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Library Guides

Engineering

Recommended databases for final year project

Scopus

Tutorials:

Scopus BasicsScopus Advanced

Web of Science

Tutorials:

Web of Science BasicWeb of Science Advanced

Advanced searching support

How to devise a search strategy

Identify your keywords and get familiar with exact phrase searching, truncation, wildcards and combining terms

Final year project: literature review

How to scope the literature, identify key papers, key authors and set the scene for your final project.

Systematic Review methodology for literature searching

A systematic review is a research methodology useful for researchers writing a review article to be published.  This approach could be useful for PGT students and PGRs.

SAGE Research Methods

The Library subscribes to SAGE Research Methods: a portal of text, video & project planner resources explaining different quantitative and qualitative approaches to carrying out research.  Ideal for project stage students, PGT students and PGRs.

Final year project: books in the Library

The Library also has a number of print and Ebooks on how to write a literature review and how to undertake a dissertation project.  Some of these are specifically written for Engineering projects.  A collated list of these titles is available:

  Reading list of books explaining how to do a Literature Review and undertake a research project

Access to Dissertations & Theses


A 'thesis' in the UK refers normally to Doctoral/ PhD level research work, while a 'dissertation' refers to Undergraduate/Postgraduate Taught level original work of a shorter length. 


Theses and dissertations are not peer-reviewed but a PhD Thesis will be a very high-level piece of in-depth work and would only 'pass' after a successful defence of the thesis by the author in front of a panel of academics. (If you find a useful PhD thesis, it is worth checking Scopus or Web of Science for an author profile as it is quite common for authors to publish articles arising from the thesis.)