1. How do I search for my topic?
- Identify the keywords of your topic and use those as your search words
- Each article has tags assigned to it, words or shorts phrases that make them searchable - you want your search words to match those tags
- Words like factors, effects, issues, relationships are usually not used as tags - don't include them as search words
Example: Your topic is: access to health care in prisons
Summon Search: "health care" (prison* OR incarcerat*)
- "health care" searches for health care as a phrase, not separate words (health AND care)
- prison* searches for all variations of this word (prison, prisons, prisoner, prisoners)
- incarcerat* searches for all variations of this word (incarcerated, incarceration)
- (prison* OR incarcerat*) searches for either of these terms
2. How do I focus the search hits to meet my assignment requirements?
- Use Refine Your Search in Summon to focus your search hits to just peer-reviewed articles
- Peer-reviewed articles:
- Click on Peer Review
- Under Content Type, click on Journal article
- Current/Recent articles:
- Under Publication Date, move the scroll bar over to 2006 to present
- Articles with a Public Health Perspective and/or a Law Perspective
- Under Discipline. click on Public Health and/or Law
- Articles with a Policy perspective and/or a Legal perspecive
- Under Subject Terms, click on subjects like health policy & services, health policy and/or laws, regulations & rules.
3. I have too many irrelevant search hits. How do I focus them?
- Add "United States" to your search to focus your search hits to articles about the United States
- Look through the Subject Terms in the Refine Your Search sidebar and click on the subjects that interest you
- When you find an article that looks interesting, look at its assigned tags
- Add any relevant tags to your search
- This will also help you develop your research questions and search for articles about your specific research questions
