best search engine for literature review

Reference management. Clean and simple.

The top list of academic search engines

1. Google Scholar

4. science.gov, 5. semantic scholar, 6. baidu scholar, get the most out of academic search engines, frequently asked questions about academic search engines, related articles.

Academic search engines have become the number one resource to turn to in order to find research papers and other scholarly sources. While classic academic databases like Web of Science and Scopus are locked behind paywalls, Google Scholar and others can be accessed free of charge. In order to help you get your research done fast, we have compiled the top list of free academic search engines.

Google Scholar is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only lets you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free but also often provides links to full-text PDF files.

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles
• Abstracts: only a snippet of the abstract is available
• Related articles: ✔
• References: ✔
• Cited by: ✔
• Links to full text: ✔
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, RIS, BibTeX

BASE is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany. That is also where its name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles (contains duplicates)
• Abstracts: ✔
• Related articles: ✘
• References: ✘
• Cited by: ✘
• Export formats: RIS, BibTeX

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open-access research papers. For each search result, a link to the full-text PDF or full-text web page is provided.

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles
• Links to full text: ✔ (all articles in CORE are open access)
• Export formats: BibTeX

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need anymore to query all those resources separately!

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles and reports
• Links to full text: ✔ (available for some databases)
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX (available for some databases)

Semantic Scholar is the new kid on the block. Its mission is to provide more relevant and impactful search results using AI-powered algorithms that find hidden connections and links between research topics.

• Coverage: approx. 40 million articles
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX

Although Baidu Scholar's interface is in Chinese, its index contains research papers in English as well as Chinese.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 100 million articles
• Abstracts: only snippets of the abstract are available
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX

RefSeek searches more than one billion documents from academic and organizational websites. Its clean interface makes it especially easy to use for students and new researchers.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 1 billion documents
• Abstracts: only snippets of the article are available
• Export formats: not available

Consider using a reference manager like Paperpile to save, organize, and cite your references. Paperpile integrates with Google Scholar and many popular databases, so you can save references and PDFs directly to your library using the Paperpile buttons:

Google Scholar is an academic search engine, and it is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only let's you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free, but also often provides links to full text PDF file.

Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI. Sematic Scholar was publicly released in 2015 and uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries for scholarly papers.

BASE , as its name suggest is an academic search engine. It is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany and that's where it name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers. For each search result a link to the full text PDF or full text web page is provided.

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need any more to query all those resources separately!

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Best Academic Search Engines [2024]

Table of Contents

Gone are the days when researchers used to spend hours in the library skimming through endless reference books and resources. Now, thanks to academic search engines — with just a few clicks, researchers can access an extensive amount of information at their fingertips.

However, not all search engines are designed to make the research discovery process easier. It varies from one search engine to another, few might not have updated their database to the latest articles, while others might still provide older articles as a result of your search keyword or topic, and so on. This way, half of the researcher’s time is consumed shortlisting the best academic search engines.

Therefore, to help you choose the best search engine for academic research, we’ve crafted this blog. In this article, we will explore the best academic search engines available and why they are essential for scholars, researchers, and students alike.

Introduction to Academic Search Engines

Academic search engines are online repositories or databases that host millions of research articles and allow users to find relevant scholarly articles, research publications, conference proceedings, and other academic resources. Unlike web search engines like Google or Bing, these platforms are specifically designed to provide accurate, reliable, and relevant academic content.

These search engines often have advanced features that help users filter their search results based on specific criteria. For example, SciSpace helps you filter the results based on author, publication date, PDF, open-access, and more. In addition, it also provides citation information, abstracts, and full-text access to research papers and other scholarly literature, making them invaluable tools for scholars and researchers.

Academic search engines play a crucial role in the research process by providing scholars with easy access to relevant and reliable information. They save researchers valuable time by eliminating the need to sift through irrelevant search results and provide them with free access to a focused pool of academic resources.

With their advanced features and comprehensive coverage, these academic databases empower researchers to stay at the forefront of their fields and contribute to the advancement of knowledge.

Benefits of using reliable academic search engines for research

When it comes to academic research, using reliable search engines is of utmost importance. The credibility and quality of the sources you rely on can significantly impact the results of your research findings and conclusions.

Here are the potential advantages of using a popular search engine!

1. Reliable scholarly source: By using an academic search engine, researchers can ensure that the information they find is from reputable sources. These academic databases typically index content from scholarly journals, universities, research institutions, and other reliable and cited sources. As a result, the risk of using incorrect or biased information, which is prevalent on the open web, is significantly reduced.

2. Increased exposure to enormous articles: With a reliable academic search engine, you can access a vast array of scholarly articles and research publications. These search engines have extensive academic databases that include articles from various disciplines, including science and social sciences, allowing researchers to explore a wide range of topics and find relevant studies to support their research.

3. Advanced search filters: Reliable academic search engines often provide advanced search features that enable researchers to refine their search queries and narrow down the results to find the most relevant and latest information. These features may include filters for publication date, author, journal, and citation count, among others. By utilizing these advanced search terms and options, researchers can save time and effort by quickly finding the most pertinent resources.

4. Access full-text journal articles: Another advantage of using search engine for academic research is the ability to access full-text scientific articles. Many academic search engines provide direct links to the full text of articles, either freely available or through institutional subscriptions. This ensures that researchers can read and analyze the complete article, rather than relying on abstracts or TL;DR summaries.

5. Additional tools support: The most reliable search engines for research like SciSpace offer additional tools and features to enhance the research workflow. These may include citation generators, reference management systems, and options to save and organize search results. These tools can greatly facilitate the organization and the citation analysis of sources, making the research process more efficient and systematic.

Best search engines for research

Now that we’ve understood the importance of using reliable search engines for academic research, let's explore some of the best academic literature search engines available:

1. SciSpace

SciSpace is considered the best academic search engine that hosts and provides free access to a comprehensive index of 300 million+ scholarly articles from various fields. It utilizes advanced algorithms to provide users with highly relevant search results. Its intuitive and user-friendly interface makes it ideal for both novice and experienced researchers to navigate millions of research papers with no mess around.

One of the standout features of SciSpace is its “ Trace feature ” which allows users to find relevant research papers based on the preferred criteria including citation counts, related publications, references, authors, and more. It helps you land on the right research paper based on your preferences or research needs.

SciSpace is the only search engine that not only helps you discover relevant scholarly scientific literature but also allows you to read a research paper using its AI research assistant, conduct a literature review, and generate accurate citations for your research publications. It is an all-in-one platform that accelerates your research workflow with its AI-powered tools. You can explore all of them here

2. Google Scholar

Google Scholar is undoubtedly one of the popular search engines. With its vast database of scholarly literature, Google Scholar allows users to search for articles, theses, books, and conference papers across multiple academic disciplines. Google Scholar helps users save their search queries and set up email alerts for new publications in their field of interest. This ensures that researchers stay up-to-date with the latest developments in their respective fields.

PubMed is a go-to academic search engine for those in the field of medicine and life sciences. Developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), PubMed provides access to a vast collection of medicine, biomedical, health sciences, or literature, including journals, clinical trials, and scientific articles. Its meticulously curated articles makes it a trusted resource for medical professionals, scientists, researchers, and students alike.

Scopus is a comprehensive database of science that covers a wide range of scholarly literature across multiple disciplines. It offers a vast collection of peer reviewed articles, including publications, conference papers, and patents. With its extensive coverage and powerful search capabilities, Scopus is a valuable tool for researchers looking to explore the latest developments in their respective fields.

JSTOR is a repository that provides access to a vast collection of academic journals, books, and primary sources. Its interdisciplinary approach makes it a valuable resource for researchers across various fields of study.

6. IEEE Xplore

IEEE Xplore is a premier academic search engine for those in the fields of engineering, computer science, and technology. It provides access to a vast collection of technical articles, conference papers, and standards published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

IEEE Xplore is a treasure trove of knowledge for researchers and engineers looking to stay at the forefront of technological advancements.

Criteria for choosing the best academic search engine

With so many free academic search engines to choose from, it can be challenging to determine which one is the best fit for your research needs. Here are some criteria to consider when selecting an academic search engine:

• Relevance: The search engine should provide highly relevant search results that are specific to your area of study.
• Database size: A larger database gives you access to a broader range of scientific literature.
• Advanced search capabilities: Look for search engines that offer advanced search filters, allowing you to refine your search based on specific criteria.
• User-friendly interface: A user-friendly interface makes it easier for researchers to navigate and retrieve the information they need efficiently.
• Accessibility: Consider the availability of full-text or PDF access to articles and the ease of obtaining the necessary permissions to cite or use the content.

In conclusion, academic search engines play a vital role in scholarly communication, facilitating efficient and reliable academic research. They provide scholars, researchers, and students with access to a vast array of scholarly articles, research papers, and other academic resources. By using the best academic search engines, researchers can ensure that their research is backed by evidence (accurate and trustworthy information).

While each search engine has its own unique features and strengths, the key is to choose the one that best aligns with your research needs and preferences. Remember to utilize advanced search filters, explore related articles and citations, and keep your research well-organized for maximum efficiency. As technology continues to advance, we can expect academic search engines to evolve and provide even more innovative solutions to the challenges faced in academic research.

