My question to you all is how?

I understand the why (putting you PhD in a wider context, not reinventing the wheel,...), but am not really sure where to start. I have my research questions all sorted (my PhD is in statistics) but need to know what to do next. I have thought about online searching (ISI Web of Science) using keywords, or perhaps looking at a couple of papers I already have found and looking at the references on them. Or perhaps I could look at work by researchers already in my field? However, I am worried I will miss an important paper. I just wanted to ask some of you experienced PhD students how you went about this and what you found sucessful (or not)?

Thanks, Billy xx

im not really sure what you asking? if you already have your research questions in mind thats a good start. if you know exactly what information you need to look for then try searching text books first. they usually cite seminal papers. once you know what these papers/authors are then you should be able to find link to pretty much every paper ever written on the topic you are researching.

im not sure if you know this but web of knowledge has the facility whereby you can find what papers have cited a particular paper( seminal paper for example )

also when you input a search for a given key word you input into the web of knowledge search engine, you can find the most widely cited authors for that keyword

using these two features alone can give you access to a lot of very important papers in your feild.

a very useful tip which can also save time is to search amazon and wiley for relevant texts books which may be useful. they usually give a peek at table of contents and some passages from the book. so you can usually find out quicky enough what books are useful before you even step foot in the library.

Usually a couple of great papers/books should have the leads on refs, that is how i have done mine. It actually works and once you reach saturation point you will know because you will come across the same refs in any paper/book you read. if you see something new (ref) then follow it up coz it usually leads to something else new! good luck