1. 8 tips and tools for narrowing your search scope and keyword selection
When you write a paper and publish it, the journal which has published your paper makes
your research known to its readers. However, it is rather obvious that no researcher reads all the
journals which are published in his field of study - issue of time being just one reason- and only
focuses on few influential ones. Of course most researchers follow these journals to keep
themselves updated. However, papers relevant to some researchers may be published in journals
that they do not read regularly or not read at all. This is where the concept of keywords and
search engines comes up.
What is a keyword? Well, let’s say a keyword is a key which opens the door to your paper
and at the same time opens the doors for you to other papers. What it means is that keywords’
function is twofold:
First, keywords help other researchers find your work, i.e. helps effectively disseminate your
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paper; and
Second, carefully chosen keywords allow you, as a researcher, to find the right articles for
your paper and thus narrow down your search and save you research time.
Dissemination: Keyword is one element which enables the dissemination of your paper –
along with title and abstract which will be discussed in future articles- and without these, readers
would not be able to find or cite your paper. Keywords lead other researchers to your paper
which may not be visible to them during their process of reading or, as mentioned above, in the
journals they follow.

2. Narrowing down: Suppose you want to start writing your literature review. What should
you do first? Well, finding the best and most relevant articles. How can you do that? Of course
by focusing on your selected keywords. They narrow down your search in your field of study.
There may be hundreds of papers out there in your chosen field of study, but with keywords in
hand you can decrease them to maybe thirty or fifty articles. So in effect they help narrow down
your scope of research.
Well, the problem in the academic world is that there are many journals and papers out there,
so chances are that when you publish a paper in one journal only a limited number of researchers
may notice it. And even when these researchers notice your paper in that journal, again chances
are that the the title you have selected will fail to indicate any relevance.
One important thing to remember is that most search engines and databases use the words
found in the title, abstract, and keywords of your paper to display (index) it when someone
searches with a keyword. So these three determine the visibility of your paper and if they are
optimized and properly selected, chances of your paper being found and cited by other
researchers will dramatically increase.
Now one practical example of how keywords can be useful and how important they are for
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the visibility of your paper:
Let’ say you have published a paper titled ‘new approaches to teaching listening
comprehension’. Now, your paper describes, for instance, how metacognitive strategies can help
improve listening comprehension. But, your title does not make reference to the strategies. So,

3. suitable keywords for your paper will include the name of those metacognitive strategies, and a
search for any of those will lead other researchers to your paper.
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Here are some tips:
1. You should not use terms in the title of your paper as keywords, why? Because keywords
complement the information you include in your title. Terms in the title are automatically
included in indexes, and keywords function as additional pointers.
2. Read through your paper, list down the terms and/or phrases which are used repeatedly.
Find the major concepts and the terms related to them. Make sure you include all your
main key terms and/or phrases and consider including synonyms for these terms (like
strategy, tactic, plan).
3. Before submitting your article, try your keywords by searching them in search engines
and check if the results that come up are relevant to the subject of your paper. This will
help you determining the suitability of your keywords and title.
Now it is time to introduce some tools which can assist you in finding and generating
effective and optimized keywords. Bear in mind that you can use these tools to put your own
selected keywords to trial, find new, more optimized keywords and search-engine-friendly
keywords. To be honest, these tools are invaluable; of course if you know how to use them
correctly to your advantage - you will reach the same conclusion once you have tried them. Let’s
start:

4. 1. Google Trends: It shows you what is trending. Of course you might be already familiar
with this tool if you have read the other essay about gap spotting (can be found here:
link). But in case you are not, Google Trends provides you with information regarding
the popularity of a topic or strings of words you had searched; whether the popularity is
increasing or decreasing; regional interest in the topic or strings of words – notice that
this piece of information can be really useful if you are targeting a specific country and
want to find out how, let’s say, hot is your topic in that country; and suggested alternative
terms which are related to your query – again this can offer ideas about new strings of
words .
2. Google AdWords Keyword Planner: Google Keyword Planner tool provides much
information such as search volume, average monthly searchers, competition, keyword
ideas and list of related keywords. There are many options and you can highly customize
your queries. Just go to Google Adwords, select “keyword planner” in tools tab and
search for new keyword and ad group ideas. Remember that by using optimized
keywords you increase the visibility of your paper and chances of other researchers
finding –and citing- your paper. So use the keyword planner to see what people are
searching for in your chosen field of research.
3. Wordle.net: This online web-based tool is simple and effective, and it is most useful for
inexperienced researchers. You just have to paste your text into the empty field and then
you will be provided with a graphic representation of the keywords in your text. Wordle
gives a greater prominence to the words that appear more frequently in the source text.
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5. This way you will get a better understanding of the words which are repeated more
frequently.
Link to this tool:
http://www.wordle.net/create
4. Keyword Density Analyzer: This again is an online web-based tool. Once you paste
your text into the field and press enter, you will be provided with a table with 3 columns:
Word, two word phrases, and three word phrases. In each column, the words with higher
density are the most important. This is another simple tool which gives you a better
understanding of your written texts and its keywords.
Link to this tool:
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/
5. University of Texas Generator: This is a rather simple and easy to use web-based
keyword generator developed by University of Texas. It helps you generate keywords
related to your topic in 4 steps by asking about your topic, list of major concepts in your
paper. It is simple and can be helpful especially for the beginning of keywords selection
process. Here is the link to this research keywords generator:
(http://www.lib.utexas.edu/keywords/)
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6. Of course there are other tools which you can use for keywords generation, and you can
always find them here. Just go to the “searching the literature” and select “keywords”. You
can find many tools there, but the check-marked ones are proved to be more reliable and
effective. As a final point, remember this: once you choose a tool, stick with it and master it. It is
much better than trying to use all the available tools.
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