NWB2023_Systematic development and documentation of cross-disciplinary bibliometric search queries

Bibliometric analyses of cross-disciplinary research areas are often performed based on search queries developed specifically for the research area in question. If the research area is large, vaguely defined and/or covers many different scientific disciplines, it is a time-consuming process to develop search queries. Moreover, the development of bibliometric search queries is not an exact science, but a result of an iterative process. Therefore, it is important that the search queries are consolidated and well-documented. This study presents a systematic way of developing large cross-disciplinary bibliometric search queries based on the work on green research by the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science. The study considers how to design new search queries as well as how to develop existing search queries by including experts, scientific papers and policy documents to define the search terms or combinations with which to start developing the search query. A systematic way of choosing, judging and documenting the single search terms – both selected and deselected – is presented based on specific search queries for green research developed for the Scopus database. The green search query consists of more than 70 sub-search queries of varying length that are combined to one single search query. It is also considered when to use Boolean and when to use proximity operators in a search as well as which textual context of the search that returns the most precise publication sets. As a result, a template for developing and documenting advanced bibliometric search queries is presented.