While you might be familiar with the term \u201cthesaurus\u201d as a resource for finding synonyms, they mean something slightly different in an academic research context. In databases, you may see the option for a thesaurus that shows the standardized terminology for a discipline and that term\u2019s relationship to other concepts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When you search a thesaurus for a keyword you are using in your research, the preferred term for that keyword will be shown, along with terms that are related. The related terms may be a broader category or more specific sub-terms. They are displayed in the thesaurus and allow you to decide whether you want to include the broader or narrower terms in addition to the preferred term in your search. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not all disciplines use thesauri, so they do not appear in all databases. They can be found in Engineering Village (controlled vocabularies available for both Compendex, using the Engineering Index Thesaurus<\/a> and Inspec, using its own proprietary thesaurus<\/a>), PubMed (which uses the Medical Subject Headings (or MeSH) Database<\/a>), PsycNET (which uses the APA Thesaurus<\/a>), and ProQuest, which includes multiple thesauri such as MeSH<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n