BIOL 230 - Fundamentals of Ecology

To start any research project, you need to begin looking for sources. For an effective search, you need to use keywords, which are the building blocks of academic searching. There are two steps to good keyword formation:

• Pinpoint the main concepts that compose your question
• Expand each of those terms by brainstorming synonyms, related words and/or variant spellings.

Before you begin searching for information, you first need to identify what the main concepts of your question are. This will help you determine the best places to look, and the best search terms to use.

For instance, vessel strikes are one of the causes of deaths and injuries in killer whales off the BC coast. For example, see this UBC Science post by Chris Balma about a study examining pathology reports.

I'm interested in learning more about this issue and have come up with the following research question:

What is the impact of boat strikes on killer whale populations and health?

Image: NMFS vessel Nautical by NOAA Photo Library, CC BY 2.0

To come up with your search terms, think about how your question can be simplified to 2-3 main ideas or concepts. You can use the PICOS or PECOS framework if it helps (Population or problem | Intervention, Exposure, or Issue | Comparison or Control | Outcome or impacts | Setting or context).

For this question, our initial main concepts might be:

killer whales (population)   AND   boat strikes (exposure or issue)

Then think of the different ways to describe these concepts:

As you research your topic, you will increase your knowledge and learn terms that could potentially give you better results!

If you want to make your search narrower and more focused, you may be able to add a third concept. For instance, we might want to search for killer whales AND boats AND population or health. You could also rephrase parts of your search to be more specific. For example, you could search for "boat strike*" rather than just "boats" so you're only finding research about physical impacts and excluding research about noise pollution, etc.

If your topic is very specific and you're not finding many resources, you may need to look at broader concepts. For instance, I've consulted a taxonomy to find the family of the species and also looked at impacts to other cetaceans in the area to see if I could expand my search to include delphinidae OR cetacean* OR whales OR dolphins OR "humpback whale*". Take a look at some of the reference sources listed on the Getting Started page to help you brainstorm concepts and synonyms.

You should look for existing research about your topic to understand the past and current landscape of your ecological problem. What has already been done, and how can you take this further? Understanding the broader context of your problem will give you a deeper understanding of the problem itself.

Google automatically finds synonyms and variations on the keywords you search but it also doesn't allow you to control what it searches and the results can be influenced by other factors aside from relevance to your topic.

Scholarly research databases and library catalogues provide options that give you more control over the search and the results. Here are a few tips which can make your searches in the library catalogue and databases more effective:

Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT

• AND is used to combine search terms that must be present in your results. Many databases assume there is an AND between your search terms unless you tell it otherwise. E.g. ("killer whale*" OR orca*) AND ("vessel strike*" OR "boat strike*" OR "ship strike*")
• OR is used to add additional search terms like synonyms and different spellings in order to broaden your search and find more research. Use parentheses to gather these synonyms together and combine with another concept. E.g. ("killer whale*" OR orca*)
• NOT is used to exclude a word from your search. Use with caution as it only looks for the word and not the context. E.g. using NOT noise would exclude an article that was about vessel strikes and noise.

Phrase searching: put quotes around your keywords to find the words together in that order. E.g. "killer whale"

Truncation: in most databases, an asterisk (*) at the end of a word will find all different endings. E.g. "killer whale*"

Wildcards: used differently in different databases but easy to look up in the help section of the database you're using. The UBC Library Summon search uses ? to replace up to one character. E.g. behavio?r would retrieve materials with either behaviour or behavior in the title, abstract, and author keywords.

Controlled vocabulary or subject headings: these are terms added to articles or books to help you find related topics. In some databases, you can click on these or add them to your search to help improve your results.