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Aviation Library Guide: Literature Searching

What is literature searching?

A search strategy to help find relevant resources on a particular topic. If you have a good search strategy, it will help you find more relevant, high-quality information that give statements and arguments in your assignments more credibility.

The importance of keywords...

Think of this research question...

What are the advantages of implementing Sigma Methodology for Process Improvement in the Aviation Industry?

If you were to put this entire question into a search engine, you would get limited results.

You need to select the most important keywords from the question...

 Sigma Methodology AND Process Improvement AND Aviation Industry.

We can then make our searches better by thinking of alternative keywords to use in our searches.

Sigma Methodology could be...

Lean Six Sigma OR 6 Sigma.

Process Improvement could be...

Continual Improvement OR Business Process.

Aviation Industry could be...

Air Transport Industry OR Arline Industry.

Developing your search strategy...

When developing your search strategy think about:

  • Acronyms: e.g. Corporate Social Responsibility AND CSR.
  • Abbreviations: e.g. Director AND Dir.
  • Different spellings: e.g. Organisation AND Organization).
  • Search limits: Specific search criteria (e.g. limit to peer-reviewed articles).
  • Date range: How old can a resource be for it to be valid for your topic? 

What are academic resources?

For your studies, you will need to find academic sources. These can include academic textbooks and scholarly, peer-reviewed articles.

What does Peer-reviewed mean?

Peer-reviewing is a vigorous process where articles written by academics are assessed by other academics, who give the writer editorial feedback. The article is rewritten using this feedback, before being published in an academic journal.

Guides and Worksheets for Literature Searching

Peer-reviewed Aviation Journals

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