Where to find literature for literature review: Chinese and English search methods

Key points of this article

Search for documents in layers: first check the core database of the topic, then use references and citation records to complete, and finally use preprints to check for leaks
Search Chinese and foreign language documents separately. Write a set of search terms for each. Do not just translate Chinese keywords into English.
The search term uses a combination of "core concepts + synonyms + qualifying conditions", which makes it easier to filter out available literature than a single big word.
The found PDF can be saved to Zotero, and then searched and translated in the OmniDoc document workspace for easy reference and reading.
The search results must be checked against the author, year, journal and DOI, and the translation and recognition results must be returned to the original text for confirmation.

When writing a review, many people get stuck on the first step: where to find the literature review. If you directly enter a big word, you will easily get hundreds of thousands of results, most of which have nothing to do with your question; if you change to Chinese keywords, you will worry about missing a lot of foreign language research. This article is written for readers who are preparing to write a topic, course review, or graduation thesis. It explains where to search Chinese and foreign literature respectively, how to design search terms, and how to manage them after they are found.

After reading, you should be able to come up with a search plan: which types of databases to choose, which keywords to use in each type, and what methods to use to complete missing documents. This method does not rely on any one tool and is equally applicable to another subject or a different school library.

Where to find the literature review? One sentence conclusion

One sentence conclusion: First search the Chinese comprehensive database and foreign language comprehensive database subscribed by the school library, then follow the references and citation records of the found documents forward and backward, and finally use preprints and subject professional databases to check for leaks.

your situation	Recommended practices	reason
A brief overview of the course, with narrow topics	The Chinese library and the foreign library will each be searched for one round, and the expansion will be stopped after screening out the core documents.	The scope is small, and the main library can cover the main points.
Graduation thesis summary, involving Chinese and English	Establish Chinese and foreign language search word lists respectively, and perform traceback after searching in each database	Chinese and English terms are not completely corresponding, and it is easy to miss documents in a single language
Research fields change rapidly, such as emerging technologies	Add retrieval of preprint platforms and conference papers	Recent developments often appear first in preprints and are slower to be officially published.
Medicine, law, engineering and other professional fields	Prioritize the use of this professional database, and then supplement it with the comprehensive database	The classification of professional database is more detailed, the search vocabulary is more standardized, and the search is more accurate.
Only one or two starting papers	Expand outwards from the references and cited documents of the starting paper	Good reviews have been screened and you can borrow its citation chain

Before you start: Confirm these points first

Scope of the review: First write down the research questions, time span and research objects. If the scope is unclear, the search terms will expand infinitely, and there will be no criteria for filtering.
Which full texts can be seen: Your school library subscription determines which full texts you can open. When searching under the campus network or library account, there are usually many more full texts visible, so confirm the access method first.
Language and Region: Local policies and local cases are often only available in Chinese libraries; international theories and general methods are mostly concentrated in foreign libraries. Both sides must be searched, and the search terms must be written separately.
How to store documents: The found documents need to be stored and marked in a unified place. It is recommended to build the Zotero library before starting the search, and then enter each document from the same entrance to avoid duplication and loss.

Steps from formulating search terms to organizing the literature library

Split the research question into 2-3 core concepts: For example, "the impact of urban renewal on community residents" can be split into "urban renewal", "community" and "resident impact". The clearer the concept, the better the search query can be written.
List synonyms and related words for each concept: For example, "urban renewal" may also correspond to "old city renovation" and "urban redevelopment". Write them into a table to facilitate subsequent additions and deletions.
Use Boolean logic to combine search terms: Synonyms within the same concept are connected with "or", and different concepts are connected with "and", written in a form similar to "(urban renewal or old city renovation) and community".
Search one round in the Chinese comprehensive database and the subject database: First use a wider search term to see if the title, abstract and keywords are relevant, and then gradually add the subject, document type, year and other qualifying conditions.
Write English search terms separately: Do not directly translate Chinese search terms. First, learn about the common terms in the field through English reviews or textbooks, then combine them into English search terms and search in foreign language databases and preprint platforms.
Do two-way tracing: For each highly relevant document, check its reference list to find the classic work that has been cited repeatedly; then check its citation record to find subsequent research. Only by checking in both directions can the front and back context be covered.
Save the results to Zotero and read the full text of the foreign text: Create groups in Zotero by topic and save the titles and PDFs. If you need to read the full text of a foreign language, you can connect to the Zotero library in the literature workspace of the OmniDoc desktop client, search for the paper PDF, and then select bilingual comparison or translation only for translation. Bilingual comparison facilitates comparison of the original text paragraph by paragraph. The machine translation is only used to help understanding. You must go back to the original text for verification before quoting.
Record the database, search formula and date of each round of search: Write down the database name, search formula, search date and number of results. This information is needed for the methods section of the review and can be used later to supplement the search.

Check each item after completion

After the search and sorting are completed, check the following points one by one to judge whether the review is tenable rather than simply looking at the number of documents.

Check items	What do you think?	What to do if there is a problem
Literature relevance	Read headlines, abstracts and keywords to determine whether to answer your research questions.	Exclude irrelevant tags, and write down the reasons for the exclusion, so as to explain the screening criteria.
Is the title information complete?	Is the author, year, journal or conference name and DOI complete?	Go back to the database details page to complete the missing; do not quote the incomplete literature.
Retrieval coverage	It depends on whether the results are concentrated in a certain year, a certain type or a certain school.	Add synonyms or change the database and do another round of traceability
The proportion of Chinese and English	Check whether the number of Chinese and foreign documents is in line with the topic of the review.	Supplement the literature of missing languages according to the subject
Translation and identification content	Check the terms, numbers and formulas in the translation against the original; spot check the scanned pieces identified by OCR	Identify the wrong paragraphs and correct them manually according to the original text.
Duplicate entry	Find duplicates by title or DOI in Zotero	Merge duplicate entries and retain one with more complete information

If you find that a large number of documents have nothing to do with the problem, do not stay, you should return to the first step to narrow the research problem and re-split the concept.

# frequently asked questions (FAQ)

1. How to find references in literature review?

Start with the reference table of the highly relevant papers that have been read, find out the classic work that has been cited many times, and then search it in the database according to the title. This method is usually more direct than re-searching for big words, and it is easier to find recognized literature in the field.

2. The paper found is only an abstract, but what if there is no full text?

First use the school library account or campus network to open the full text, and then check the author's public home page, preprint platform or institutional knowledge base. If you can't find it, you can contact the author to get it by email.

3. Can scanned PDF documents be translated directly?

Sure. The scanned version of PDF can upload translations directly. To determine whether it is a scanned piece, you can try to select a paragraph of text in the reader, which usually means that it is in the form of a picture; if you need to search for the text in it, you can first do OCR recognition and spot-check for errors while reading.

4. Can you ask the general chat robot to list references directly?

It can help split concepts and supplement synonyms, but the listed literature may not exist, or the title, author, and year may be incorrect. Each article has to be verified in the database.

# Summary

Where to find the literature review, there is no unified answer, but the idea is fixed: first, use the Chinese and English comprehensive database and subject database as the main search, then use references and cited records to complete, and finally use the preprint to check the recent progress. The search words are designed in different languages, and the documents found are stored in Zotero management. Before citation, go back to the original text to check the title and content.

Open OmniDoc and translate the whole article.