Research Skills for Dissertations:2012

Sue BirdBodleian Subject Librarian Geography

The digital architecture facilitating research & study

Oxford Libraries Information Platform

Literature & Data Search Enginese-Journals

e-Books

On-line data bases

Subscription Dbases

Data Portals(expanding)

Course Information Management

Research Skills Tool Kits

Science Blogs

Science & Ideas Media

PodOxford

Networking, Communication & Living

Data Visualisation Tools

You & Your Devices (and WiFi connection –

Eduroam, OWL)

Cloud computing

Note: commercial products cited merely represent commonly used services rather than endorsements

Data Mining & workflow tools

Policies & Guidelines

SoGE Intranet

Cloud computing

OUCS Personal

Page

Data & File SharingOxFile

Oxford iTunes U

Reference Management Tools

This session

How to cite sources correctly & therefore avoid plagiarism

How to use Reference Management Software

SOLO & OXLIP+

Reference works

Google Scholar v. Bibliographic Databases

Searching Techniques & Keeping up to date

Avoiding Plagiarism

"...You must always indicate to the examiners when you have drawn on the work of others; other people's original ideas and methods should be clearly distinguished from your own, and other people's words, illustrations, diagrams etc. should be clearly indicated regardless of whether they are copied exactly, paraphrased, or adapted...

...The University reserves the right to use software applications to screen any individual's submitted work for matches either to published sources or to other submitted work. Any such matches respectively might indicate either plagiarism or collusion...

...Although the use of electronic resources by students in their academic work is encouraged, you should remember that the regulations on plagiarism apply to on-line material and other digital material just as much as to printed material..."

Section 9.5 Proctors' and Assessor's Memorandum

https://intranet.ouce.ox.ac.uk/undergraduate/fhs/plagiarism.html

Good academic practice

So by following the citation principles and practices in place in your subject area, you will develop a rigorous approach to academic referencing, and avoid inadvertent plagiarism.

Be uniform in your referencing system:-

Probably use the Harvard system as suggested on the School’s web-site – but whatever you do use – just be consistent

https://intranet.ouce.ox.ac.uk/undergraduate/fhs/dissertation/referencing.html

Citing your references

Just a few of the more common points

An article in an online journal which also exists in print should be cited in the same way as print.

To cite something which only exists electronically, e.g. a web site, follow special rules which include the date viewed.

A specific quote must include the page reference in the citation.

Citation practice

A large number of manuals are available to give guidance and sound practice.

1:Doing a literature review / Chris Hart (London, 1998)[H 62 HAR ]

2:Manual for writers / Kate Turabian (7th ed. Chicago, 2007) [LB 2369 TUR ]

3:Communicating in geography & the environmental sciences / Ian Hay (3rd ed. Oxford, 2006) [G 70 HAY ]

4:Cite them right /Pears & Shields (2010 ed.) [LB 2369 PEA]

5: Complete guide to referencing & avoiding plagiarism / Neville (2nd ed. 2010) – available on-line via E.B.L.

References / Bibliography

Organize your research and manage your database of references

Import references from many different data sources including direct from databases like Scopus or Web of Knowledge, or library catalogues like SOLO.

Store links to documents – pdf’s, images, etc.

Include citations while you write your paper

Build a bibliography in a variety of styles and in different document formats (Word, RTF, HTML, etc.)

Reference Management Systems

RefWorks

(web based – access your records anywhere - free to members of university – even after you leave)

• ProCite, Reference Manager and EndNote (works without web access – but software needs to be installed on own machine – charge of c£80 from OUCS)

• EndNote on the Web

(free to members of university, but has limited feature set – designed to be used alongside desktop version)

• Zotero is a free plug-in for Firefox browser (only) – limited but growing capability

• Mendeley, etc.

E-Journals

I didn't check for the hard copy - so used to getting online access!

Newspapers

Electronic newspapers

• Some are freely available. Alphabetic list on OxLIP+

• Best source for the “Text Only” of huge range of newspapers and magazines is Nexis UK. Goes back approximately 10 yrs in most cases and is very current i.e. today’s daily news items

Newspapers

Legal information, cases etc.

