Literature Review - 6 Steps to Find Quality Resources

Have you ever used a quote and can't remember where you found it? Have you ever wanted to read an article again, but can't locate it no matter how much you search? The better you manage your research process, the more efficient you will be in all of your academic work. Tools such as citation managers, research logs, and others linked from this page, will give you some options for maximizing your time.

Import and store your the citation information for books and articles (and more) as you research. Then, create on-demand reference lists for papers and projects.

While you are unlikely to directly cite web pages in a literature review, you may use pages from government organizations, NGOs, trade organizations, or others to locate information.  It can be overwhelming to save and organize these pages.  Here are some tips and tricks:

• Create unique bookmark folders for each assignment
• Look for permanent or stable URLs if they are offered on the page
• Use the "Save to PDF" print function to save a more permanent copy of the page
• Use your search log to take detailed notes about how you located an unstable resource (for instance, if you select variables in a table to create a unique report, record what variables you selected)

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Choose at least one of the resources discussed on this page, such as a search log, citation manager or website tool , and try it out!