Search the Literature

Beginning to scope your topic

A scoping search (also known as background searching) is a way to form an understanding of your topic. It's important to perform several of these at the beginning of your project to make sure you have a unique and well-designed proposal.

It can be used to:

• understand your topic
• identify major issues, themes, and methodologies
• identify research gaps and opportunities
• provide evidence to support your proposal

Your choice of where to scope topics is important. We recommend beginning with one of the tools below as they contain a large representative sample of available research across many disciplines. These tools offer features to help you sort and refine your results by relevance, citation counts, and publication date, as well as options to save searches so you can return to them later.

Some of these tools include AI features that can assist with searching or source selection; however it's important to use these features carefully and to be mindful of the associated cautions.

• Web of Science
• Scopus
• Scholar Labs* via Google Scholar
• ProQuest One Academic*

*AI features

Developing a comprehensive search plan

Once you've settled on a research question, locate all relevant evidence and key studies to strengthen your proposal. This training will equip you with the skills needed to plan and carry out a comprehensive search.

• Module: Finding Information

Literature searching documentation

• Literature Searching Canvas
  A brainstorming and mapping tool to guide you through developing concepts, selecting databases and resource types.
• Search History Log
  Simple table to track concepts, databases, and search results.
• Literature Search and Analysis Template
  More comprehensive spreadsheet to track searches across databases, with a tab to annotate relevant results.

Use of AI in literature searching

AI can offer assistance with literature reviews, however any AI tools should be used with caution. Limitations include hallucinations, gaps in subject coverage and accuracy of generated summaries:

• AI summaries can be inaccurate or contain misinformation
• Copyright and licencing prevent any one tool from searching across the known universe of content
• The search and selection process may not be as replicable or transparent as required by your output or funder

Check the Use of AI in Research Guidelines for further information. Advice from the research community includes:

• Cochrane, Campbell and JBI
• ARC
• NHMRC

Finding theses

A thesis is a research document that qualifies someone for an academic degree or professional qualification, typically for the completion of an honour's degree, a research master's degree, or a PhD. Looking at theses can be valuable when developing a research proposal, because it shows how a research project evolves from an initial idea to a fully developed study.

UTS graduate research students can submit their own digital thesis to the Library.

Research methods

The Library’s collection includes a range of resources on research methods, including Sage Research Methods. A subject search in the Library catalogue for research methodology, qualitative research or quantitative research will also return relevant resources.

Finding research data

Find and reuse research datasets to build on your own research. Reusing has many benefits including reducing the cost of duplicating data collection, leading to new collaborations between data users and data creators and increasing the impact and visibility of research.

• Guide: Finding data

Getting help

Librarians can assist with training and advice around:

• Developing concepts from a research question
• Systematic searching
• Adjusting search results
• Setting up search alerts

Request a consultation with a librarian.