So, embrace these powerful tools, explore the above-featured academic search engines, and let us know which tool you are clinging to!

Frequently Asked Questions

Google Scholar, SciSpace, PubMed, and JSTOR are widely used tools for academic research.

Academic search engineinvolves an in-depth examination of scholarly sources with a rigorous approach, while a Google search engine explores a wider range of web content, including non-academic sources, with varying levels of reliability.

They provide a comprehensive overview of existing research on diverse topics aiding researchers in conducting an efficient literature review without investing more time.

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Literature searches: what databases are available?

Posted on 6th April 2021 by Izabel de Oliveira

Many types of research require a search of the medical literature as part of the process of understanding the current evidence or knowledge base. This can be done using one or more biomedical bibliographic databases. [1]

Bibliographic databases make the information contained in the papers more visible to the scientific community and facilitate locating the desired literature.

This blog describes some of the main bibliographic databases which index medical journals.

PubMed was launched in 1996 and, since June 1997, provides free and unlimited access for all users through the internet. PubMed database contains more than 30 million references of biomedical literature from approximately 7,000 journals. The largest percentage of records in PubMed comes from MEDLINE (95%), which contains 25 million records from over 5,600 journals. Other records derive from other sources such as In-process citations, ‘Ahead of Print’ citations, NCBI Bookshelf, etc.

The second largest component of PubMed is PubMed Central (PMC) . Launched in 2000, PMC is a permanent collection of full-text life sciences and biomedical journal articles. PMC also includes articles deposited by journal publishers and author manuscripts, published articles that are submitted in compliance with the public access policies of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other research funding agencies. PMC contains approximately 4.5 million articles.

Some National Library of Medicine (NLM) resources associated with PubMed are the NLM Catalog and MedlinePlus. The NLM Catalog contains bibliographic records for over 1.4 million journals, books, audiovisuals, electronic resources, and other materials. It also includes detailed indexing information for journals in PubMed and other NCBI databases, although not all materials in the NLM Catalog are part of NLM’s collection. MedlinePlus is a consumer health website providing information on various health topics, drugs, dietary supplements, and health tools.

MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) is the NLM controlled vocabulary used for indexing articles in PubMed. It is used by indexers who analyze and maintain the PubMed database to reflect the subject content of journal articles as they are published. Indexers typically select 10–12 MeSH terms to describe every paper.

Embase is considered the second most popular database after MEDLINE. More than 32 million records from over 8,200 journals from more than 95 countries, and ‘grey literature’ from over 2.4 million conference abstracts, are estimated to be in the Embase content.

Embase contains subtopics in health care such as complementary and alternative medicine, prognostic studies, telemedicine, psychiatry, and health technology. Besides that, it is also widely used for research on drug-related topics as it offers better coverage than MEDLINE on pharmaceutics-related literature.

In 2010, Embase began to include all MEDLINE citations. MEDLINE records are delivered to Elsevier daily and are incorporated into Embase after de-duplication with records already indexed by Elsevier to produce ‘MEDLINE-unique’ records. These MEDLINE-unique records are not re-indexed by Elsevier. However, their indexing is mapped to Emtree terms used in Embase to ensure that Emtree terminology can be used to search all Embase records, including those originally derived from MEDLINE.

Since this coverage expansion—at least in theory and without taking into consideration the different indexing practices of the two databases—a search in Embase alone should cover every record in both Embase and MEDLINE, making Embase a possible “one-stop” search engine for medical research [1].

Emtree is a hierarchically structured, controlled vocabulary for biomedicine and the related life sciences. It includes a whole range of terms for drugs, diseases, medical devices, and essential life science concepts. Emtree is used to index all of the Embase content. This process includes full-text indexing of journal articles, which is done by experts.

The most important index of the technical-scientific literature in Latin America and the Caribbean, LILACS , was created in 1985 to record scientific and technical production in health. It has been maintained and updated by a network of more than 600 institutions of education, government, and health research and coordinated by Latin America and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (BIREME), Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and World Health Organization (WHO).

LILACS contains scientific and technical literature from over 908 journals from 26 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, with free access. About 900,000 records from articles with peer review, theses and dissertations, government documents, conference proceedings, and books; more than 480,000 of them are available with the full-text link in open access.

The LILACS Methodology is a set of standards, manuals, guides, and applications in continuous development, intended for the collection, selection, description, indexing of documents, and generation of databases. This centralised methodology enables the cooperation between Latin American and Caribbean countries to create local and national databases, all feeding into the LILACS database.  Currently, the databases LILACS, BBO, BDENF, MEDCARIB, and national databases of the countries of Latin America are part of the LILACS System.

Health Sciences Descriptors (DeCS) is the multilingual and structured vocabulary created by BIREME to serve as a unique language in indexing articles from scientific journals, books, congress proceedings, technical reports, and other types of materials, and also for searching and retrieving subjects from scientific literature from information sources available on the Virtual Health Library (VHL) such as LILACS, MEDLINE, and others. It was developed from the MeSH with the purpose of permitting the use of common terminology for searching in multiple languages, and providing a consistent and unique environment for the retrieval of information. DeCS vocabulary is dynamic and totals 34,118 descriptors and qualifiers, of which 29,716 come from MeSH, and 4,402 are exclusive.

Cochrane CENTRAL

The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) is a database of reports of randomized and quasi-randomized controlled trials. Most records are obtained from the bibliographic databases PubMed and Embase, with additional records from the published and unpublished sources of CINAHL, ClinicalTrials.gov, and the WHO’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.

Although CENTRAL first began publication in 1996, records are included irrespective of the date of publication, and the language of publication is also not a restriction to being included in the database.  You won’t find the full text to the article on CENTRAL but there is often a summary of the article, in addition to the standard details of author, source, and year.

Within CENTRAL, there are ‘Specialized Registers’ which are collected and maintained by Cochrane Review Groups (plus a few Cochrane Fields), which include reports of controlled trials relevant to their area of interest. Some Cochrane Centres search the general healthcare literature of their countries or regions in order to contribute records to CENTRAL.

ScienceDirect

ScienceDirect i s Elsevier’s most important peer-reviewed academic literature platform. It was launched in 1997 and contains 16 million records from over 2,500 journals, including over 250 Open Access publications, such as Cell Reports and The Lancet Global Health, as well as 39,000 eBooks.

ScienceDirect topics include:

• health sciences;
• life sciences;
• physical sciences;
• engineering;
• social sciences; and
• humanities.

Web of Science

Web of Science (previously Web of Knowledge) is an online scientific citation indexing service created in 1997 by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), and currently maintained by Clarivate Analytics.

Web of Science covers several fields of the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Its main resource is the Web of Science Core Collection which includes over 1 billion cited references dating back to 1900, indexed from 21,100 peer-reviewed journals, including Open Access journals, books and proceedings.

Web of Science also offers regional databases which cover:

• Latin America (SciELO Citation Index);
• China (Chinese Science Citation Database);
• Korea (Korea Citation Index);
• Russia (Russian Science Citation Index).

Boolean operators

To make the search more precise, we can use boolean operators in databases between our keywords.

We use boolean operators to focus on a topic, particularly when this topic contains multiple search terms, and to connect various pieces of information in order to find exactly what we are looking for.

Boolean operators connect the search words to either narrow or broaden the set of results. The three basic boolean operators are: AND, OR, and NOT.

• AND narrows a search by telling the database that all keywords used must be found in the article in order for it to appear in our results.
• OR broadens a search by telling the database that any of the words it connects are acceptable (this is useful when we are searching for synonymous words).
• NOT narrows the search by telling the database to eliminate all terms that follow it from our search results (this is helpful when we are interested in a specific aspect of a topic or when we want to exclude a type of article.

References (pdf)

You may also be interested in the following blogs for further reading:

Conducting a systematic literature search

Reviewing the evidence: what method should I use?

Cochrane Crowd for students: what’s in it for you?

Izabel de Oliveira

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Best Practice for Literature Searching

• Literature Search Best Practice
• What is literature searching?
• What are literature reviews?
• Hierarchies of evidence
• 1. Managing references
• 2. Defining your research question
• 3. Where to search
• 4. Search strategy
• 5. Screening results
• 6. Paper acquisition
• 7. Critical appraisal
• Further resources
• Training opportunities and videos
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Where to search

To conduct a successful literature review, you need to conduct a comprehensive search so that you feel confident that you’ve found all the relevant literature on the topic you are investigating.   You can put together an excellent search, but if you are not looking in the right places, you will not find the literature you need.

Access means getting the full text of research.  Discovery means finding out about the existence of research.  It is a very common mistake to use tools that are better for access for the task of discovery. Doing this means that you are doing your searching backwards!

The first step of your search must be discovery, and only after you know what is out there do you need to start acquiring the full text of the articles you need.  Making this common mistake of reversing the order wastes time and negatively affects the quality of your literature review because you will be much less likely to find all the research you should be finding about your question.

Search options

• Search engines
• Academic search engines
• Researcher platforms
• Publisher platforms
• Library discovery services

The best tools for conducting your literature searches comprehensively and systematically are subject specific databases.

