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Academic Writing Month (#AcWriMo): Tuesday (14th) - Turning your question into a searchable query

#AcWriMo provides a structured and supportive environment for researchers and academics to focus on their writing projects, set targets, and make progress in their scholarly endeavors. The goal is to boost productivity and help individuals establish good

#AcWriMo 2023 - From research question to searchable query

Academic Support Librarian Joshua Cheyne led a session on turning research questions into workable search queries. The discussion, facilitated by Dr. Ruth Currie, covered constructing effective search strategies aligned with research objectives.

Reflective Questions

What are the central concepts/key words within your questions? 

What approaches could you explore for breaking your question into searchable keywords? 

Do you know who your academic librarian is and how they can support you in your literature work? 

How are you maintaining a log of your searches and how effective is this within your current data management practice? 

How it is the process of refining your literature search informing how you think about your research question?  

Joshua Cheyne - Expertise

Academic Librarian for the School of Business and Creative Industries
Divisions:

  • Accounting, Finance & Law 
  • Marketing, Innovation, Tourism & Events
  • Management, Organisations & People

Other areas of expertise:

  • Search strategy construction (Boolean logic, search syntax, complex searches, and database selection)
  • Systematic review search methods, information retrieval, and conducting a comprehensive and effective literature review
  • Information skills training (all levels of proficiency and expertise)

Turning your question into a searchable query

What was the session about? 

A comprehensive and systematic literature search will underpin your entire research project, but turning your research question into a workable search query can be a daunting task. In this session, Academic Support Librarian Joshua Cheyne conducts an in-depth exploration of the process involved in constructing a search strategy that accurately reflects your research objectives. He addresses the systematic deconstruction of a research question, the identification of key concepts, relevant keywords, the execution of searches, and the proficient management of search results.  

What were some take aways from the session? 

  1. Your research question will often have multiple concepts and keywords that are searchable. When preparing for systematic literature work, its important to break your question down, to identify what these concepts are. From here, there will be various routes your search can take, depending on your disciplinary area.

  2. The process of refining your search can produce a lot of literature to consider and you may need to run a few attempts before you find an approach that works for you. It is important to keep a log of your searches in a format that works for you. Each database may also offer different interfaces to search from.  

Recording : Tuesday's AcWriMo Session

Watch the recording of the session on this page and keep an eye out on the e-bulletin for future sessions. If you are a PGR, your PGR Coordinator will let you know when more sessions are upcoming. In the meantime, good luck with your literature searching!