Doing research for your topic is a matter of choosing relevant keywords or key terms that best represent the main concepts about your topic. It may be useful to consider narrowing or broadening keywords as you refine your search strategy. 

Example

Where do key terms or keywords like this come from?

• Author/index-assigned subject terms
• Subject thesaurus / descriptors, e.g. ERIC
• Abstracts of useful articles
• Encyclopedia or overview works, e.g. Wikipedia
   

How to find keywords?

Watch for and capture them when reading - especially from abstract and subject term fields

Use template below for your own search strategy.

What is your information environment? What counts as "literature?"

Citation mining is a way of maximizing your search. By checking and following up on the citations listed in the works you're interested in, you can find more relevant results. Under each result in LibrarySearch, select "cited articles" or "cited by these articles" to learn more.

Example: (resilience OR grit) critique

Research is iterative → Find more based on what you have, and record your path

For more, or to trace more recent related resources that may not be articles, look at the "cited by" links related entries for the same item in Google Scholar.

​Save and name files consistently.

Strategies:

• Email files to yourself, or use your VIU or other file space
• Create folders for specific projects
• Name files consistently, and consider how the names will file. e.g.:
  • ResilienceProject_AuthorLast_AuthorFirst_BriefTitle
  • If file name leads with date, 2017 07 28 is better than July 28 2017

​Make periodic backups.

e.g.: from local drive to cloud, or cloud to local.

Use a citation management tool. 

Consider: Features or functionality that you will need. For example:

• If you need only to generate quick citations, the “saved items” function of LibrarySearch may suit your needs.
• If you want to save citations for later use and organize them in folders Zotero supports those purposes.
• If you are working with others you may value collaborative features (e.g. Zotero group: Education in the 21st Century ; VIU Wikipedia Community of Practice)

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Consider keeping a research journal.*^ In addition to recording your evolving questions and understandings along your research path, record more mundane bits that you may be glad for later.
Include: 

• Key databases and other sources, effective key words/descriptors and combinations, significant journal titles and authors and publishers, ideas for follow up.
• License terms or copyright permissions contacts for information that you may want to cite or use substantially in papers or presentations.
  • Take particular note of scholars and colleagues who are facilitating your work through Open Access and Open Education Practices such as #preK12OER and #K12OECollab
    Consider how this kind of "generous thinking" might inform your own scholarly and professional practice.

* Cooksey, R., & McDonald, G. (2019). How should I record my research journey? (pp. 55-71). In Surviving and thriving in postgraduate research (2nd ed.). Springer. Retrieved from: https://books.google.ca/books?id=_ZSfDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PR6&ots=EVg9FsuKjA&lr&pg=PA55#v=onepage&q&f=false

^ Engin, M. (2011). Research Diary: A Tool for Scaffolding. International Journal of Qualitative Methods: ARCHIVE, 10(3), 296-306. Retrieved from: https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/ijqm/index.php/IJQM/article/view/8069