Databases abstract and index the content of academic journals from multiple publishers, and when appropriate other publication types such as trade journals, standards, reports, conference papers and patents. They are designed for discovery—i.e. finding out that a piece of research exists and giving you the bibliographic details you need to find that piece of research. 

The difference between subject-specific databases and general databases

Databases can either be multidisciplinary or focused on a discipline like chemistry, or language and literature, or the sciences of food and health. The focus defines the database's scope--what information is included within it--and how you find that information.

A subject focused database is usually built around a thesaurus of subject terms based in its discipline. Because of their breadth of coverage, multidisciplinary databases don't have thesauri, and this means that they are far more likely to return what are called false hits, or noise, where the term you search is not used in the sense you need.  

Sometimes even when a database does have a thesaurus but one focused on a different discipline than where your topic falls, you will still get false hits with a term.  Information retrieval in the area of food is complex because of the broadness of the field.  For example:

• Searching pig  in a general database will bring back content where an animal has been used in preclinical trials, from livestock research, to the use of pork in food.
• In a health-focused database, the search options and filters will have been developed for the human health field, which may not be helpful for searching food science topics not related to human health.
• Searching spirits in PubMed (which does have a thesaurus focused on biomedical terms) or the multidisciplinary databases Web of Science or Scopus, (which do not have thesauri) you get moods and the supernatural mixed in with research focused on alcoholic beverages.

FSTA, focused on food science, not only doesn’t bring back supernatural false hits for spirits , it brings back many more relevant ones about distilled alcoholic beverages because of how each record has been tagged, or indexed, with the subject specific term spirits, even when that term does not appear in an article’s title or abstract.

What is indexing and why is it helpful in searching?

For example, in FSTA , if you search the thesaurus term aroma it pulls together all the results where the authors used the word aroma to describe a central element of the research, but also works by authors who used the words  odor ,  odour  or  smell .

Similarly, research about  Baijiu , Luzhou-flavor liquors, Luzhou-flavour liquors, Moutai liquors, and  Moutai-flavor liquors  are all gathered under the thesaurus subject heading  Chinese liquors .

Some databases rely on machine learning to do the indexing, while others like FSTA have editorial teams of experts who do the work more accurately.  

Search engines like Google allow you to find all sorts of information on the internet, but they are not designed specifically for finding scholarly information, so are terrible for literature searches.  

However, they are good for finding governmental information like U.S. Department of Agriculture research funding instructions, scientific reports from the UK Food Standards Agency or the European Food Safety Authority, or guidelines from organizations like the World Health Organization.  Academic search engines and most databases do not include this type of document.  The database FSTA is an exception, since it indexes legislation, standards and reports (but not funding instructions). 

Unlike general search engines, academic search engines like Google Scholar do focus on scholarly information, but they:

• DO NOT exercise editorial standards about the content's quality, which results in the inclusion of predatory journal articles, and also distracting, sometimes silly, completely irrelevant citations like these lunch menus that have been indexed as though they are academic papers.    

DO NOT allow precise control over searches, even with advanced search options. 

• DO NOT use indexing, which means you only find results written in the language in which you are searching. 
• DO cover all disciplines, which means that your searches are likely to bring back lots of false hits. 

Search engines can be useful for accessing the full text of articles and patents but using them for discovery is an inefficient--and potentially hazardous--way to research.

Platforms like Academia.edu and ResearchGate allow researchers to create profiles to showcase their work and share their articles. Both can be useful for acquiring full-text articles; however, because researchers create and maintain their own profiles, searching these platforms will not give you a comprehensive overview of a field—you’ll only find the work of researchers who have chosen to participate.

Don’t confuse these platforms with discovery services, such as databases, which are specifically designed to be comprehensive in the subject area they cover in order to help researchers find relevant information.

Some tools might seem to be full text databases but are actually publisher-specific platforms. ScienceDirect, the subscription platform hosting Elsevier’s journal articles, is a notable example. ScienceDirect makes it very easy to access Elsevier content, but only about 20% of food science research is published in Elsevier journals. Using that platform or any other single publisher platform to search for content will drastically limit your search.

Library discovery services are designed for discovery and access.  They are intended to make it easy for a user to search in one place to find everything in the library's collections-print and e-books, articles, and more.  They make it easy to access the full text of everything they own or subscribe to, or link to inter-library loan forms to borrow material from other libraries.  The disadvantages of using them for the discovery process are that: 

• They sometimes can make it seem as though you are seeing everything the library has in its collections, when, for a variety of behind the scenes reasons, this is almost always not true
• They are interdisciplinary by nature because the library's collections will span many subjects, which means that they lack subject specific features to help build targeted searches.

BEST PRACTICE RECOMMENDATION :  Look at the library discovery page for a link to the subject specific databases.  You can often see a list ordered by subjects or alphabetically or both.    

Best practice!

BEST PRACTICE RECOMMENDATION : familiarise yourself with the databases you have access to, including subscription databases –get to know their scope (what content they index) and also how to search them, including using thesaurus functions if available, so that you can use each to their full capacity.

BEST PRACTICE RECOMMENDATION : remember that research for a literature review is a two-step process—first is discovery of research, and the second is accessing the research you’ve determined you need. Don’t switch the order of the steps! If you limit your search to the research outputs that you think that you have easy access to, you will almost certainly end up with a biased review that is neither systematic nor comprehensive.

• << Previous: 2. Defining your research question
• Next: 4. Search strategy >>
• Last Updated: Sep 15, 2023 2:17 PM
• URL: https://ifis.libguides.com/literature_search_best_practice

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What is an academic search engine?

Academic search engines aim to combine the convenience and power of web-based search engines with the rigour of peer-reviewed scholarly sources. In contrast to traditional academic databases, which often sit behind a paywall, most ASEs are freely accessible and often link to full-text research articles. ASE searches return publications that are sorted by topic and significance in the field, with the most frequently cited publications appearing higher in the list by default. Researchers can strategically use ASEs to compile an expansive bibliography and streamline the literature review process.

How do academic search engines work?

The underlying algorithms used by search engines are often referred to as “web crawlers”; these index a constant stream of online traffic. The metadata generated through this pre-filtering process are what allow search engines to return immediate results in response to keyword queries. The metadata generated by the search engine algorithms (and in some cases artificial intelligence tools) can be used to find networks of related articles, all of which can be saved into customisable reading lists or batch exported into reference management software.

What is the best academic search engine for your needs?

ASEs with a broad multidisciplinary focus will naturally have the biggest database of sources, and Google Scholar has traditionally been the leader on this front. Other ASEs are all playing catch-up, but Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) , Semantic Scholar and Refseek have all expanded the number of documents hosted within their databases. To generate metadata for millions of sources, Google Scholar harnesses the ubiquity of Google’s web-crawling algorithm, while Semantic Scholar uses AI-driven techniques. The proprietary nature of these tools can limit transparency and user control, and the iterative nature of these tools can compromise search reproducibility. In fact, even consecutive queries using identical search terms in Google Scholar may yield inconsistent results . In contrast, BASE uses an internationally standardised protocol for harvesting metadata while disclosing their list of content providers , and may be better suited for meta-analyses or systematic literature reviews.

While ASEs are typically free for end users, the availability of full-text research articles can be quite limited. CORE mitigates this by hosting only articles published in open access journals, but that may not be a viable option for your topic.

Access to ASEs may also vary depending on your location – for instance, Google is blocked or censored in some parts of the world – and it can be difficult to rely on ASEs as their only literature search tool. The ASE landscape can be quite volatile overall, with Microsoft Academic – the previous main competitor to Google Scholar – shutting down its operations in 2021 . The best approach may still be to pair an ASE with a more traditional academic database (such as Web of Science or Scopus ) along with databases specifically tailored for your discipline ( ERIC , SSRN , Pubmed , CiteseerX ).

Top search tips

Regardless of which ASE you choose, as a researcher, you need to use a consistent approach when planning a search.

• Summarise your topic or research questions into one or two sentences.
• Underline keywords in your topic and list their synonyms as alternate search terms.
• Search using different combinations of keywords, and assess if there are too many or too few relevant results.
• Sort the results by publication time frame and citation counts, and save any relevant articles to a personalised reading list.
• Use the “cited by” or “related articles” functionality of ASEs to expand the scope of your key references.

A common search mistake is not incorporating Boolean operators into your search strategy. Google Scholar, for example, uses the following Boolean operators:

• AND limits results by only returning articles that are relevant to all the search terms (for example, learning AND teachers)
• OR expands your results by returning articles relevant to either of the search terms (for example, learning OR teachers)
• The minus sign (-) limits results by excluding keywords (so, learning -teachers)
• -site excludes results from a website (teachers -site:wikipedia.org)
• ~ expands your results by including synonyms for the key term in the search (~teachers)
• “” limits your results by only showing articles with the exact phrasing (“professional learning for teachers”).

Making it work

ASEs are just another tool in a researcher’s toolkit, and you can be creative in how you choose to use them. You can make a separate reading list for every new paper you are writing, and quickly share these reference lists with your co-authors to speed up the final copy-editing process. You can create email alerts every time a prominent author in the field (yourself included!) publishes a new paper, or when a new study cites your work. ASEs can be used strategically to improve the public accessibility of academic literature and to help you form new collaborations.

