• Explore your topic for basic understanding
  • Use your textbook, encyclopedias, or credible websites
• Define your research question
  • What is your purpose? Are you giving an explanation, comparing, or contrasting?
• Choose effective keywords
  • Omit stop words such as the, a, an, of, if
  • Choose concise, distinctive keywords and phrases to describe your topic
  • Think of synonyms for your keywords and connect them with OR, e.g. (cats OR felines)

• If you have a broad topic, you may need to narrow your search scope. There are many ways to narrow.

  Here are some ideas:

  • Condition/Disease, Developmental stage, Genetic aspects, Geography, Species, Time period

Primary references are research articles, dissertations, technical reports, conference papers; they contain methodology and experimental results.

Secondary references are textbooks, encyclopedias, popular magazine articles; they contain a general description of the results found in primary research articles.

AND, OR, NOT are Boolean connectors for keyword searching.

When searching, you can search for two concepts with AND. Usually AND is the default connector in a database. For example, larva AND jumping

You can search for synonyms with OR. For example, jumping OR leaping

You can exclude terms with NOT. For example, jumping NOT frogs