How to begin your research

Identify a subject

• choose a subject that you are interested in: the search will be more fruitful if what you need to deal with involves you!
• define the field of your topic: to avoid a surfeit of information, start from the basic reading texts (manuals, encyclopaedias, dictionaries) that can help you to define and delimit the scope of your search. You may find it helpful in this activity to read the following article:  
  Pain Elisabeth, How to (seriously) read a scientific paper,  «Science», March 2016, 21st, <https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.caredit.a1600047>. (Last visit: August 2024, 7th)  
• discuss with lecturers and colleagues
• think of the five Ws (why, who, what, where, when):
  • Why did you choose this subject? What makes it interesting? Have you any thoughts regarding the questions it poses?
  • Who provides the information about the topic and who is interested in it? Who could publish information about it? Are there any organisations/institutions linked to it?
  • What: what are the main questions concerning the subject? Is there a debate around it? Are there several points of view to be considered?
  • Where: is the topic linked to a particular geographical area? Is it of  local, national or international relevance?
  • When: is the topic linked to a particular period of history or is it of current interest ? Is it of use to make a chronological comparison?

At this point, take a look at the list of your results:

• don't have enough information? You need to widen the field: think of questions and subjects that are connected, go back to the basic reading texts There are several reasons why you may not find enough information:  
  • the subject is too specific: widen the perspective to include other  aspects (for example, from the geographical or chronological viewpoint or that of the data considered);
  • you have not consulted a sufficient number of databases or you have not used the most efficient search strategy;
  • you are using terms that are of too common a usage and not specific enough to describe the topic: focus on the presence of the specialist lexis used by experts in your field of study through semantic searches (thesauri and subject indexes).
  • the subject is too recent: it is something about which nothing substantial has yet been written, hence in all probability you will be able to find only general information about the main means of information. Check that you are searching in databases that contain journal articles;
  • if you cannot find enough information, consider the possibility of changing to another subject.
• have too much information? Try to make your list of results more manageable. You may want to consider the subject taking into account the various types of perspectives so as to “reshape” it on the basis of:  
  • theoretical approach
  • branch, subcategory
  • chronological aspects or limits
  • geographical aspects or limits
  • population groups

Finding information

Finding information is quite simple since we are constantly surrounded by it; the internet makes available an enormous quantity and variety of information in every field of knowledge and more.
However, what distinguishes search activities is the use of the best sources of information that enable the researcher to access academic and reliable resources.

The resources useful to a search may be in various forms; on this basis the method and the means used to search and retrieve them change accordingly; these resources are principally books (in paper or electronic form) and articles (paper or electronic).

Books: consult our SEARCH catalogue (if you are not very familiar with the procedure, consult our tutorials on the use of SEARCH). If what you are looking for is not available in our Library, try consulting OneSearch, the catalogue of the University of Pisa;  even if you are not an  internal user you will be able to access local lending by registering as an external user at the library of your interest. If the volume is not in the SNS Library collections you can use our Interlibrary services (but only if you are an SNS-affiliated user).

Journal articles, contributions in miscellaneous collections, book chapters, proceedings: consult a bibliographic database. To find the most suitable database, explore our databases, organised by scientific-disciplinary areas. Carry out your search using key words or subject terms that describe the subject efficaciously.

Other documental resources: internet resources, images, patents, minutes of congresses, primary search data (raw or structured), standards, preprints, scientific reports, working papers, statistics.

If you cannot find what you are looking for, you can use our Interlibrary services (but only if you are an SNS-affiliated user).