Jack Wang is an associate professor in the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences at the University of Queensland. He was awarded 2020 Australian University Teacher of the Year.

If you found this interesting and want advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the THE Campus newsletter .

This video gives more tips on how to use academic search engines such as Google Scholar in research.

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Literature Search: Databases and Gray Literature

The literature search.

• A systematic review search includes a search of databases, gray literature, personal communications, and a handsearch of high impact journals in the related field.  See our list of recommended databases and gray literature sources on this page.
• a comprehensive literature search can not be dependent on a single database, nor on bibliographic databases only.
• inclusion of multiple databases helps avoid publication bias (georaphic bias or bias against publication of negative results).
• The Cochrane Collaboration recommends PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) at a minimum.     
• NOTE:  The Cochrane Collaboration and the IOM recommend that the literature search be conducted by librarians or persons with extensive literature search experience. Please contact the NIH Librarians for assistance with the literature search component of your systematic review. 

Cochrane Library

A collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. Search the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials here.

European database of biomedical and pharmacologic literature.

PubMed comprises more than 21 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.

Largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources. Contains conference papers.

Web of Science

World's leading citation databases. Covers over 12,000 of the highest impact journals worldwide, including Open Access journals and over 150,000 conference proceedings. Coverage in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, with coverage to 1900.

Subject Specific Databases

APA PsycINFO

Over 4.5 million abstracts of peer-reviewed literature in the behavioral and social sciences. Includes conference papers, book chapters, psychological tests, scales and measurement tools.

CINAHL Plus

Comprehensive journal index to nursing and allied health literature, includes books, nursing dissertations, conference proceedings, practice standards and book chapters.

Latin American and Caribbean health sciences literature database

Gray Literature

• Gray Literature  is the term for information that falls outside the mainstream of published journal and mongraph literature, not controlled by commercial publishers
• hard to find studies, reports, or dissertations
• conference abstracts or papers
• governmental or private sector research
• clinical trials - ongoing or unpublished
• experts and researchers in the field     
• Library catalogs
• Professional association websites
• Google Scholar  - Search scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts and articles.
• Dissertation Abstracts - dissertation and theses database - NIH Library biomedical librarians can access and search for you.
• NTIS  - central resource for government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business related information.
• AHRQ  - agency for healthcare research and quality
• Open Grey  - system for information on grey literature in Europe. Open access to 700,000 references to the grey literature.
• World Health Organization  - providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends.
• New York Academy of Medicine Grey Literature Report  - a bimonthly publication of The New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) alerting readers to new gray literature publications in health services research and selected public health topics. NOTE: Discontinued as of Jan 2017, but resources are still accessible.
• Gray Source Index
• OpenDOAR - directory of academic repositories
• International Clinical Trials Registery Platform  - from the World Health Organization
• Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry
• Brazilian Clinical Trials Registry
• Chinese Clinical Trial Registry - 
• ClinicalTrials.gov   - U.S.  and international federally and privately supported clinical trials registry and results database
• Clinical Trials Registry  - India
• EU clinical Trials Register
• Japan Primary Registries Network  
• Pan African Clinical Trials Registry

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World’s Top 11 search-engines of Scholarly literature

List of most popular search engines of scientific papers and research articles..

What was your primary source of information during your undergraduate studies? Wikipedia? Google?

Aah, they are not going to work especially if you are planning to go for Masters of PhD studies or are already enrolled in one of the masters or doctoral program in your university. At higher stage of learning, more robust, more scientific and more reliable databases of knowledge are needed. Let us share with you Top 8 databases in the world which are serving millions of postgraduate students, professors and scientists around the world.

• Google Scholar

Perhaps the most widely known search-engine to look for papers in the world is Google Scholar , which is so popular that hardly any postgraduate can claim being unaware of it. 

Google Scholar ( scholar.google.com ) is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes most peer-reviewed online academic journals and books, conference papers, theses and dissertations, preprints, abstracts, technical reports, and other scholarly literature, including court opinions and patents. While Google does not publish the size of Google Scholar’s database, scientometric researchers estimated it to contain roughly 389 million documents including articles, citations and patents making it the world’s largest academic search engine in January 2018. Previously, the size was estimated at 160 million documents as of May 2014. An earlier statistical estimate published in PLOS ONE using a Mark and recapture method estimated approximately 80–90% coverage of all articles published in English with an estimate of 100 million. This estimate also determined how many documents were freely available on the web.

• Crossref Search

Crossref is an international body that assigns Digital Object Identifier. All publications with DOI numbers assigned by Crossref can be searched in its databases. Thus the database of Crossref ( search.crossref.org ) is a rich resource of finding research papers.

Scopus  ( scopus.com/search/form.uri ) is not ScienceDirect but is being run by Elsevier. It is most powerful search engine after Google Scholar. Scopus is an index and by searching within Scopus you would find all papers that are indexed in Scopus. It’s outreach is broader than that of Elsevier as you can find literature from other publishers as well in it.

• ScienceDirect

It should be noted here that except GoogleScholar and XueshuBaidu  all search-engines listed here belong to certain publishers. Thus, when you would search within them, you are searching in the database of scholarly articles and books being published by these publishers.

ScienceDirect.com  is one of the most popular databases, owned by Elsevier. Elsevier is a Dutch information and analytics company and one of the world’s major providers of scientific, technical, and medical information. It was established in 1880 as a publishing company. It is a part of the RELX Group, known until 2015 as Reed Elsevier. Its products include journals such as The Lancet and Cell, the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, the Trends and Current Opinion series of journals, the online citation database Scopus, and the ClinicalKey solution for clinicians. Elsevier’s products and services include the entire academic research lifecycle, including software and data-management, instruction and assessment tools.

All literature available at ScienceDirect is at least indexed in Scopus and at most  in Ei Compendex, SCI, SCIE, SSCI, ESCI etc.

Wiley Online Library ( https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ ) is owned by John Wiley & Sons, Inc, which is one of the famous publishers of scientific and academic works. This search engine would allow you to explore within all journals by Wiley. From 2021, Hindawi publishing group is also owned by Wiley.

• IEEE Xplore

IEEE Xplore ( ieeexplore.ieee.org ) is one of the favorite search engines of the scholars from engineering and technical disciplines.

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IEEE Xplore is owned by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). IEEE is a professional association with its corporate office in New York City and its operations center in Piscataway, New Jersey. It was formed in 1963 from the amalgamation of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Institute of Radio Engineers. IEEE claims to be the world’s largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. IEEE and its members inspire a global community through its highly cited publications, conferences, technology standards, and professional and educational activities.

All literature available at IEEE Xplore may not be necessarily indexed in Ei Compendex database however most of the publications by IEEE are at least indexed in Ei Compendex. Ei Compendex is the broadest and most complete engineering literature database available in the world. It provides a truly holistic and global view of peer reviewed and indexed publications with over 20 million records from 77 countries across 190 engineering disciplines. Overall, the literature in IEEE Xplore may be indexed in various popular databases including Ei Compendex, Scopus, SCI, SCIE, SSCI, ESCI etc.

• SpringerLink

SpringerLink ( link.springer.com ) is one of the most important search engines among the scholars from various disciplines. It is owned by Springer Nature. Springer Nature is an academic publishing company created by the May 2015 merger of Springer Science+Business Media and Holtzbrinck Publishing Group’s Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, and Macmillan Education.

SpringerLink provides researchers with access to millions of scientific documents from journals, books, series, protocols, reference works and proceedings. Literature in SpringerLink may be indexed in various popular databases including Ei Compendex, Scopus, SCI, SCIE, SSCI, ESCI etc.

Scilit ( www.scilit.net ) is one of the modern search engines for searching scholarly publications from various disciplines. Scilit is owned by MDPI. MDPI is an organisational acronym used by two related organisations, Molecular Diversity Preservation International and Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, which were both co-founded by Shu-Kun Lin. The first organisation, Molecular Diversity Preservation International, founded in 1996, is primarily a chemical sample archive, with some scholarly publishing and conference activities. The second organisation, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, was founded in 2010, primarily as a publisher. As of 2018 MDPI publishes 213 academic journals, including 37 that have received an impact factor.

Scilit search engine not just searches in the databases of MDPI publications but in the databases of other publishers as well. Thus, unlike ScienceDirect, IEEEXplore and SpringerLink, it is more comprehensive search-engine and can be compared with GoogleScholar and XueshuBaidu.

Scilit provides researchers with access to millions of scientific documents from journals, books, series, protocols, reference works and proceedings. Literature in Scilit may be indexed in various popular databases including Scopus, SCI, SCIE, SSCI, ESCI, Ei Compendex and some other, relatively unpopular, databases etc.

• Emerald Insight

Recently, Emerald Insight, one of the most famous publishers of scholarly literature has launched its own search-engine. Emerald Publishing Limited is a scholarly publisher of academic journals and books in the fields of management, business, education, library studies, health care, and engineering. It was founded in the United Kingdom in 1967 and has its headquarters in Bingley.

