What are keywords? Keywords are the most important words in a research statement or question. They are the words that create significance or meaning.
Why use keywords? Keywords are important in research because they are highly useful to facilitate an online search for information. They open the doors to vast amounts of information. Keywords may also be referred to as "search terms."
Fill out the keyword sheet to explore wording that is used to describe your topic.
A simple tool such as a thesaurus may allow you to find keyword variations that can be used to search the library catalog, article databases, etc.
2. Add: product marketing = 709
3. Narrow further by adding: strategies or methods or techniques = 295
4. Find it button vs full text
4. Decide whether or not to LIMIT results to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals.
5. Let's review the an article's record and tools.
6. Search your own topic. Find a potentially useful article, and add the citation to RefWorks.
General Vs. Subject-specific databases:
Academic Search Ultimate offers access to an unprecedented collection of resources including journals, magazines, reports, books, and videos. Many are peer-reviewed and full-text. Subjects range from astronomy to zoology.
KEYWORDS are the parts of a research question/topic/statement that carry the most meaning. They specify what it is exactly that you are interested in researching.
Craft your search using KEYWORDS that relate to your topic, rather than a full phrase or sentence.
Flesh out your search by brainstorming synonyms or other topical words that relate to your research. You may find that some words in your original statement are already very similar in meaning, and could be redundant. The more synonyms you have for each keyword, the more results you will get.
Finally, connect these keywords together using BOOLEAN OPERATORS. See the following box for details.
Boolean operators tell the search engine how to connect your keywords together, and significantly affect the search results.
"Quotation marks" - Use quotation marks around a phrase you want kept together.
e.g., "Organizational behavior"
Asterisk* - Use at the end of a word stem to search all possible endings of a word.
e.g., organization* will search organizational, organizations, organization...
e.g., manage* will search management, manager, manage, manages...
AND - Use between keywords or phrases when you want every result to include them.
e.g., "Organizational behavior" AND stress AND manage*
OR - Use between keywords or phrases when you don't care which term is included in a result, so long as at least one of them appears. This is most often used when you string together words of similar meaning to capture more search results, or if you aren't sure which research area to focus on.
e.g., diversity OR inclusion OR discrimination
e.g., stress OR strain OR "emotional distress"
(Parentheses) - To prevent misreading your search, use parentheses to enclose OR strings.
e.g., "management practices" AND (stress OR strain) AND (workplace OR employer OR organization)
NOT - Use to designate specific words or phrases you do NOT want included in your search results. Useful if you need to refine your search after getting too many irrelevant results.
e.g., stress AND (employer OR workplace OR organization) NOT diet