Recently published review articles (or literature reviews) can be a great starting point for finding scholarly literature related to your research topic. Article databases enable you to search for them with limiters or through keyword searching.
These tutorials explain the differences between review articles and research articles and give a quick example of how to find literature reviews using different databases.
Identifying the right terms and phrases for your topic is critical to successful searching. This worksheet may be helpful in organizing and recording your search terms and phrases:
There are 4 quick tricks that work in most databases for keyword searching. Learn how to do them by viewing and listening to the 10-minute video tutorial created by the former Education librarian Judy Nixon, "Tricks of the Trade," which covers:
A more recent video covering the "shotgun," "snowball," and "building blocks" approaches to searching is provided by Professor Heather Howard with Purdue's Parrish Library:
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Library has created a useful quick-guide for database searching according to vendors:
What is citation searching?
Why do it?
Where to do citation searching?
Many databases have a "cited by" link.
Top ones for Education field are:
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