According to their official website, Emerald publishes monographs, handbooks, serials and professional texts across business and social science championing new ideas that would advance research and practice. Emerald Insight  ( emerald.com/insight ) is likely to provide scholars with access to millions of scientific documents from journals, books, series, protocols, reference works and proceedings published by Emerald Insight.  Currently, the site is being run as pilot project however it is expected to be launched soon after some trials. Literature in Emerald Insight  may be indexed in various popular databases including Ei Compendex, Scopus, SCI, SCIE, SSCI, ESCI etc.

• XueshuBaidu

Have your ever found your Chinese lab-mates or colleges, searching on a very unique search – engine that you had never heard about? Yes, that’s XueshuBaidu (xueshu.baidu.com), a Chinese alternative to GoogleScholar and equally rich in terms of its access to millions of scientific documents from journals, books, series, protocols, reference works and proceedings. It is owned by Baidu Inc., a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence, headquartered in Beijing’s Haidian District. It is one of the largest AI and internet companies in the world.

All literature available at XueshuBaidu may not be necessarily indexed in CNKI database however most of the publications are at least indexed in CNKI database. CNKI is a key national information construction project under the lead of Tsinghua University, and supported by PRC Ministry of Education, PRC Ministry of Science, Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China and PRC General Administration of Press and Publication. This project was firstly launched in 1996 by Tsinghua University and Tsinghua Tongfang Company. The first database was China Academic Journals Full-text Database, which became popular in China rapidly, especially in academic libraries. In 1999, CNKI started to develop online databases. Till now, CNKI has built a comprehensive China Integrated Knowledge Resources System, including journals, doctoral dissertations, masters’ theses, proceedings, newspapers, yearbooks, statistical yearbooks, ebooks, patents, standards and so on. 10 services centers have been set in Beijing, North America, Japan, North Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. And it is widely used by universities, research institutes, governments, think tanks, companies, hospitals and public libraries.  Overall, the literature in XueshuBaidu may be indexed in various popular databases including Ei Compendex, Scopus, SCI, SCIE, SSCI, ESCI, Ei Compendex etc.

• Taylor & Francis

Taylor & Francis ( www.tandfonline.com ) owns rich literature on almost every topic.  Overall, the literature in T & F may be indexed in various popular databases including Ei Compendex, Scopus, SCI, SCIE, SSCI, ESCI, Ei Compendex etc.

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Methodology

• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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McCombes, S. (2023, September 11). How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved March 25, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/literature-review/

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• Key guides for students

Literature Review

How to search effectively.

• Find examples of literature reviews
• How to write a literature review
• Grey literature

The  Literature searching interactive tutorial  includes self-paced, guided activities to assist you in developing  effective search skills..

1. Identify search words

Analyse your research topic or question.

• What are the main ideas?
• What concepts or theories have you already covered?
• Write down your main ideas, synonyms, related words and phrases.
• If you're looking for specific types of research, use these suggested terms: qualitative, quantitative, methodology, review, survey, test, trend (and more).
• Be aware of UK and US spelling variations. E.g. organisation OR organization, ageing OR aging.
• Interactive Keyword Builder
• Identifying effective keywords

2. Connect your search words

Find results with one or more search words.

Use OR between words that mean the same thing.

E.g.  adolescent  OR  teenager

This search will find results with either (or both) of the search words.

Find results with two search words

Use AND between words which represent the main ideas in the question.

E.g. adolescent AND “physical activity”

This will find results with both of the search words.

Exclude search words

Use NOT to exclude words that you don’t want in your search results.

E.g. (adolescent OR teenager) NOT “young adult”

3. Use search tricks

Search for different word endings.

Truncation *

The asterisk symbol * will help you search for different word endings.

E.g. teen* will find results with the words: teen, teens, teenager, teenagers

Specific truncation symbols will vary. Check the 'Help' section of the database you are searching.

Search for common phrases

Phrase searching “...........”

Double quotation marks help you search for common phrases and make your results more relevant.

E.g. “physical activity” will find results with the words physical activity together as a phrase.

Search for spelling variations within related terms

Wildcards ?

Wildcard symbols allow you to search for spelling variations within the same or related terms.

E.g. wom?n will find results with women OR woman

Specific wild card symbols will vary. Check the 'Help' section of the database you are searching.

Search terms within specific ranges of each other

Proximity  w/#

Proximity searching allows you to specify where your search terms will appear in relation to each other.

E.g.  pain w/10 morphine will search for pain within ten words of morphine

Specific proximity symbols will vary. Check the 'Help' section of the database you are searching.

4. Improve your search results

All library databases are different and you can't always search and refine in the same way. Try to be consistent when transferring your search in the library databases you have chosen.

Narrow and refine your search results by:

• year of publication or date range (for recent or historical research)
• document or source type (e.g. article, review or book)
• subject or keyword (for relevance). Try repeating your search using the 'subject' headings or 'keywords' field to focus your search
• searching in particular fields, i.e. citation and abstract. Explore the available dropdown menus to change the fields to be searched.

When searching, remember to:

Adapt your search and keep trying.

Searching for information is a process and you won't always get it right the first time. Improve your results by changing your search and trying again until you're happy with what you have found.

Keep track of your searches

Keeping track of searches saves time as you can rerun them, store references, and set up regular alerts for new research relevant to your topic.

Most library databases allow you to register with a personal account. Look for a 'log in', 'sign in' or 'register' button to get started.

• Literature review search tracker (Excel spreadsheet)

Manage your references

There are free and subscription reference management programs available on the web or to download on your computer.

• EndNote - The University has a license for EndNote. It is available for all students and staff, although is recommended for postgraduates and academic staff.
• Zotero - Free software recommended for undergraduate students.
• Previous: How to write a literature review
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• Last Updated: Mar 13, 2024 8:37 AM
• URL: https://uow.libguides.com/literaturereview

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Literature reviews

• Introduction
• Conducting your search
• Store and organise the literature
• Evaluate and critique the literature
• Different subject areas

Finding literature reviews on your topic

Find reviews

• Run your search in the database
• Limit the results to review or literature review -  often found under Document type

If there is no option to limit to reviews try adding the word "review" to your search.

• Go to the Advanced search of the database

• Type  review  into a search line and change the field option to Title

Note: The results may include book reviews using this method.

Useful databases to find review articles

• Annual reviews online Annual Reviews publishes analytic reviews in focused disciplines within the biomedical, physical, and social sciences. The reviews cover significant developments in the different fields.
• Web of Science Go to the Advanced Search to set the document type to "Review". Web of Science covers the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities.
• Scopus Click on Limit to change the Document type to Review. Scopus is a multidisciplinary abstract and citation database of peer reviewed literature, book reviews and conference proceedings.
• Subject guides These guides list recommended databases useful for your particular subject area.
• << Previous: Different subject areas
• Last Updated: Dec 15, 2023 12:09 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/research-techniques/literature-reviews

AI Tools To Automate Your Literature Review: Which To Use?

Researching and writing outa literature review can be a daunting task, but AI-powered tools like Semantic Scholar, Research Rabbit, and Scite are revolutionising this process.

These tools, leveraging artificial intelligence, automate the arduous task of sifting through mountains of academic papers, extracting key information, and summarizing relevant research.

In this article, lets explore how AI research assistants and advanced search engines streamline the literature review process, making it faster, more efficient, and thorough for conducting scientific research. Discover the best AI tools to transform your literature review work. 

Why Use AI Tools To Write Literature Review?

The vast sea of academic papers can be daunting. This is where AI tools like ChatGPT, Semantic Scholar, and Research Rabbit become indispensable.

AI tools for literature review are adept at sifting through millions of papers across various databases like PubMed and Google Scholar. They use AI algorithms and natural language processing (NLP) to identify relevant research articles, providing a summary of key information.

Some AI-powered research assistant such as Scite, uses AI to scan through research data, offering insights into the supporting or contrasting evidence within peer-reviewed papers. This can be a valuable tool for finding specific details in a systematic literature review.

These tools also streamline the literature search by automating the process of citation and reference management. Tools like Connected Papers and Research Rabbit are adept at evaluating and summarizing relevant academic papers, saving you time and effort.

They can extract key information from PDF documents and research articles, making it fast and easy to organize your findings.

AI-powered tools for literature review also help in creating a thorough literature search, essential for:

• Systematic literature reviews
• Meta-analyses, and
• Identifying research gap.

They can elicit information from a variety of sources, providing a comprehensive view of your research question. This approach ensures that your literature review is not only rich in content but also diverse in perspectives.

Best AI Tools To Write Literature Review

If you are looking at exploring AI tools to help you write literature review, consider these instead. They are revolutionizing the way literature reviews are conducted:

Connected Papers

As the name suggests, Connected Papers focuses on showing how various academic papers are interconnected. This generative AI tool helps you visualize the research landscape around your topic, making it easier to:

• Identify key papers,
• Identify potential gaps in your literature review, and
• Understand emerging trends in scientific research.

While not a traditional literature review tool, ChatGPT is revolutionising academic research by offering prompt-based assistance.

This chatbot-like AI tool can help automate parts of the literature review process, such as generating research questions or providing quick summaries of complex topics.

