Email: libraries@colorado.edu
This page covers keyword development and citation tracking research strategies. You will also find a database recommendation for getting started, as well as subject-specific database recommendations. Finally, I recommend skimming to move from a page of search results to a set of relevant papers you want to read more thoroughly.
Web of Science is a powerful search tool with lots of metadata in each article record, allowing you to efficiently sort, filter, and limit your search. It is called Web of Science because it tracks the connections between articles through their citations, so you can efficiently do citation tracking searches in this database:
Different databases index different sets of journals, conference papers, and other sources. Usually they focus on a specific subject, and many have subject-specific search features. So, you should search within a couple of databases, below find recommendations for different areas of engineering:
The last step of your search is skimming the results to decide which sources to spend more time reviewing. At this point, focus on skimming the record, not the full text. Look at the article title, abstract, and keywords; and perhaps also consider the authors, publication date, and the journal title.
Once you've decided take a closer look at a source, export and organize the source. Then, move onto strategies for reading the literature.
(Remember, look for keywords and relevant references while you read the literature. Come back to searching after doing some reading - this process is iterative!)
