Search across guide titles, topics, keywords, and content throughout the Researcher's Field Guide.
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You do not need to repeat the same literature searches every week to stay current. Build a monitoring system using saved searches, database alerts, citation alerts, journal notifications, and a short routine for reviewing what arrives.
Read Guide →There is no universal number of years that makes research “current.” The right time frame depends on what you are studying, how quickly the field changes, and what role each source plays in your argument.
Read Guide →A literature review should represent the relevant state of knowledge, not simply maximize the percentage of recent citations. Recent research matters, but older foundational and still-relevant studies may be equally necessary.
Read Guide →A major review can give you a strong starting point, but its publication date does not tell you where its evidence ends. Find its last search date, understand how it searched, then systematically retrieve the research that appeared afterward.
Read Guide →Database alerts rerun a saved search against newly added records and notify you when something matches. The useful ones come from searches precise enough to catch important new research without flooding you with irrelevant results.
Read Guide →Citation alerts and keyword alerts monitor different signals. Citation alerts follow new work connected to a known paper, while keyword alerts look for new records matching a topic, so the right choice depends on what you want to keep watching.
Read Guide →Keeping up with a research field does not mean reading every paper it produces. A sustainable system monitors several useful signals, screens new research quickly, and reserves close reading for work that could actually change what you know or do.
Read Guide →Sometimes the most recent evidence is available only as a preprint or another research output that has not completed peer review. You do not necessarily need to ignore it, but its preliminary status should affect how you evaluate, describe, cite, and rely on it.
Read Guide →Theses, dissertations, reports, and working papers are scattered across repositories, specialist databases, organizational websites, and search engines. Learn where to search and how to find documents that conventional journal databases may miss.
Read Guide →A conference abstract with no identifiable full paper should not simply disappear from your review. Trace the study carefully, seek additional information where appropriate, and decide what the abstract can support based on your review criteria and the information actually available.
Read Guide →Government and institutional reports can contain valuable research evidence, including surveys, evaluations, administrative analyses, and technical studies. Their authority as documents, however, should not be confused with the methodological strength of the evidence they contain.
Read Guide →Searching for unpublished research can reduce the risk of missing important evidence, but it can also require substantial time for uncertain return. The right level of effort depends on your review question, the risk of selective publication, the likely location of missing studies, and whether finding them could realistically change your conclusions.
Read Guide →Government consultations can expose research, administrative data, expert evidence, and organizational knowledge that never reaches academic journals. Their usefulness depends on what the document contains and how critically you evaluate it.
Read Guide →A literature search can appear comprehensive while still underrepresenting research from particular countries. Database coverage, language, indexing practices, publication venues, and search design all influence which research becomes visible.
Read Guide →Regional databases can be important when your question depends on evidence from a particular country or region. Whether you should search them depends on where relevant research is likely to be published and how well your existing databases cover it.
Read Guide →Relevant research does not cease to exist because its journal is absent from a major database. Journal websites, regional indexes, metadata services, repositories, citation trails, and targeted searching can help you locate it.
Read Guide →A missing English abstract should not automatically remove a potentially relevant study from consideration. Other metadata, original-language text, citation trails, journal records, and targeted translation can help you determine whether the study should proceed.
Read Guide →Research does not cease to exist because it is absent from a major international index. Separate database coverage from research existence, then search the publication systems where relevant local evidence is actually distributed.
Read Guide →Local evidence may be distributed across theses, government reports, institutional repositories, technical documents, and other grey literature rather than conventional journals. Finding it requires searching the organizations and systems that produce the evidence, not only bibliographic databases.
Read Guide →Finding a citation does not mean the full paper is available in the database where you found it. Verify the reference, search systematically across publisher, repository, and library routes, and do not treat an abstract or another author's description as a substitute for reading the original.
Read Guide →If you know a study only because another paper describes or cites it, you have not consulted the original study. Find and read the original whenever reasonably possible; if you cannot, make the secondary route visible rather than citing the original as though you read it yourself.
Read Guide →Secondary citation makes it explicit that you learned about an original source through another work rather than consulting the original yourself. It can be appropriate when the original genuinely cannot be obtained, but it should usually remain a fallback rather than a shortcut around reading accessible sources.
Read Guide →A paper may refer to an appendix, protocol, or supporting document that is surprisingly difficult to find. Learn where to search, how to verify the correct document, and what to do if it remains unavailable.
Read Guide →A secondary source can tell you what someone else says an inaccessible source contains, but that is not the same as reading the original. Learn when transparent non-retrieval is preferable to indirect reconstruction.
Read Guide →A paper belongs in your literature review because it helps answer the review question and meets the criteria appropriate to your review, not simply because it appeared in your search. Learn how to make inclusion decisions consistently and transparently.
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