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Search plan

Your search plan starts with determining the different aspects of your chosen research topic and thinking up as many synonyms as possible for each aspect. If you have defined sub-questions, you have to determine the aspects of the sub-questions.
This was covered in Information Literacy 1, but you can read it again in this TUlib module.

Read the sections Analyse your research topic or subquestions until Formulate your search queries in this module.


http://tulib.tudelft.nl/searching-resources/making-a-search-plan/#preparing-for-your-search-plan

1

The research topic "How can the automotive industry contribute to the improvement of air quality by researching fuel technology?" has 3 aspects. Tick the correct aspects.

a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)

Yes, that is correct. The three aspects are: automotive industry, air quality and fuel technology.

The aspects describe the subject of your research topic and you will be using them as search terms.

No, that is incorrect. The aspects describe the subject of your research topic and you will be using them as search terms.

The three correct aspects of this research topic are: automotive industry, air quality and fuel technology.

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Example of the aspects elaborated with synonyms:

Please note:

  • Most synonyms are in English, because most search systems are in English.
  • An asterisk (*) replaces 0 or more symbols; this is called truncation.

Search query

This table must be translated into search queries - a separate query for each aspect, after which the queries are combined.

The complete search query is constructed step-by-step because it is very difficult to type a complete search query all at once, without any mistakes. The complete search query would look like this: