Political Science

First, identify key terms in your research topic or question. For example: How do Intergovernmental organizations influence national policy?

Then, brainstorm synonyms for the keywords or phrases that can be used in a search engine:

Other phrases that you could use for "intergovernmental organizations" could be IGO or "international organizations". You could also search using specific IGOs such as "united nations", "world trade organization", or "European Union".

You might try searching using the term nation or phrase "sovereign nation" instead of "national policy" or you might try searching with a specific country's name.

Only use words that add value to the search (don't type in full phrases or questions that include words like "are" or "the").

Search tips:

• “Truncating” words can help expand your search. Place an asterisk at the end of the root of the word so that the search engine will retrieve documents that contain any words that begin with that spelling:  nation* will find nation + national + nationalism + any plural forms
• "Phrase searching" is when you place multi-word concepts, such as “economic policy”, within quotation marks to search the words as one phrase
• You can use three words called Boolean Operators to connect or exclude your keywords: AND, OR, NOT

Different search engines have different rules for how operators are used in their searches. The tips here work in OCtopus and some other database's search engines. Check the help section of the database for more information.