I am finding a lot of information on my research topic. How do I refine my results to the most relevant material?
Answer
There are a couple of approaches you can take: the first is to refine the results using the subject terms (or subject thesaurus terms) shown in the left-hand column; the second is to select one or two articles from your results that are the most related to your topic, then use the article's list of cited works or references as your next set of articles to retrieve and view.
The first approach requires you to look at the words and phrases presented as subjects or subject thesaurus terms. There will be a number of terms; pick two or three that you believe are most relevant. You can also use the date-range limiter to limit your results to just a few recent years. This should help you focus your list of results. You may need to do this several times, trying different subject terms until you see a list of results that is of most interest to you.
The second approach requires you to pick one or two articles from your results. Make sure it is an article you believe strongly applies to your topic. Use the article’s list of works cited, or references, and search for the articles listed. This should greatly help you narrow the papers of interest to just a few.