Before beginning with the literature search for your paper, it is helpful to think about the following points to avoid spending too much time on corrections and amendments later in the writing process.
- Planning Ahead
Even if the process of academic writing is not linear, it can be useful to set yourself a time limit for your literature search, so that there is still enough time left for reading and writing and you don’t get lost in a vast number of sources.
Time planning also includes dealing with the requirements for the work / required sources (in particular in terms of the scope of the work):
- Formal Requirements
- What particular kind of assessment is required? Should the thesis be purely a review or should it also include empirical work?
- What scope should the work have?
- Required citation style (e.g. APA-7 at HSLU W). Further information on citing can be found here (in German).
- Sources
- Completeness of the search; is there a minimum number of required sources or source types?
- Are there any geographical restrictions? For example, should your sources be limited to publications from Switzerland, Austria, and Germany.
- Are there requirements for the recency of the sources?
- Dealing with Your Topic
The starting point for a search is to think about your own level of information: What do I already know? Where do I lack knowledge?
Compile the existing information:
- Limit your topic as good as possible, but don’t make it too narrow.
- On what basis of information did you define your topic? (Current newspaper articles, suggestions from your supervisor etc.)
- What do you already know about the topic?
In this phase, both internet searches and the use of encyclopedias (e.g. Wikipedia) are useful. See also: Search Tools
- Note Down and Arrange Search Terms in a Structured Way
When you first start dealing with your topic, you may notice how differently it can be approached or described. Different authors sometimes use different terms for the same aspect. A mind map can help you to note down and structure all the central terms of a topic or divide them into subtopics. A word table (in German) can also provide an overview: note down suitable general and subordinate terms for each aspect and add related and synonymous terms. This creates a set of words that allows you to carry out a search in a systematic way later on. The search terms in the set can be meaningfully linked using Boolean operators.
A thesaurus (in German) or dictionary (in German) can also be helpful for arranging a set of terms.
Further Information
The following videos provide a brief overview of the topic of „search preparation“:
- Search preparation summarized (in German): Recherchefahrplan für wissenschaftliches Arbeiten – YouTube
- Find & structure your search terms (in German): SLUBcast – Recherchevorbereitung – Suchbegriffe finden – YouTube