5-day online FDP on Applied Statistical Data Analysis using SPSS; Date: 08 to 12 Sept 2025; Organizer: SSSIHL, Bengaluru

Using various search approaches

Novice scholars and students may be new to the research domain and might be inexperienced in identifying various journal articles for their respective study. The key in any research is to use research papers from reputed sources and journals.

Also, some scholars might end up spending too much time identifying the relevant research paper or end up using inferior quality articles in their study. Some might even get buried under the voluminous data returned during a simple search.

This blog aims to guide novice scholars and students using intelligent criteria to obtain optimum search results. These few tips would eventually result in

a) Understand the technique to use intelligent search

b) time-saving

c) hence a research scholar can utilise their time to focus on their research

d) organise well, focus on their subject area

e) effectively evaluate and present relevant information, bringing out a scholarly research

The various search approaches are listed below, and I will explain the concepts used by taking an example.

Note: Caution - GoogleScholar is used only as an example. There will be variations noted in the search results. You can look for advantages & disadvantages of using GoogleScholar. To have repeatability and reproducibility, it is best to use

a database aggregator like EBSCO, JSTOR or
use a publisher web database like ScienceDirect (Elsevier), Emerald, t&f online, Wiley, Sage or
Scopus, Web of Science

Simple "Text" search:

One can use a search engine or database search to obtain the relevant articles.

In this blog, I will use Google Scholar as an example to search papers related to mobile payments. (Stay tuned for a separate blog on various databases search).
Using a simple search in google scholar by entering the text mobile payments returned 6,67,000 articles (today, i.e. 23-May-2021).
Note: Using "mobile payments" (i.e. in double quotes) will return a different result since an exact phrase will be used as the search criteria.

2. Use Boolean logic:

We all would have studied a Venn diagram in our school. I will make use of the same concept to explain this point.

Rather than using a simple search, identify all the keywords/combination used or the keyword known.
In Google Scholar, enter the text ("mobile payment" OR mPayment OR "mobile wallet" OR m-payment OR "digital wallet" OR "mobile money")
This search result using OR conditions returned 17,300 articles.

The above search criteria can be further expanded using AND, NOT boolean.
Using an AND condition with a model, say TAM, resulted in 10,300 articles.

3. "go backwards" or "backward search" – review the citations of the article or the research papers that are cited by a research paper

Start with a research paper of interest
Examine the research papers listed in the references or works cited
Search for these research papers through your university library to access them

4. "go forward" or "forward search" – use the citation index or look for research papers/studies that cite the research paper

Start with a research paper of interest
Go to Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) or Web of Science: to list the studies that cite an initial article
Search for and access these articles through your university library access

Hence, using intelligence search criteria enables a research scholar with fewer, manageable results. Other recommended approaches ("go backwards" and "go forward") can also be used while doing a systematic search for literature review, Bibliometric Analysis, SLR and Meta-analysis.

Stay tuned for my forthcoming blog to learn about the "systematic search" of research articles that scholars could use for their dissertations, thesis, or research paper.

Searching for something specific or Exact phrase: Whenever double-quotes (" ") is used in the search criteria, it indicates that you are looking for an exact match. When you put your search criteria in quotes, it tells the search engine to search for the whole phrase. Searching within quotes only finds results that include all of those words, in that specific order.

Searching without quotes populates results that include the words you typed, but necessarily not in the order you searched.

There are other search criteria that can be used to refine your searches for better results like using a hyphen (-) to exclude words, asterisk wildcard (*), OR for multiple words.

Please go through some of the basics tips for the search criteria and explore yourself.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse