authors or by the editors of the publication.
Our search for (expat or expatriate) in the Business Source Complete database yields over 7,800 articles when submitted as a "basic" or "default" search option.
If we now switch over to the FULL TEXT SEARCH mode, which is what GOOGLE uses as its default, now we are looking into every word, from every page, of every document, but only for those publications or publishers that have signed operational agreements with EBSCO group of databases. Each publication has its own timeline of which issues are available with full text searching capabilities.
Here now is what the results look like when we search for (expat or expatriate) in the Business Source Complete database in the full text searching mode, denoted by the "TX" prefix:
The number of results jumped from almost 7,900 to almost 53,000! That is a ratio of 6.7 full text documents, for every article found using just the major components of an article citation.
There is no standard ratio of full text results to default search results. Some publications have never offered full text access to any database, and only allow that in-depth search method to be accessed folks who personally buy a subscription directly from the publishing firm. That is the method used by THE ECONOMIST weekly news magazine and the daily business newspaper FINANCIAL TIMES OF LONDON.
- #8: Most of our databases offer a variety of viewing options, as well as ways to narrow down the volume of results - Within the EBSCO family of databases, there are a variety of options that will only appear after you click on the box called "Filters". When you activate those options, you will be LIMITING your results into smaller subsets, using different click-on / click-off criteria. Some databases offer more options, such as "Articles on Several Companies" is offered in the business database, but that specific option will not appear in an art or music database where that option would be irrelevant.
- Below the group of click box filters are other filters which are dynamically generated based on the specific database you are using AND ALSO based on the specific results generated by your current search strategy & the other filters that you might have selected. Here is a view of these additional LIMITING options that were generated by searching the BSC database for (EXPAT OR EXPATRIATE):
- Various subsets, as well as various options within each category are dynamically available depending on which publication years you want to focus on. Further down the left column are ways to analyze the results and show you the frequency of which elements occur most often within the current batch of results. Such as Subject headings, Publication / journal names, and Companies that are the focus of the underlying documents.
- Sadly, most of the articles that focus on the United States CAN NOT ACCURATELY BE SEARCHED by using the "geography" limiters in the BSC database. Depending on your search strategy & results, it is quite common that 80% of all articles focusing on the Unites States in the Business Source Complete database do NOT have any meaningful geographic heading! The only realistic way to limit BSC results to the USA is to manually read through the titles and abstracts of each citation. If no geographic area is mentioned, then it is safe to assume that underlying article is only focusing on the USA. This problem with identifying articles about the United States is unfortunately rather common, as a shortcut to lower expenses, by database companies that tend to focus on the USA for their choice of journals & magazines that they want to cover.
