Sökguider: Urban Business and Development: Real Estate and Transport: Documentation and evaluation

Documenting the search process

Documenting your search process helps you remember which search terms you have already tried so you won't repeat the same search, or in case you want to recreate the search to continued work. Many databases allow you to create an account to save searches and results, if this is not possible, useful documentation is:

Name of database
Date when search was performed
Which search terms you used
How you combined the search terms

Evaluating sources

To help you decide if a source is relevant and trustworthy you can ask yourself the following questions:

Who is the author? Is the author affiliated with a university or other research institution?
Does the text cite other scholarly materials?
Is the content relevant to your research question? Can you use the text to support your own claims?
Has the text been refereed/peer reviewed? Remember, usually only articles published in scholarly journals have been peer reviewed. In literary research it is common to publish your findings in other formats, such as dissertations, books or book chapters. Just because a source is not peer review it does not mean that it is not scholarly.