PHD ProcessLiterature Searching

Tools for evaluating research

James BissetAcademic Liaison Librarian (Research Support)

Part 1: Literature Searching

Speed searching- Search strategy for your topic - Refine or expand your search

accordingly- Trace academic debate by

following up references and citations

- Does not mean do everything quickly

Think about what you need to search for before you start searching

Expanding a search (1)

• synonyms: power OR energy

• alternative spellings/wildcards: behavio?r finds behaviour and behavior

labo?r finds labour and labor

Expanding a search (2)

• truncation: negligen* finds:• “the police were accused of

negligence”• “the police were accused of acting

negligently”• “the police were accused of being

negligent”

Refining your search• phrase searching:

“nuclear energy” • Proximity searching:

within # strateg*• additional keywords:

AND climate• Excluding results:

NOT weapons

Combining your results

OR OR

AND

AND

AND

NOT

nuclear atomic

opinion attitude* engag*

power energy

weapon* bomb proliferat*

AND

Public popula*

Public opinion and “nuclear power”

Search strategy activity

• Decide in your group which aspect of the research topic you are going to focus on

• Identify the keywords within the question/title and write these at the start of the rows

• Write synonyms next to each keyword• Truncate or add wildcards as

appropriate

Which resources?

Which resources?• Reference works• Government

publications• Web• Books/ e-books• Journals/ e-

journals• E-prints• Statistics/ data

• Theses• Newspapers• Conference

proceedings• Patents• Primary sources• Images• Blogs & wikis

Accessing Resources• Which database?–Bibliographic details (includes

catalogue) or full-text–General or subject-specific–Be specific e.g. Energy Policy,

Renewable Energy, Public Opinion Quarterly etc.

• Use to find out if we have full-text

Literature ReviewConstruct a bibliography of ten items

with at least one reference to each of the following:

• Book• Journal article• Thesis

Write up the search strategy you employed

Evaluate the resources you have found in terms of provenance rather than content

• Media representation• Official perspective• NGO/charity view

Part 2: Tools for

Evaluating

Evaluating resources

• Who is the author? What is their affiliation?

• What is the status of the source? Academic, professional magazine, verifiable webpage?

• How up to date? Does it have a date?

• Has anyone else referred to this resource? e.g. citations

• How do they refer to it? Negative or positive?

Daily Mail, March 13th 2009. Is this story about British workers being forced out of work by workers from the continent?

Morning Star, March 14th 2009Is this story about how private businesses are taking advantage of their workers?

Citation searching

Article B

Article C

Book1

Article D

Book 2

20092007 20082006 2010 2011 2012

Article G

Article E

Book4

Article F

Book 3

Paper A

Citation searching

Not just counting citations: - compare to articles from same journal - compare to other research by same author

Citation searching

Key tools:• Web of

Science• Google

Scholar• SciVerse

Scopus

Journal Impact Factors• Use Sum of citation accounts

to gauge a measure of “academic quality” of a journal - on-going discussion on appropriateness and reliability of doing so - does give an indication of key journals in a field and where authors like to publish.

Image Credits[Slide 4] Via Flickr Creative Commons, by Ruanon. Original available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/70873497@N02/6935006104/

[Slide 7] Via Flickr Creative Commons, by viZZZual. Original available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/22394551@N03/2655969483/

[Slide 18] Screenshot and text from UWE iSkillZone. Original available at http://iskillzone.uwe.ac.uk/

[Slide 24-26] Via Flickr Creative Commons, by Kirsty Andrews. Original available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/47745961@N08/5169765739

Image Credits[Slide 30-31] ‘Vitae®, © 2010 Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) Limited‘ Available at www.vitae.ac.uk/rdf

Measuring Researche

r Developm

ent

Measuring Researcher Developm

ent

Vitae Researcher Development Framework [see image credits]