ChatGPT’s AI-driven insights can be a valuable starting point for deeper exploration into specific research areas. The key is to provide it with the right input, and then to give the right prompts.

Research Rabbit

This tool uses AI to scan a variety of sources, including peer-reviewed research data. It’s particularly useful for conducting systematic literature reviews, as it can evaluate and summarize relevant academic papers, highlighting supporting or contrasting evidence.

Its key features include mapping out connections between research papers, identifying key papers in a research area, and helping to understand how various research topics are interconnected.

Research Rabbit also excels in reference management, a vital component of academic writing.

Scite is an innovative tool that uses AI technologies to provide a new layer of insight into scientific literature.

It evaluates the credibility of research by analyzing citation contexts, helping you to identify the most impactful and relevant papers for your research question.

Scite’s most distinctive feature is its Smart Citations. Unlike traditional citations that merely count how often a paper is cited, Smart Citations provide context by showing how a paper has been cited. This means that for each citation, Scite shows you the other relevant papers that:

• Contrasts, or
• Mentioning evidence for the claims made in the original paper. 

As a result, Scite is invaluable for conducting thorough literature reviews, especially for systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Semantic Scholar

This AI-powered research assistant stands out in its ability to sift through vast databases like PubMed and Google Scholar.

It uses advanced natural language processing (NLP) and AI algorithms to extract key information from millions of academic papers, offering concise summaries and identifying relevant research articles.

What sets Semantic Scholar apart is its AI algorithms. It analyses millions of academic publications, extracting key information such as:

• Figures, 
• Tables, as well as 
• Contextual relevance of each paper.

This enables the tool to provide highly relevant search results, summaries, and insights that are tailored to your specific interests and research needs.

What To Watch Out For When Writing Literature Review With AI Tools?

When you’re writing a literature review with AI tools, you’re stepping into a world where technology meets academic rigor. To ensure they balance each other out, by watching over these details as you use AI when researching:

Bias  

AI algorithms, including those used in literature search tools, can inherit biases from their training data.

This might skew the search results towards more popular or frequently cited papers, potentially overlooking lesser-known yet significant research.

Ensure you’re accessing a variety of sources to maintain a balanced perspective. When possible, always look into newer papers on your research area, as these may not have been discovered by your AI tool yet.

Citation Accuracy

While tools like Scite provide advanced citation analysis, the accuracy of AI in identifying and interpreting citations is not infallible.

Always verify the citations and references manually, especially when dealing with complex literature or less digitised sources.

You can also use multiple AI tools to check for citation accuracy. For example, rather than simply relying on Scite, you can also use other reference management softwares like: 

• Refworks, or

Contextual Understanding

AI tools, efficient as they are, might not fully grasp the nuanced context of your research question.

Tools like ChatGPT and Semantic Scholar provide summaries and identify relevant papers using natural language processing (NLP), but they may not always align perfectly with your specific research focus.

Always double-check that the AI’s interpretation matches your intended research angle. This means actually spending time to read articles within the research area, and become familiar with it. 

Depth of Analysis

AI tools can automate the initial stages of your literature review by quickly sifting through databases like PubMed and Google Scholar to find relevant papers.

However, they might not evaluate the depth and subtlety of arguments in academic writing as thoroughly as a human researcher would.

It’s crucial to supplement AI findings with your own detailed analysis. This means you should not rely on AI completely, but to actually roll up your sleeves and work on the analysis yourself as well.

Over-reliance on AI

There’s a temptation to overly rely on AI for streamlining every aspect of the literature review process.

Remember, AI is a tool to assist, not replace, your critical thinking and scholarly diligence.

Use AI to enhance your workflow but maintain an active role in evaluating and synthesising research data. See AI as a tool, not your replacement. You need to be there to pilot the AI tool, to ensure it is doing its job properly.

AI Tools For Literature Review: Keep Up With Times

Leveraging AI tools for your literature review is a game-changer. Tools like Semantic Scholar, Research Rabbit, and Scite, powered by advanced AI algorithms, not only automate the search for relevant papers but also provide critical summaries and evaluations.

They enhance the literature review process in academic research, making it more efficient and comprehensive.

As AI continues to evolve, these tools become indispensable for researchers, helping to streamline workflows, organize findings, and extract key insights from a vast array of scientific literature with unparalleled ease and speed.

Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.

Thank you for visiting Academia Insider.

We are here to help you navigate Academia as painlessly as possible. We are supported by our readers and by visiting you are helping us earn a small amount through ads and affiliate revenue - Thank you!

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The 8 Best Search Engines of 2024

While you could use Google to find other search engines, here are the ones we think are arguably better

Most people prefer to rely on just one or two search engines that deliver three key features:

• Relevant results (results you are interested in)
• Uncluttered, easy-to-read interface
• Helpful options to broaden or tighten a search

This article's options should help you find the best search engine for your needs.

These are mainly web page search engines, but others exist for specific searches. Other search engines exist just for people, images, and, of course, jobs.

Duck Duck Go Search

Does not track or store user information.

Fast searches.

Optional one-month search window.

Search results are not dated.

Limited image search results.

No personalized results.

At first, DuckDuckGo.com looks like Google. However, many subtleties make this search engine different.

DuckDuckGo offers some slick features, like zero-click information, wherein all your answers appear on the first results page. DuckDuckgo offers disambiguation prompts that help to clarify what question you are asking. Most significantly, DuckDuckGo does not track information about you or share your search habits with others.

Give DuckDuckGo.com a try. You might like this clean and simple search engine.

Google Search

Favors fresh content.

Ranks blogs and services.

Accessible on any device.

Collects information on users.

Hidden content might damage ranking.

Search delivers too many results.

Google is the reigning leader of spartan searching and is the most used search engine in the world. Google is fast, relevant, and has the most extensive single catalog of web pages available.

Try Google images, maps, and news features; they are outstanding services for locating photos, geographic directions, and headlines.

Yippy Search

Blocks undesirable websites.

Search result previews.

Cloud of related topics in results.

Cannot turn off the filtering process.

Ad-supported.

No intuitive search.

Yippy is a Deep Web engine that searches other search engines for you. Unlike the regular internet, which uses robot spider programs for indexing, Deep Web pages are usually harder to locate by conventional search.

That's where Yippy becomes very useful. If you are searching for obscure hobby interest blogs, hard-to-locate government information, offbeat news, academic research, and similar content, then Yippy is your tool. 

Bing Search

Favors older, established web pages.

Ranks home pages, not blogs.

Crawls hidden and non-hidden content equally.

Ranks forums low in search results.

Instant search is slower than Google.

Some ad-heavy search result screens.

Bing  is Microsoft's attempt at unseating Google, arguably the second-most-popular search engine today.

In the leftmost column, Bing tries to support your research by offering suggestions; it also provides search options across the top of the screen. Things like wiki suggestions, visual search, and related searches might benefit you. Bing is not dethroning Google soon, but it is worth trying. 

Dogpile Search

Links to "favorite fetches" on whimsical home screen.

Pulls from multiple databases for broad results.

Fast search results.

Result screen entries aren't dated.

No home screen personalization.

Lots of sponsored results.

Years ago, Dogpile preceded Google as a fast and efficient choice for web searching. Things changed in the late 1990s, Dogpile faded into obscurity, and Google became the leading platform.

Today, however, Dogpile is back with a growing index and a clean and quick presentation that is a testimony to its halcyon days. If you want to try a search tool with an engaging appearance and desirable crosslink results, definitely try Dogpile.

Google Scholar Search

Save articles to read later.

Citations in several styles.

Results include how many times an article has been cited and by whom.

Wide-ranging but not comprehensive.

No criteria for what makes a result "scholarly."

No way to limit results by discipline.

Google Scholar is a particular version of its platform. This search engine will help you win debates.

Google Scholar focuses on scientific and hard-research academic material that scientists and scholars have scrutinized. Example content includes graduate theses, legal and court opinions, scholarly publications, medical research reports, physics research papers, and explanations of economics and world politics.

If you're looking for critical information that can stand up in a heated debate with educated people, then Google Scholar is where you want to go to arm yourself with high-powered sources.

Webopedia Search

Focuses on technical terms and applications.

Friendly to non-tech users.

A different Term of the Day every day.

Searches only Webopedia's 10,000+ word and phrase database.

You have to open the article to find out more.

Webopedia is one of the most useful websites on the web. Webopedia is an encyclopedic resource dedicated to searching technology terminology and computer definitions, the domain name system , or what DDRAM means on your computer. Webopedia is a perfect resource for non-technical people to make more sense of the computers around them. 

Yahoo Search

Home screen includes news and trending topics.

One-stop shop for search, email, horoscope, and weather.

Options to search verticals rather than the web.

Ads aren't clearly labeled as ads.

Search results aren't dated.

Large ads on the home screen.

Yahoo has several things: a search engine, a news aggregator, a shopping center, an email service, a travel directory, a horoscope and games center, and more.

This web-portal breadth of choice makes this a beneficial site for internet beginners. Searching the web should also be about discovery and exploration, and Yahoo delivers.

The Internet Archive Search

Search text, news, archived websites, and much more.

Advanced search also available.

"Wayback Machine" lets you search old websites.

Vast amount of archived content can be overwhelming.

