Search plan part 1: the search table

A search plan will provide a structured way to search for information. With the research question, you can start creating the first part of a search plan: 1) Start extracting the different concepts of your research question and 2) determine synonyms and related terms for each concept.

In the figure below we already filled out some related terms for the concept: automotive industry from the example about the automotive industry:

automotive industry

automobile*

automo* industr*

automo* sector*

transport sector*

car

cars

vehicle*

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.

 

You might remember the search plan from your previous course Information Literacy 1, and you have read in more detail about the search plan on TUlib:

• Building your search plan