
6. Example search strategy
Your research area is the medical devices industry for cardiovascular patients in Europe. You may want to start preparing your search by:
- considering the type of material you wish to use
- choosing the most appropriate resource(s)
Then you need to identify key terms and authors, and think of alternative terms.
Key terms: Cardiovascular, medical, devices, industry, Europe
Alternatives: cardiovascular OR cardiology OR heart
industry OR market
devices OR technology
Then combine your terms using truncation and parentheses where required:
(cardiovascular or heart)
and (industry or market)
and (devices or technology)
and (Europe not US)
and device*
Why is this time well spent?
If you don't plan your search correctly it will:
- take longer to execute as you will retrieve information and resources that you don't need, and you are more likely to be distracted by other interesting but irrelevant information
- be less comprehensive, because you are unlikely to search for all the relevant synonyms, abbreviations and alternative spellings.