LibGuides: Systematic Searching: Finding Search Terms

Find search terms, keywords, phrases

Where can I find relevant keywords, subject terms, search terms or phrases and synonyms?

Subject headings or thesaurus - available from library databases or online
Key papers, highly relevant papers - references of key papers are also useful
Published search strategies in review papers on your topic
Google, internet browsers, AI language models or AI tools
Text analysis tools

Library Databases with subject headings or thesaurus

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 5,300 full-text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,300 journals and a total of 9,810 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
→ Concurrent users: Unlimited
→ Available to current NTU/NIE staff and students | Restricted onsite access for associate members -- please approach the staff at the Lee Wee Nam Library service desk for assistance
APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
(Formerly known as PsycInfo)

Citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, and technical reports, as well as citations to dissertations, all in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines, such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business and law.

→ Concurrent users: Unlimited
→ Available to current NTU/NIE staff and students | Restricted onsite access for associate members -- please approach the staff at the Lee Wee Nam Library service desk for assistance
Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
Full-text content and peer-reviewed business journals. Covers all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, accounting, banking, finance and more.

→ Concurrent users: Unlimited
→ Available to current NTU/NIE staff and students | Restricted onsite access for associate members -- please approach the staff at the Lee Wee Nam Library service desk for assistance
CINAHL This link opens in a new window
CINAHL is a data resource for nursing and allied health professionals. CINAHL Complete provides quick and easy full-text access to premier nursing journals, evidence-based care sheets, quick lessons and more. Literature coverage includes nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines. In addition, CINAHL provides access to health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, audiovisuals and book chapters. It includes full-text journals, legal cases, clinical innovations, critical paths, research instruments and clinical trials.

→ Concurrent users: Unlimited
→ Available to current NTU staff and students only
→ Subscription by Medical Library, LKCMedicine
EBSCOhost This link opens in a new window
An online bibliographic and full text database service, it offers more than 80 multi-disciplinary databases targeted at academic users. Databases subscribed include the Academic Search Premier, Business Source Premier and Computer Source. Full text documents are available in various formats such as PDF, html and XML and color embedded images. Sign up for a personal account to save searches, create search or journal alerts and create web pages with persistent links to articles in Ebscohost.

→ Concurrent users: Unlimited
→ Available to current NTU/NIE staff and students | Restricted onsite access for associate members -- please approach the staff at the Lee Wee Nam Library service desk for assistance
Engineering Village This link opens in a new window
Consists of multiple databases that cover 190+ subject areas and multiple content types that reflect the depth and breadth of engineering.

NOTE: Our Library only subscribes 2 databases: Compendex and Inspec.
Video tutorials: Quick search tutorial, Results page tutorial, Record page tutorial, Numerical data tutorial.

→ Concurrent users: Unlimited
→ Available to current NTU staff and students | Restricted onsite access for NIE staff & students, associate members -- please approach the staff at the Lee Wee Nam Library service desk for assistance.
OvidSP This link opens in a new window
Medical research platform of aggregated content and productivity tools that make it easy to quickly search information and make informed decisions on patient care, quality, and clinical outcomes.

NOTE: Subscription includes books and journals such as LWW Total Access collections.

→ Concurrent users: 3
→ Available to current NTU staff and students | Restricted onsite access for NIE staff & students, associate members -- please approach the staff at the Lee Wee Nam Library service desk for assistance.
→ Subscription by Medical Library, LKCMedicine
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global This link opens in a new window
Collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, spanning from 1743 to the present day and offering full text for graduate works added since 1997, along with selected full text for works written prior to 1997. It contains a significant amount of new international dissertations and theses both in citations and in full text.

→ Concurrent users: Unlimited
→ Available to current NTU staff and students | Restricted onsite access for NIE staff & students, associate members -- please approach the staff at the Lee Wee Nam Library service desk for assistance.
ProQuest Search This link opens in a new window
Single search platform that covers all databases and collections under ProQuest.

→ Concurrent users: Unlimited
→ Available to current NTU staff and students | Restricted onsite access for NIE staff & students, associate members -- please approach the staff at the Lee Wee Nam Library service desk for assistance.

Other Resources

IEEE Thesaurus
The IEEE Thesaurus is a controlled vocabulary of about 11,570 descriptive engineering, technical, and scientific terms as well as IEEE-specific society terms.
Tools for Search Strategy Development - Text mining for searching and screening the literature
Text mining for searching and screening the literature: Tools for search strategy development, [McGill University]: