First of all, we should formulate the literature retrieval strategy. At least set a goal before literature retrieval, and then consult the tutor or library related personnel, so as to avoid wasting your time wandering in a large number of databases. When doing literature retrieval, keywords should be broad enough to cover the whole research field, but also go deep into a specific topic. A good literature review should not only reflect your professional level, but also prove that your research direction is meaningful. In this way, no matter when you write an article or reply in the future, you can clearly explain what the purpose of choosing this topic is and what the meaning of the topic is.
When doing literature retrieval, it is often necessary to judge whether to repeat other people's work. If you think there is a more valuable research direction, then you need to search the literature carefully to make sure that no one has done the same research in this direction. Don't let others have the opportunity to ask you in your defense: Why didn't you mention the results of a study done in the same direction last year in your literature review? In any case, it is difficult to produce great value by repeating other people's recent research. However, if you want to repeat a study more than ten years ago, or a study with unreasonable results, it may still make some sense. You accidentally dug up a gold mine. Of course, the articles in the literature review should be relatively new, and it would be better if you could do a literature search in the last year or two before submitting your papers or articles.
Now there are many automation tools to help automatically update the latest literature. For example:
(1) Use keywords. Everyone knows to search with keywords, but if the keywords are too vague or too broad, the search algorithm can only give a rough result. If you want to get a specific result, try to search with some specific words in your major.
(2) Subscribe to RSS and Google News. According to the selected keywords and the specified time period, these tools will regularly inform you of relevant updates and link information.
(3) Regular and database reminders. These websites will regularly or irregularly send you the latest published articles or even links to the full text of journals according to the keywords or types of research fields you provide.
Finally, you need to remember that your time is always limited. Try to concentrate on searching for documents related to your research direction, otherwise you will waste too much time. At the same time, it is better to do a thorough search than to spend many times doing a general search. The most important purpose of literature retrieval is to clarify why your research is meaningful, which is based on the high quality and direct correlation of the retrieved information.