Advanced search requires a learning curve.

Not practical for daily use.

The Internet Archive is a favorite destination for longtime Web lovers. The Archive has been taking snapshots of the entire World Wide Web for years, helping users virtually travel back in time to see what a web page looked like in 1999 or what the news was like around Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

It's essential to think of the Internet Archive as much more than a web page archiver; it's a versatile search engine that also finds movies and other videos, music, and documents.

You won't visit the Archive daily like Google, Yahoo, or Bing, but when you need historical context, use this search site.

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Integrity of Databases for Literature Searches in Nursing

The quality of literature used as the foundation to any research or scholarly project is critical. The purpose of this study was to analyze the extent to which predatory nursing journals were included in credible databases, MEDLINE, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and Scopus, commonly used by nurse scholars when searching for information. Findings indicated that no predatory nursing journals were currently indexed in MEDLINE or CINAHL, and only one journal was in Scopus. Citations to articles published in predatory nursing journals are not likely found in a search using these curated databases but rather through Google or Google Scholar search engines.

Research, evidence-based practice, quality improvement studies, and other scholarly projects typically begin with a literature review. In research, the review of the literature describes existing knowledge about the topic, reveals gaps and further research questions to be answered, and provides a rationale for engaging in a new study. In evidence-based practice, the literature review provides evidence to answer clinical questions and make informed decisions. Quality improvement studies also begin with a search of the literature to gather available knowledge about a problem and explore interventions used in other settings. The appearance of journals that are published by predatory publishers has introduced the danger that reviews of the literature include inadequate, poorly designed, and low-quality information being used as “evidence”—raising the possibility of risky and harmful practice. Researchers and authors should be confident in the literature they cite; readers should have assurance that the literature review is based on sound, authoritative sources. When predatory journals are cited, that trust is eroded. No matter what type of study or project is being done, the quality of literature is critical for the development of nursing knowledge and for providing up-to-date information, concepts, theories, and approaches to care. 1

An effective literature review requires searching various reliable and credible databases such as MEDLINE (through PubMed or Ovid) and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), among others that are relevant to the topic. The ease of searching using a web browser (now commonly referred to as “googling”) has increased the risk of finding sources published in predatory and low-quality journals that have not met the standards of research and scholarship that can be trusted as credible and reliable evidence.

The purpose of this article is to present an analysis of the extent to which predatory nursing journals are included in MEDLINE, CINAHL, and Scopus databases, used by nurse researchers and other nurses when searching for information, and in the Directory of Open Access Journals. This directory indexes “high-quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals” and should not include any predatory journals. 2

Statement of Significance

What is known or assumed to be true about this topic?

The quality of nursing literature used is vital for the development of research studies, application of evidence in clinical settings, and other scholarly projects. Nurse scholars need to be confident as they search the literature that they are accessing sound information sources and not articles from predatory nursing journals, which do not adhere to quality and ethical publishing standards. Citations of articles in predatory nursing journals may be found when searching Google and Google Scholar, making these citations easy to access but potentially resulting in the integration of poor quality research into the nursing literature. On the other hand, searches through credible databases—MEDLINE, CINAHL, and Scopus—are less likely to yield citations from predatory publications.

What this article adds:

This study helps validate the trustworthiness of these databases for conducting searches in nursing.

PREDATORY JOURNALS

Many studies have documented the problem of predatory journals. These journals do not adhere to quality and ethical publishing standards, often use deceptive language in emails to encourage authors to submit their manuscripts to them, are open access but may not be transparent with the article processing charge, may have quick but questionable peer review, and may publish inaccurate information on their Web sites such as impact factor and indexing. 3 – 6 Predatory publishing is an issue in many fields including nursing. In a recent study, 127 predatory journals were identified in nursing. 7

Citations acknowledge the ideas of others and give credit to the authors of the original work. When articles are cited in a subsequent publication, those citations disseminate the information beyond the original source, and the article in which it is cited might in turn be referenced again, transferring knowledge from one source to yet another. When articles in predatory journals are cited, the same process occurs. Those citations transfer knowledge from the predatory publication beyond that source. Studies have found that authors are citing articles published in predatory journals in nursing as well as other fields. 7 – 10 Nurse scholars need to be confident as they search the literature that they are accessing sound information sources and not articles from predatory journals.

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE INFORMATION RESOURCES

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) supports researchers and clinicians through its multiple health information resources including PubMed, MEDLINE, and PubMed Central (PMC). PubMed serves as the search engine to access the MEDLINE database, PMC, and books, chapters, and other documents that are indexed by the NLM. PubMed is free and publicly available: by using PubMed, researchers can search more than 30 million citations to the biomedical literature. 11 The majority of records in PubMed are from MEDLINE, which has citations from more than 5200 scholarly journals. For inclusion in MEDLINE, journals are assessed for their quality by the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee. 12 Five areas are included in this assessment: scope of the journal (ie, in a biomedical subject); quality of the content (validity, importance of the content, originality, and contribution of the journal to the coverage of the field); editorial standards and practices; production quality (eg, layout and graphics); and audience (content addresses health care professionals).

PMC includes journal citations and full-text articles that are selected by the NLM for digital archiving. To be included in PMC, journals are evaluated for their scope and scientific, editorial, and technical quality. 13 Journals considered for inclusion are evaluated by independent individuals both inside and outside PMC. 14 PMC serves as the repository for articles to meet the compliance requirements of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other funding agencies for public access to funded research. About 12% of the articles in PMC are deposited by individual authors to be in compliance with funders and 64% by publishers, scholarly societies, and other groups. 15 Beginning in June 2020, as a pilot program, preprints reporting research funded by the NIH also can be deposited in PMC. 16

CINAHL AND SCOPUS

The journal assessment and indexing processes for CINAHL and Scopus are similar to those used by the NLM. However, as private corporations, EBSCO (CINAHL) and Elsevier (Scopus) are not required to make journal selection processes publicly available or explicit. CINAHL has an advisory board for journal selection. A CINAHL representative provided the following criteria for indexing of journals in CINAHL: high impact factor; usage in reputable subject indexes (eg, the NLM catalog); peer-reviewed journals covered by other databases (eg, Web of Science and Scopus); top-ranked journals by industry studies; and article quality (avoiding low-quality journals) (personal communication, October 19, 2020).

Elsevier's Scopus provides a webpage referring to the journal selection and assessment processes. Journals being considered for indexing in Scopus are evaluated by the Content Selection and Advisory Board and must meet the following criteria: peer-reviewed with a publicly available description of the peer review process; published on a regular basis; has a registered International Standard Serial Number (ISSN); includes references in Roman (Latin) script; has English language titles and abstracts; and has publicly available publication ethics and publication malpractice statements. 17

LITERATURE REVIEW

Studies have shown that in health care fields, researchers, clinicians, faculty, and students regularly search MEDLINE for their research and other scholarly and clinical information. 18 – 21 De Groote et al 18 found that 81% of health science faculty used MEDLINE to locate articles for their research. MEDLINE was used by the majority of faculty in each individual health care field including nursing (75%) and medicine (87.5%) for searching the literature and finding articles. In another study of 15 different resources, medical faculty and residents reported that PubMed was used most frequently for searching the databases of the NLM, primarily MEDLINE. 20 Few studies have focused on the search practices of nurses. In a review of the literature, Alving et al 22 found that hospital nurses primarily searched Google for information on evidence-based nursing. They used Google more than bibliographic databases.

The quality of content that is retrieved when using PubMed as a search engine is important considering its widespread use for accessing scholarly and clinical information in nursing and other fields. Manca et al 23 reported that articles published in predatory journals were being retrieved when conducting searches using PubMed and were a concern for researchers. Based on their studies of predatory journals in neurology 24 and rehabilitation, 25 they concluded that predatory journals “leaked into PubMed” through PMC because of less stringent criteria for inclusion of journals. 23 Citations to articles from predatory journals then could be found using the PubMed search engine. However, in a letter to the editor, Topper et al 26 from the NLM clarified that individual articles published in predatory journals might be deposited in PMC to meet the requirements of research funding and be searchable in PubMed. Topper and colleagues make a clear distinction between journals indexed in MEDLINE or PMC and citations of individual articles that were deposited in PMC to meet funder requirements.

The aim of this study was to determine whether predatory nursing journals were included in databases used by nurse researchers and other nurses when searching for information. These databases included MEDLINE (searched via PubMed), CINAHL (EBSCO), and Scopus (Elsevier) and in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

In an earlier study, 127 predatory nursing journals were identified and assessed for characteristics of predatory publications. That dataset was used for the current study. For each predatory nursing journal, information was retrieved from the NLM Catalog, Ulrichsweb, and journal and publisher Web sites. Ulrichsweb 27 provides bibliographic and publisher information on academic and scholarly journals, open access journals, peer-reviewed titles, magazines, newspapers, and other publications. Journal titles of the predatory journals were often similar to nonpredatory journals and could be easily mistaken. To ensure accuracy, the information for each journal was checked for consistency between these sources using the ISSN, exact journal title, and publisher name. The purpose of an ISSN is to identify a publication and distinguish it from other publications with similar names. An ISSN is mandatory for all publications in many countries and having one assigned is considered a journal best practice. 28 For each predatory journal, the following data were collected if available: complete journal title; abbreviated journal title; acronym; ISSN (electronic and/or print); DOI prefix; publisher name and Web site URL; NLM index status; number of predatory journal articles cited in MEDLINE and PMC (when searching using PubMed), in CINAHL, and in Scopus; if the journal was indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals; status in Ulrichsweb; and Google Scholar profile URL.