• Lexis Library

• WestLaw – both UK & US editions

• But there are a lot more

(if necessary ask the Law Library for help)

Dissertation Techniques

Use SOLO or OxLIP+ to access

Reference tools

Abstracting and Indexing services

Reference Sources

General reference tools

CREDO Reference : Reference works incl. Dictionaries, encyclopaedias etc

International Encyclopedia of Human Geography

Dictionaries. OED; Oxford Reference On-line

English Language Reference

Bodleian Mapshttp://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/guides/maps

E-booksReference books

Blackwell Reference OnlineSAGE Reference OnlineSAGE Research Methods Online

Text booksEBL (officially) the E-Book LibraryNetLibrary now hosted by EBSCOhost Ebook CollectionOxford Scholarship OnlineTaylor & Francis Online eBooks Library

Subject searching

SOLO and Oxford e-journals cover Oxford holdings only by title

Better to use specialist indexes covering the world’s literature to find articles

Access via OxLIP+

Use inter-library loan for items not held in Oxford and not online

Bibliographic Databases

Excellent for locating journal articles , book chapters and book reviews (NB. References only,)

General or specific subject coverage

Different interfaces but similar functionality

Not tied to library holdings

Frequently will provide a link to full text

Google is fast

• Very fast• Proudly fast• Tells you how fast• Found SoGE home page in 0.13 secs• Also found 26,600,000 other ‘relevant’ pages• But put home page first• Brilliant - How does it do it?• Not telling….

Did I need 26 million references?

• Nobody looks at all the references Google retrieves

• So why display them?• Algorithm takes into account links made by other

pages• And click-throughs• So the top result for a given search is determined

over time by the people who make that search• Is that the same as the ‘best’ result?

So let’s invent…

• Google Scholar• Let’s team up with publishers so they let us search

behind their firewalls• Let’s modify our algorithm so it excludes non-scholarly

material (how do we define that?)• Let’s look at citations so when one article we index

cites another one we index, we can move it higher up the relevance ranking

• Let’s link together different versions of the same article• Let’s include library locations for full-text access

But let’s not allow:

• creation of sets• Or controlled vocabularies• Or combining of searches • Or hit rate figures for individual search terms• Or proximity searching• Or saving and e-mailing results• Or creation of alerts• Or standardisation of journal names/abbreviations• Or info on what is included and what is not• Or info on how the system decides what is scholarly• Or an indication of update frequency – seems slower than

normal Google

Databases vs. Search engines

• Contents are indexed by subject specialists

• Subject headings• Limiting functions e.g.

publication types, languageAllow you to • View Search history• Combine searches• Mark and sort results• Print/save/email/export• Save searches• Set up alerts

• Searches done by automated “web crawlers”

• No thesaurus / subject headings – just free text searching

• No limiting functions

• Usually none of these!

Bibliographic Databases

Abstracting and Indexing Services Vast range.

SCOPUS (includes GEOBASE)

OVID SP

ProQuest

Web of Knowledge

Search Strategies

• Boolean logic

• Truncation

• Wild cards

• Synonyms

• Which language are you using?

Boolean connectors

• AND – combines terms to restrict results

• OR – useful for covering synonyms

• NOT – excludes unwanted areas of research

OR, AND, NOT

SCOPUS

• Includes data from GEOBASE - THE bibliographic database for the Earth, Geographical and Environmental Sciences

SCOPUS

Abstract and citation database containing both peer-reviewed research literature and quality web sources. With over 19,500 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers, including 325 book series.

46 million records:

25 million records with references back to 1996 (of which 78% include references).

21 million records pre-1996 which go back as far as 1823.

4.8 million conference papers from proceedings and journals.

Bibliographic Searching

Search Tip : 1– Important to remember that although each database

covers thousands of journal titles no single database is ever comprehensive.

– If you are having difficulty finding material on a topic use the keywords you find in any relevant reference and search again.

