Developing relevant research articles is a must in the publish or perish world of science and academics. These are highly competitive fields full of evolving information, no matter what branch it is that you’re working in. If you want your reputation to be stellar and always improving, you have to keep up with emerging literature and data.

As a scholar, it’s your job to develop innovative ideas and stay up-to-date on all the changes on the horizon in your specialized field. It’s not enough to know what you’re doing; you have to be cognizant of what others are working on, too. This can be difficult in a global industry, but you can stay on top of recent publications when you use strategic search strategies to structure how you receive your information.

Why Science is Time-Sensitive

There’s a constant push and pull in the world of research. On the one hand, any experiment has to be thoroughly performed and completely exhaustive, with evidence that displays no bias, no rushing, and complete adherence to the rules and regulations that must be followed. On the other hand, if you want to be the first one to the table with your findings, you have to beat others to the punch.

In addition to this race to publishing original findings, there are other reasons science is time-sensitive. Consider the most recent global health issue: the pandemic of COVID-19. It was a brand new virus that had never been seen before. The public population of the entire world was looking at scientists for an answer to a terrifying, deadly scare. Delayed research meant thousands of deaths.

As researchers experimented with potential treatments and healthcare professionals tried and failed and tried and succeeded, the results had to be published in real-time to prevent more fatalities. While this was an extreme situation, it’s a truth that scientists are always aware of, especially when the research pertains to treatments that could impact the health of a person.

The Overwhelm of Literature

At one time in the not-so-distant past, scholars had the problem of not having access to enough resources to complete their work. Sometimes, the book they needed was across the world and had to be shipped, costing significant expense and time delays. Additionally, the ability to publish your findings was limited, too, as journals only had a set amount of publications they’d release, with a maximum count of articles included.

Today, this problem is on the entire opposite side of the spectrum. We now have too much information to sift through. Open access publishing companies provide free research online. Bloggers, whether they have the credentials or not, publish their own conclusions freely all over the internet. Books and journals are published almost daily.

How, then, do you sort out the “information” from the “misinformation” within enough time to keep your own work relevant? The key is to be careful what you’re searching for.

Search Strategies to Keep You Relevant

The worst thing you can do if you want to avoid the vortex of internet black holes is to use generic search terms to keep up with publications in your field. Yes, you want to stay relevant, but you also have a busy schedule and better things to do with your life than to sort through unnecessary results.

Use these strategies to narrow your findings down to the most accurate and relevant recent publishings:

●      Consider your search words carefully. The web crawlers that you’re using will look for matching text, citation counts, author names, and the location of the publication. When you switch to an “advanced” setting, you can tell the crawler what settings are absolutely required and which ones are okay to be broad.

●      Get to know the databases that come up in your results. A database is a repository of content that has already been published. Some of those databases carry material that you know is high-quality and relevant and when you see those search results come up, you know they’ll likely work for what you’re looking for. Others, on the other hand, might not cater to your area of study and you can ignore those searches.

●      Find the most relevant publishers and sign up to receive emails when they offer a book or journal that contains content that might be interesting to you.

●      Stick to a routine schedule for searching. If you’re randomly looking for new publications, you’re going to end up with duplicates. However, if you do your search at regular intervals, you’ll know which dates to look for in the search results.

With these tips, you can develop an organized, structured way to look for publications that will help you, not waste your time.

Add Impactio as Part of Your Optimization Strategy

Choosing strategic keywords and designing a search strategy are important to stay relevant in your field. Once you’ve narrowed down the information, come up with a research project, and made it to the outcome, you also need to publish your work optimally. Like the searches you yourself go through, your own paper should show up in web crawlers. With Impactio, you can optimize your paper as you write it with all the tools you need to guide you right there in one comprehensive solution.

Impactio’s all-in-one platform was designed for academic experts. Review your content, analyze your information, and condense everything into your final thoughts. Then optimize your paper with the tools at your disposal to turn a complicated and complex job into a more efficient, time-saving process with Impactio!