Identify Your Topic and Search Terms

Describe Your Topic

Narrow down and describe your topic to make sure that you're searching for exactly what you want. Brainstorm your idea and write it out; though you can't search for a whole sentence or question, this will help you articulate your topic.

Ask a specific research question; for example, "How does temperature affect the protist endosymbionts of corals?"

OPTIONAL Handy Hint: You might be interested in corals but what aspect? Unless you're doing background research for books and reference works, don't stop at a broad topic search; this will give you thousands of results (or millions in a search engine like Google).

Identify main concepts

Identify the main ideas and key search terms for your topic.

Example: For the topic "How does temperature affect the protist endosymbionts of corals?" the following concepts are the most important ones to search for.

Concept 1: temperature

Concept 2: protist endosymbionts

Concept 3: corals

OPTIONAL Handy Hint: You'll be tempted to use concepts like "effect," "cause," and "prove." Be aware: an article may be about the effects or proof of something without ever explicitly stating it. If you search for the word "effect" or "prove" and the article doesn't mention the word specifically, your search won't find it.

Search Terms

Think of related terms

  • Scientific, scholarly, or field-specific terminology
  • Synonyms or alternative ways of describing your topic. 
  • Plural or alternate endings for your keywords
  • Look for additional terms in your search results. 

Concept 1:  temperature

  • warming, 

  • cooling,

  • degrees, 

  • global warming, climate or climatic change

Concept 2: protist endosymbionts

  • protists, protozoa; 

  • endosymbiont, symbiotic; 

  • dinoflagellates (the group of protists studied), algae (photosynthetic protists are a type of algae), Symbiodinium (the genus of dinoflagellates found in corals); 

  • photosynthetic (These protists are photosynthetic and provide the coral with sugars in exchange for a safe place to live)

Concept 3: corals

  • cnidaria (corals are in the animal phyla cnidaria),

  • Xenia (the genus of coral studied); 

  • coral, coral reefs, reefs; 

  • bleaching (describes what happens to corals when they expel their protist endosymbionts)


OPTIONALHandy Hint: Books and background resources like encyclopedias (e.g. Wikipedia) and other reference resources are good places to find more search terms (and to give some context to the detailed articles you'll find in scholarly databases). Find books and other resources at Cornell University Libraries using the global search.