Thesis Writing Guide/Search

How to search for literature Once you have set up at least Zotero, you are good to go. Some almost universal tips: Quotation marks for exact phrases: If you search for banana tree, it shows you all papers with banana and tree in them. "banana tree" only returns those where those two words are right after another. A minus bans a word from occurring. For example, Hiawatha -giraffe searches for every result that contains Hiawatha, but not giraffe. While this sometimes helps to narrow down specific niche cases, it is generally not advisable to use unless you are certain you know what you are doing; worst case, you just artificially blind yourself to otherwise perfect sources, just because somewhere in the text a word accidentally occurred that you excluded. Consider recency and citations in tandem. A paper from this year with 10 citations is a great find - so is one from a decade ago with 1000 citations. The longer a paper exists, the more time it has to accumulate citations. Over time, you will get a feeling for how exactly the ratio looks like in your field. High citation count + older paper + generic title usually points to a foundational, broadly recognized work - well suited for citing basic concepts. Don't forget `Friend of a friend` papers: once you've found a highly relevant paper, look at which sources it cites itself in its own related-work section. This often surfaces papers you'd not have found through your own search terms, because other authors use different phrasing or are relevant to your topic without you knowing of their concepts yet. Scope A thesis maintain a manageable number of sources. While it is always a compromise, deeper understanding beats broad collecting. Naturally, either extreme is wrong: Too few sources (< 20) are almost always a sign of bad search, and too many (> 200) are almost always an instant sign of unfocused accumulation. A rule of thumb: spend about as much time reading papers as you do searching new ones. If you lean towards either side, lean towards reading. Set yourself a deliberate stopping point for the literature search, usually within the first one to two months of your thesis. Tell yourself explicitly: "I have learned enough now, I'm not actively searching anymore." Anything new that turns up after that goes into the future-work section instead. "Good" References Preprint A preprint is an article that is published before it is printed. While it does not mean it must be bad, it means that it may not have yet passed peer review and thus is not on equal standing with published papers. If you treat them equally in your thesis, you conflate theorized suggestions with proven solutions, which makes all your work built on top of it weaker. Thus: If available, cite conference or journal articles, not preprints If you cite a preprint, write it in your text that "according to the preprint ... by ..." You can often identify a preprint by the platform you find it on: for example, if it's on arXiv, it's a preprint. From there, you may also find the context, e.g. where it was submitted or published, jump there, and can then find the "real" paper to cite. Predatory publishing In recent years, a concept of "predatory journals"Wikipedia on "Predatory publishing" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_publishing has become more important. As a bachelor/master student, you are not expected to be able to differentiate them from "real" journals, but if you have a bad feeling, feel free to research the journal and publisher. You can always ask your supervisor for help as well. Tools Use several independent search channels to compensate for individual search engines' blind spots - different tools index differently and use different ranking logic. A rough, exemplary overview, to be exchanged or expanded as you see fit: Google Scholar as the core tool for the big, intensive search sessions. ORKG Ask (Open Research Knowledge Graph) for a second perspective/breadth. Open Knowledge Maps for broader exploration. Connected Papers for the citation graph around a central paper. Universal advice: - When you find a list of results, "open in new tab" (e.g., Middle Mouse Button) is your friend. This way, you can open 3 seemingly relevant results without jumping back and forth 9 times. Google Scholar Most fundamental research channel. Use it as you would any other search engine. Zotero is well-integrated here, can be used even from the search result page already - though it is still advised to click through to the paper to inspect it closer. ORKG Ask Here, you phrase your search as a question. A good start is just rephrasing your Thesis title as a question, and hit search. If you have research questions, they are also perfect candidates - search them verbatim. The search results provide DOIs; jump there, and proceed with Zotero as usual. Open Knowledge Maps Powerful and visually interesting tool to use for complementary literature search: Start keyword-based search similar to Google Scholar and navigate through the results. Search results, again: jump there and proceed with Zotero as usual. Connected Papers Very powerful tool, but better be used wisely: Free version only has 3 usages a month, so use them wisely. Connected Papers has an export feature that Zotero can read directly: More -> download creates a .bib that you can import via the Zotero App: File -> import.