Veterinary Sciences

When starting your search, the first step is to clearly define what you need to find. This begins by refining your topic.

• Break down your assignment topic to identify key components such as task, content, limiting, and context words.
• Identify synonyms or related concepts that could be relevant to your search.

  Keyword	Synonyms/Related terms
  "Veterinary Science"	"Veterinary Medicine" OR "Animal Health"
  Dog	Canine OR Canis
  "Animal Welfare"	"Animal Well-being" OR "Animal wellbeing" OR "Animal Care"
  Diagnosis	Assessment OR Evaluation
  Epidemiology	"Disease Surveillance" OR "Disease Monitoring"

Need more help defining your topic? Try these resources:

Developing a search strategy can help you find information more efficiently and effectively by:

• Combining Keywords: Utilise Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to refine your search.
• Modifying Keywords: Enhance your search by using techniques like:
  • Phrase searching - Use quotation marks "" around a group of words to search for an exact phrase (e.g., "animal behavior").
  • Truncation - Use the asterisk * symbol at the end of a word stem to search for multiple word forms (e.g., "behav* finds behaviour, behavior, behavioral, etc.).
  • Wildcards - Use a symbol like a question mark ? to replace a single character within a word to find variations (e.g., "behavio?r" finds behavior and behaviour).
  • Nesting - Use parentheses () to group terms and control the order of operations in a search (e.g., (cats OR dogs) AND behavio?r).

An example search string to retrieve documents that cover various aspects of veterinary science or animal health and relating to dogs in general could be:

("Veterinary Science" OR "Veterinary Medicine" OR "Animal Health") AND (Canine OR Canis OR dog*)

Adjust the keywords or truncation as needed to fit your specific search requirements.

See more about developing your search skills.

This tool is designed to help you create a search string using Boolean search operators. Add your key concepts and synonyms then click the 'create a search string' button. The resulting search string can be copied and pasted into a database search box or the Library search box.

Copy and paste the above search string into a search box

The Search Strategy Builder was developed by the University of Arizona Libraries and is used under a Creative Commons License.

As you review your search results, ask yourself the following:

• Who is the intended audience? Questions to ask to determine this include:
  • Is it written for researchers or a general audience?
  • Is the language technical or filled with jargon or can anyone understand it?
  • Does it have a formal layout - such as Introduction, Methodology, Results, Conclusion or is it just a whole article?
  • Does it include references or not?
• Is the content biased? To determine bias, ask:
  • Is it clear whether the content comes an advertiser or from a non-commercial source?
  • What is the purpose of the resource? is it trying to inform you or sell you something?
  • Do you know what bias the author or publisher has? Do a search on the author/publisher to see what other resources they are associated with.
• Is it peer-reviewed? Peer-review (also known as refereeing) is the process journal editors use to ensure the articles they publish meet the standards of good scholarship. You can check if a journal is peer-reviewed by searching in Ulrich's Web. 
• How accurate is the information? Ask yourself:
  • Do the facts fir with what you already know? Why/why not?
  • Are there cited (and verifiable) references for its information – this is just as necessary for online resources such as websites etc.
  • Is the information complete or are there obvious gaps?
• How current is it? You can ask:
  • Is the information current and up-to-date? Does it need to be?
  • Is it clearly stated when the information was written and/or updated?

For a deeper analysis, consider using the Cornell Method Template to critically evaluate the information in the articles you find.

Explore these key resources for conducting systematic and literature reviews.

Where to find Australian statistics:

To find comprehensive statistics, explore specialised databases and consult the following websites for additional resources.