Uncharted territory: understanding exploratory search behaviours in literature reviews

In the realm of Information Seeking and Retrieval (ISR), searching the literature for relevant references in the context of academic work, such as theses or publications, is widely recognised as an exploratory search task. This task becomes particularly challenging when searchers lack prior knowledge of the subject matter. To help address the growing need for supporting exploratory search endeavours, ISR researchers have developed exploratory search models and interfaces. However, while much attention has been given to conceptualising exploratory searches, little focus has been placed on understanding the specific approaches and behaviours that searchers employ during conducting literature reviews. This paper aims to bridge this gap by conducting semi-structured interviews with 30 Master’s students at the end of a user study. This paper provides comprehensive definitions for the fundamental exploratory characteristics from the recent conceptual model, pinpoints potential factors that could influence these characteristics, introduces new exploratory dimensions, and extends our comprehension of existing ones in the academic context. It also uncovers a spectrum of approaches used in literature searches, shedding light on how individuals rely on specific paper sections to measure their relevance and highlighting essential facets of knowledge acquisition in the context of literature searches.