SPORTDiscus: Keyword searching

To find articles/document on a topic, enter keywords (search terms) into SPORTDiscus's search boxes. SPORTDiscus then searches for documents that include your keywords in their titles, abstracts (summaries) and other key fields. The following steps will help you carefully identify and organise your keywords so that you're more likely to find the best results:

1. Identify the words/keywords in your assignment/research question that are most relevant to your topic (i.e. words that distinguish the title from any other title). For an example, let's consider this question: "To what extent is motivation a key component to effective participation in long distance running". 
   
   Using our example, you might select the following keywords: motivation and long distance running. Generally, it's best to ignore generic words such as "impact". 
   
   
2. Treat each word that you select from your title as a "separate" concept within the overall topic. Then, for each concept, identify any alternative words that have the same/similar meaning (or have opposite meanings e.g. inequality, equality). Different authors use different words to describe the same concept and if your keywords don't reflect this, you may miss important articles. Here's a table of keywords (organised by concept), that could used in our search example: 
   

• Plural versions: SPORTDiscus automatically searches for both the singular and plural versions of a word in singular form, so if you enter footballer it will also search for footballlers. 
   
• Truncation: sometimes you can increase the number of your results by entering an asterisk at the end of the stem of a word e.g. if you just enter motivat*, SPORTDiscus searches for these:
  motivate
  motivates 
  motivated 
  motivating 
  motivator 
  motivators
  motivational

Another example: Manag* will search for manage, manages, managed, managing, manager, managers, managerial, management.
 

• US spellings: SPORTDiscus automatically searches for both the UK and US variant spellings of many words e.g. if you enter behaviour, it will also search for behavior.  Other common US/UK variants include the letter Z rather than S.  

•  Using multiple search boxes: Note the screenshots. if your topic contains multiple concepts (e.g. long distance running and motivation), enter your set of keywords for each individual concept in a separate search box. To display an additional search box, click the (plus) button just below the search boxes. Don't change the default "AND" setting between each search box - you need this so that each of your results relates to each of the concepts.
   
• Entering alternative search terms: If you've identified alternative keywords for the same concept, you must enter OR in between each one e.g. "long distance running" or marathon or "endurance running". Otherwise, SPORTDiscus limits your search results to those that only feature ALL of the alternative keywords you enter.
   
• Peer-reviewed option: You can select the peer-reviewed option further down the screen on the left-hand side - this limits your results to those from peer-reviewed journals for which submitted articles are appraised by other researchers and only permitted for publication if they satisfies various quality standards. 
   
• Entering phrases: it's generally a good idea to enter these in "speech marks" (e.g. "long distance running") so that SPORTDiscus only searches for the exact phrase. Otherwise, SPORTDiscus searches for all the individual words in a phrase which can produce too many irrelevant search results.  
   
• To return to the above options after a search, click the Advanced Search link just below your search boxes. 

• Proximity searches enable you to limit your search to titles and abstracts in which two or more keywords appear in close proximity. This is useful where multiple variations of the same phrase exist e.g. "strength and power training", "power and strength training", "training for power and strength"...
   
• To do a proximity search, enter the capital letter N followed by the maximum number of words you want appearing between your keywords .eg. N2, N5, N10 etc. For example, if you might want the keywords "training" and "strength" to appear in close proximity within the space of 5 or fewer words, enter: training N5 strength.
   
• If you have a set of multiple alternative keywords that need to appear in close proximity to another keyword/set, enter the multiple keywords within a set of brackets as follows: training N5 (strength or power)
   
• If you need to enter further search terms on the same theme but they don't require a proximity search, you must enter an additional set of brackets around all of those that are proximity-related - as follows:
  plyometric* or ((training N5 (strength or power))