Synonyms & Language

• Topic = Personal energy use reduction

• Search: • A) personal energy use• B) “personal energy use”• C) “energy use” OR “energy consumption” AND

personal OR private OR household

• Context : “carbon footprint” OR “carbon neutral”

(including food mile* (i.e. miles or mileage)? )

Bibliographic Databases

ProQuest

• IBSS: International Bibliography of the Social Sciences• Sustainability Science Abstracts • Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

• PAIS International – government & other ‘grey’ literature 

• Ecology Abstracts• Oceanic Abstracts• Water Resources Abstracts

Bibliographic Databases

OVIDSP

• EconLit – economic geography

• CAB Abstracts – biogeography / natural resources

• Forest Science – biogeography

• GeoRef – physical geography & geology

• Zoological Abstracts (1864-2009 only)

Bibliographic Databases

Web of Science/Knowledge– Includes Science, Social Science & Arts and Humanities

Citation Indexes

– Citation indexes can be used in the same way as any other abstracting and indexing service. Their extra facility is the option to search the bibliographies of any articles- a citation search. Academics use the citation index to find out who has cited their work.

Bibliographic Searching

Search Tip : 2

Take time to explore the various databases & platforms available.

Some will be more useful to you than others.

• Scopus• OvidSP• ProQuest• Web of Knowledge

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/services/training/wiser

Bibliographic Searching

Search Tip : 3

Boolean Logical Operators AND, OR, NOT

Proximity operators

Adj (literally adjacent); Near(same sentence); With(same field)

Field descriptors: AU(author); TI(title); AB (abstract); SO(source or reference); DE (general descriptor) etc are likely to be specific to each database and won’t operate in ‘cross searches’

Combining searches: #1 and #2

Other tricks:

Use symbols for wildcards and truncation

? or $ for a single character globali?ation / globali$ation (is it an ‘s’ or a ‘z’)

* for truncation or variant spellingsgovern* for governance, governmentality, etc

use quotation marks for searching for phrasese.g. “resource management”

Bibliographic Searching

Search Tip : 4

• Consider subject synonyms & British and US spellings.

• Apply truncation, usually * to find plurals/alternative word endings and ? to replace a single character.

• Expand search by following hypertext links esp subject headings

• Use tagging facilities within database to mark articles for printing, emailing, downloading or exporting.

• Authors names: Check the online help for formats. Use the database index to find different forms of author’s name, otherwise truncate first initial.

Bibliographic Databases

Search :- Impact of La Nina and oceanic circulation on climate change (2011-12 only)

Scopus = 30 articles

ProQuest = 21 articles (after de-duplication of 45) (14 not found by Scopus)

Ovid = 19 after de-duplication of 20 articles, etc. (adds another 5 to the total)

Web of Science = 41 articles (a further 26 unique items)

RefWorks de-duplication = 75

Bibliographic Searching

• Three ways to keep up to date:

• E-mail alert – you can specify a search to be repeated and the results emailed to you at chosen intervals or Zetoc will tell you when the next issue of a journal is available.

• Saving and rerunning searches – you save a search and run it again in the future.

• Citation Alert – you will receive an email every time a particular article is cited in another WoK or Scopus indexed article.

Dissertation Techniques

Apart from Bibliographic Electronic Resources there are some factual databases available

via OxLIP+ e.g.:-

• World development indicators,

• EIU Country Reports,

• Demographic Yearbook etc.

If they are CD-ROM based they may require you to download software

GUIDE to RESOURCEShttp://ox.libguides.com/geography

Further assistance:

This presentation available via WebLearn & on-line

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/science/training/biosciences

More courses available: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/

Other presentations:

http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/services/training/wiser

Guidance for references:

https://intranet.ouce.ox.ac.uk/undergraduate/fhs/dissertation/referencing.html

Sue.bird@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Dissertation Techniques

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Appendix

• Results from Google Scholar

• Record for : “State of the Climate 2010” in

a) Scopus

b) Web of Science