Counts of articles cited were checked individually by journal title, publisher, and/or ISSN. Once ISSNs (both electronic and print where available) were assembled, a search algorithm was created, which included all retrieved journal ISSNs. MEDLINE was searched via PubMed using a combination of NLM journal title abbreviations and ISSNs. CINAHL, Scopus, and the Directory of Open Access Journals were searched using a combination of ISSN, journal title abbreviation, full title, and publisher. Results were visually inspected for accuracy and alignment with dataset fields.

Data analysis

Data were collected between January and April 2020. Data were entered into an Excel spreadsheet and organized by predatory journal name; abbreviated journal title; acronym; ISSN (electronic, print); DOI prefix; Web site URL; entry in NLM Catalog (yes/no); index status; number of articles cited in PubMed, CINAHL, and Scopus; Directory of Open Access Journals (included/not included); Ulrichsweb status (active/ceased); publisher; and Google Scholar profile URL. Frequencies and medians are reported.

Of the 127 predatory nursing journals in the dataset, only 102 had ISSNs to use for the search. Eighteen of the journals had records in the NLM Catalog, but only 2 of those had ever been indexed in MEDLINE, and neither are currently indexed. These 2 journals had been published earlier by a reputable publisher but then were sold to one of the large predatory publishers. The NLM Catalog record for these journals indicates that citations of articles from them appeared in MEDLINE through 2014 for one of the journals and 2018 for other, but following their transition to the new publisher are no longer included. Consistent with the MEDLINE results, these same 2 journals had been indexed in Scopus as well. Citations of articles from one of these journals were added to Scopus up to 2014, with no articles cited thereafter. Articles from the second journal continue to be added through 2020. One additional journal from the predatory journal dataset is currently in Scopus, however, only through 2014. None of the predatory nursing journals were indexed in CINAHL based on full journal title, title abbreviation, ISSN, or publisher. Two journals in the dataset were found in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

When searching PubMed, we found citations of articles from 16 predatory nursing journals. The number of citations ranged from 1 to 372 citations (from one of the journals indexed earlier in MEDLINE but sold to a predatory publisher). The second highest number of citations (n = 168) was of articles from a predatory nursing journal that had been depositing articles in PMC (and thus were retrievable when searching PubMed) but is no longer adding new material to PMC. The other citations were of articles deposited in PMC to meet requirements of NIH and other research funding. The predatory journals in which these articles were published, however, are not indexed in MEDLINE or PMC.

There were no articles from predatory nursing journals cited in CINAHL. Scopus has citations from the 2 predatory nursing journals that are no longer indexed there: 616 that were published in one of the journals and 120 from the other. Articles from a third predatory nursing journal in the study dataset, which is currently indexed in Scopus, totaled 173 (see Table).

Abbreviation: CINAHL, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature.

a Predatory nursing journals with 3 or more citations to articles.

b Search using PubMed.

This analysis documented that none of the predatory nursing journals in the study dataset were currently indexed in MEDLINE or CINAHL, and only one journal is still in Scopus. Most of the citations of articles from predatory journals found in a search of these databases are from earlier years before the journals were sold to one of the large predatory publishers. Other citations are to articles deposited in PMC in compliance with research funder requirements.

By using PubMed as a search engine and entry point to the databases of the NLM, researchers can search millions of records included in MEDLINE, or in process for inclusion, and articles from PMC deposited by publishers or authors for compliance with funders. Six million records, and about 5500 journals, can be searched in CINAHL Complete, 29 and Scopus, the largest of the proprietary databases, provides access to 24000 journals and 60 million records. 30 Results from this study show that very few articles published in predatory nursing journals find their way into a search done using PubMed and Scopus and none into CINAHL.

In a prior study, 814 citations of articles in predatory nursing journals were found in articles published in nonpredatory nursing journals. 7 Based on this current study, the conclusion can be made that these citations are not coming from searches in MEDLINE/PubMed, CINAHL, or Scopus and are likely from searches done using Google or Google Scholar as the search engine. The databases examined in this study are curated by organizations with a vested interest in maintaining and improving the quality of the research literature in those databases.

Searching multiple databases using different search engines can be frustrating and time consuming. There is overlap among MEDLINE, CINAHL, and Scopus. However, these are curated databases and, as this study found, are unlikely to return many, if any, predatory citations as part of the search results. Still, it falls on the searcher to eliminate duplicates and redundant citations. Further, certain types of literature, such as theses, dissertations, and fugitive (or “gray” literature), 31 are unlikely to be found in any of these databases, even though those citations may be important or relevant sources. Given this, it is easy to understand the intuitive appeal of Google Scholar, which provides “one stop shopping”: “From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.” 32 Google and Google Scholar were founded with a mission to become the most comprehensive search engines in the world. While this allows someone to scour the World Wide Web and Internet for some of the most obscure facts available, at the same time, little is done to verify or validate the results that are returned. Thus, it falls on the searcher to be diligent and evaluate the results of a Google or Google Scholar search, which will include citations of articles in predatory journals. This is easily confirmed by the fact that many predatory journal Web sites promote the Google Scholar logo as a sign of indexing or a badge of legitimacy.

Another vexing issue that was revealed in this study is that of reputable journals that have been bought by predatory publishers. This study found 2 journals in this category. Brown 33 reported on 16 medical specialty journals that were purchased from 2 Canadian commercial publishers by a predatory publisher. In all these cases, it is the same predatory publisher, although some of the purchases were made under a different business imprint, adding further confusion to an already muddied situation. Jeffrey Beall, who coined the term “predatory publisher” and maintained the blog “Scholarly Open Access” for almost a decade, was quoted by Brown 33 : “[The company] is not only buying journals, it is buying metrics and indexing, such as the journals' impact factors and listing in Scopus and PubMed, in order to look legitimate.” One positive finding from this study was that the 2 purchased journals that were identified were quickly de-accessioned by the NLM and are no longer indexed in MEDLINE, although citations from their pre-predatory era remain intact.

Recommendations

All of this presents a confusing picture, but it is possible to make some specific recommendations to aid researchers, clinicians, faculty, and students in their literature searches. First, become familiar with the journals and publications in your field. This is a basic foundation of scholarship. As you read articles, remember where they were published, learn journal titles, and focus on sources as well as the content. As you come across predatory journals in nursing and health care, make note of them and learn their titles too. Remember that many predatory journals adopt names that are intended to be confusing and may differ from a legitimate journal by only one letter, such as “Africa” and “African.”

Second, consider carefully how to approach your search from the outset. If you choose to start with MEDLINE (searched via PubMed), CINAHL, or Scopus, then you can have some assurance that the results will not return citations from predatory journals—although you should still verify every citation that you receive. On the other hand, Google and Google Scholar can be a “quick and easy” way to get started but will require that you carefully review and evaluate the results. If you need to venture to other more specialized databases, such as PsycInfo or ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), it is important to carefully inspect the results that you receive. To reduce the risk of including a predatory journal article in research, nursing scholars should use reputable bibliographic databases, which have clear criteria for journal indexing, for their searches.

Third, when you come across a journal title that is not familiar, take time to research it, visit the journal Web site and evaluate the information at the Web site, and determine whether it is a credible source to include in your results. If something seems irregular, then it is worth your time to do more investigating—either on your own or by enlisting the help of a knowledgeable colleague or librarian. Journals change publishers all the time, and while most of these business transfers are benign and probably will not impact you as an end consumer of the literature, that is not always the case. Likewise, the major publishers in the world today are large, multinational conglomerates that regularly spin off or purchase other companies. While this probably will not impact you on a day-to-day basis, it is important to investigate any irregularities when conducting a search of the literature.

Last, because these issues are complex and multifaceted, it is always wise to consult with a librarian who can assist you in every step of the search process. Their knowledge and expertise in information literacy, data sources, and searching techniques can help to ensure that you find the information you need from sources that are reliable and credible.

Researchers, clinicians, faculty, and students need to be careful not to include citations from predatory sources in their literature searches and articles. Predatory journals publish low-quality studies and citing this work erodes the scholarly literature in nursing. The findings of this study offer some reassurance to those who search the professional nursing literature: if you begin a search in a database such as MEDLINE, CINAHL, or Scopus, then the results will probably not include citations to predatory publications. Google and Google Scholar searches, however, may very well include predatory citations, and in that case, it is the searcher's responsibility to carefully evaluate the output and discard findings from nonlegitimate sources. Enlisting the help of a librarian is always beneficial and highly recommended.

Peggy L. Chinn, PhD, RN, FAAN, Editor, Advances in Nursing Science , is a member of our research team and contributed to the study and preparation of the manuscript.

The authors have disclosed that they have no significant relationships with, or financial interest in, any commercial companies pertaining to this article.

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