Content last reviewed:
What is a Literature Review?
- SAGE Research Methods
- Conducting a Literature Review
- Am I the Only One Struggling to Write a Literature Review? (Sage Research Methods)
What are the Purposes of a Literature Review?
- situate your work in its discipline/area/subfield
- develop an understanding of how knowledge in your discipline/field/area has changed over time
- develop mastery of what's known in your area, and part of the larger discipline that contains it
- compare different conceptual or sub-disciplinary approaches to your topic
- compare and contrast different theoretical schools or leading researchers in your area
- identify methodologies that you might use in your work
Find missing citations, track references and find related articles
- Excellent step-by-step guide Using Web of Science for tracking citations
- Cited Reference Searching guide
Why is this important?
- keeping track of how often and where a publication is being cited can help you gauge the impact of that article
- if the article has been cited, you may find a link to the citing article/author
- to locate current research based on earlier research
- to find out how a particular research topic is being used to support other research
- to track the history of a research idea
- to track the research history of a researcher
- to determine how well your own published research is cited for promotion/tenure considerations
- don't forget to keep track of your searches! Literature Reviews: Keep Track (UBC)
Tips for effective searching
If you find one relevant article for your research it can lead to other relevant papers by the following:
- using the databases, including Omni, look to find all papers & books published by the author or co-authors
- explore the bibliography in the paper for sources
- using Web of Science or Scopus look for articles that cite the article you found. Remember, some databases will also list citing articles but those lists are limited to the current database. The Web of Science and Scopus are more comprehensive, with coverage from multiple databases.
- Remember to see if a citing article has itself been cited.
Refresh your skills - developing a good search strategy is important
Search strategies:
- Electric car AND subsid*
- Boolean operators must be all caps - AND/OR will narrow or expand your results
- quotes will keep the words together
- the * will look for alternate endings
- add AND Canada
- add filters:
- Add resources beyond Carleton's collection' to broaden your results
- Peer-reviewed journals
- Subjects … governments or energy policy or energy efficiency, etc.
- Publication date
Suggested reference resources:
- Sage Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods
- Qualitative research methods for the social sciences
- Sage dictionary of qualitative inquiry
Databases for finding academic literature
- OMNI (on the library's homepage)
- Use the Public Policy & Administration guide for finding databases and other resources
- Do not limit yourself to these: See Databases by Subject list
- Look at the Subject Guides that best relate to your topic. For example: Philanthropy, Health, Renewable Energy, Canadian Studies, Indigenous Policy, Business, etc.
Good to know:
- Search Alerts can be set once you're logged into Omni's My Library Account as well as in most databases. They can help researchers stay current with automatic e-mail alerts
- Can't find an item in our collection, you can request a print book or a digital article or chapter by searching the title or topic in OMNI or by logging into your library account and filling out this blank request form. Journal articles will be sent to you electronically. For more information please see Interlibrary Loans.
What is cited reference searching?
A simple and useful way of finding additional resources on your topic is to track citations backwards and forwards.
- Find a useful paper, check the reference list (these papers will have been published BEFORE your paper), AND
- Find a useful article and check who has cited it (these papers will have been published AFTER your paper).
Cited reference searching, or citation analysis, also called citation tracking, is a way of measuring the relative importance or impact or an author, article, or publication, by counting the number of times that author, article, or publication has been cited by other works.
There are a number of tools available; however, no single database covers all works that cite other works. Searching across several databases is necessary to ensure complete coverage.
Why is this important?
- keeping track of how many times and where a publication is begin cited can help you gage the impact that article has in your discipline
- if the article has been cited, the database will provide a link to the citing article/author
- to locate current research based on earlier research
- to find out how a particular research topic is being used to support other research
- to track the history of a research idea
- to track the research history of a researcher
OMNI
Use our main search tool, OMNI to do cited reference searching. Click on these icons 
to either "find sources cited in this" OR "find sources citing this".
Use our Cited Reference Searching page to find out which of the big databases allow you to do this and how to do this.
Journal Citation Reports
- Journal citation reports database
- Browse by category (theirs) - Public Admin - click on #journals number - looking at journal impact factor (a ratio of number of citations to total number of articles) - still more subjective, emerging title? Smaller audience? Other language?)
- Click on journal title …
- Trend, calculation, distribution, key indicators (immediacy factor = how quickly cited, without self-cites, Eigenfactor, etc.
- Contributions by country / organizations
Grey literature is an important source of information for research in public policy that:
- adds a valuable global perspective
- provides detailed overviews on specific populations
- may be only source of local information
Grey literature is defined as "information produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing" ie. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body." —ICGL Luxembourg definition, 1997. Expanded in New York, 2004
Library resources
- Grey Literature Guide
- Omni (the Library's main search engine) (narrow results by resource type)
- Dissertations and Theses Global
- Google Scholar (change country, for example, to find international material)
- Canadian Business & Current Affairs
- Web of Science
- Business Source Complete (select publication type "Grey literature")
Resources
- GreyNet International (organizations in Grey Literature and repository)
Policy Reports and Working Papers
- Policy Commons
- Conference Board of Canada e-Library Covers areas of Economic Trends, Organizational Performance, and Public Policy.
- NBER (National Bureau of Economics Research) Working Papers
- Canadian Public Documents Collection
- Policy File Index Indexes research on U.S. public policy with content from public policy think tanks, university research programs, research organizations, etc.
Think Tanks
- Think Tanks guide
- Think Tank Search (Harvard University custom search)
- detailed subject guide from the Business School at the University of Alberta
Government Information
- Canadian federal government documents
News Sources
- Consult the News Guide for details of news sources
- Tips for searching newspaper databases.
For current Canadian newspapers/news
For historical Canadian & other newspapers
Dissertation databases
Dissertations and Theses Global
Dates covered: Indexing 1743 - present; Full text 1997 - present
For a full list of databases see: Theses and Dissertations
Suggested resources
- How to write a thesis by Umberto Eco
- Surviving Your Dissertation: A Comprehensive Guide to Content and Process
- Writing an annotated bibliography
- Write a book review (Queen's University)
Citation Help
- Citation Management online links to bibliographic management tools.
- Citing Your Sources general guide pointing to resources on all the main styles.
- Citing Data & Statistics
Nvivo is qualitative data analysis software to help organize and analyze data, identify trends, and cross examine information in a variety of ways.
Sage Research Methods supports researchers throughout a research project, from writing a research question, choosing a method, gathering and analyzing data, to writing up and publishing the findings.
SPSS and Stata
The library offers a statistical consulting service to help students, faculty and other researchers in the Carleton University community with their questions regarding quantitative data.
