Academic Search Complete Help
- Tip: Are you using the word and between the different words in your search strategy? If you don't use and, Academic Search Complete will look for those words as a phrase instead of as separate words. For example, the search human cloning opposition gets 0 citations, but human cloning and opposition gets 20.
- Tip: You may need to use different words in your search strategy. For example, the search alcohol and date rape and college students gets only 1 citation, but by changing the words in the search to drinking and sex and college students, 17 citations are retrieved.
- Tip: You may have put too many terms together in your search strategy. The more words you use in your search, the fewer results you get back. For example, the search human cloning and opposition and ethics gets only 1 citation, but by dropping one of the terms, the results increase. The search human cloning and opposition gets 20 citations and the search human cloning and ethics gets 42 citations.
- Tip: If your search strategy includes words that could be either single or plural and you want to use both forms of the word in your search, you can do that by using the * at the end of the word. For example, in the search hate crime* and prevention, the computer will search for articles with the words hate crime or hate crimes. This will help you to retrieve more articles.
- Tip: If none of these techniques help you find more citations for your topic, you need to discuss your topic with your instructor or with a librarian.