Keeping a research log is an excellent practice for organizing sources and successful sources. This can be as simple as a document with a record of your successful keyword combinations or it can be structured to include annotations, summaries, or notes on specific sources and how they inform your project.
Some best practices:
- Be sure to record as many of your keywords as possible
- Save your successful search combinations and be sure to include the date searched - databases are updated regularly and it's often the case that the same search may yield slightly different results on different days
- Include notes or annotations for each source - this will prove especially helpful when preparing to write a literature review or annotated bibliography
Below are a few free and helpful research log tools: