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Business Tutorial

Focus

As a general rule, a retrieval set of 10-30 articles is ideal. Fewer and we must question the scope of coverage in the literature, or usefulness of the search strategy (terms, syntax) for identifying literature on that topic. More than 30 hits and you may not have time to evaluate the results. Many more and your topic is too broad to manage in a typical assignment.

To broaden a search when you find only a handful of sources, search synonyms with the Boolean OR to capture other ways of expressing the same concept (taxes OR taxation). Try removing a concept or use a more general term to increase the number of database hits. Browse the articles you retrieve for additional ideas. Link from subject headers or "descriptors" in each article to related terms in other articles.

Truncation is another way to broaden your search results. Add the truncation symbol specified in database help pages to the root of a word. The symbol is usually * (asterisk) but sometimes $, ?, !, or #.  For example, tax* retrieves taxes, taxation, tax reform, tax evasion, taxonomy (oops!), etc.

To narrow a search, "AND" concepts in your topic sentence together to ensure that all results cover multiple aspects ("small business" AND taxation). Try the Boolean "NOT" to remove results that are getting in your way (tax* NOT taxonomy). 

Sources may sort by relevance. You can change the sort to display results in order from newest to oldest. Use date limits for more specific retrieval of sources published during a particular time period, for example since 2012 in:

"small business" AND (taxes or taxation) in Business Source Complete


Note the limits applied in this search:

  • Scholarly (Peer Reviewed Journals)
  • Publication Dates: 2012 through 2017
  • Geography: United States