TSEM 102: Earth’s Changing Climate (Couch)

Searching a scholarly database works a little differently than the typical Google or web search. To create an effective search strategy:

1. Start by doing background research to familiarize yourself with terminology and important aspects of your topic.
2. Identify your main concepts. These are your keywords.
3. Brainstorm synonyms and related terms for your keyword concepts.
4. Put your keywords together using AND, OR, and NOT as necessary.
5. Each main concept gets its own search box, and synonyms / related concepts are separated with OR.
6. Parentheses group the operations, as in math.
7. Adjust your search using database filters / limiters (restrict to peer reviewed articles, adjust the date range, etc.).
8. Search again based on what you learned from your first search.

Here is what a scholarly database search might look like for the following research question: What impact is global climate changing having on coastal environments in Maryland? Note that the quotation marks tell the database to search those words as a phrase (so we'll find articles that say "global warming" as a phrase, rather than articles that say "global" in one paragraph and "warming" in another, for example).

Here are a few databases containing scholarly research on climate change. You can find additional databases using our A-Z Database List. You can also find articles by searching individual journals via our Journal List.