## Determining keywords

Now that you have formulated a research question, the next step is to identify the main key concepts. These will become your keywords and serve as the starting point for creating your search strategy. Keywords are words or short phrases that represent the most important elements of your topic or research question.

In Google (and also Google Scholar), you can search using full sentences. However, it’s not recommended to search with your entire research question. This usually creates a lot of “noise”: you’ll find many publications that are not actually relevant for answering your research question.

Library databases are often not as “smart” as Google. They don’t understand full sentences, spelling mistakes, or informal language.

In the example research question below, the key concepts are highlighted in bold:

Due to climate change, Amsterdam is experiencing more extremely hot summer days and more frequent heavy rainstorms. What measures should the municipality take to protect its residents?

In this example, Amsterdam is not highlighted. That’s because it is too specific as a search term. You don’t just want to find scholarly publications about Amsterdam alone. Instead, you want to find research articles on how other cities have addressed this issue.