Research Skills for Dissertations: 2012 Sue Bird Bodleian Subject Librarian Geography

The digital architecture facilitating research & study Oxford Libraries Information Platform Literature & Data Search Engines e-Journals e-Books On-line data bases Subscription Dbases Data Portals (expanding) Course Information Management Research Skills Tool Kits Science Blogs Science & Ideas Media PodOxfo rd 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 Sharing OxFile 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 MemorandumProctors' and Assessor's Memorandum

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

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 (7 th ed. Chicago, 2007) [LB 2369 TUR ] 3:Communicating in geography & the environmental sciences / Ian Hay (3 rd 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 (2 nd 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 Maps

E-books Reference books Blackwell Reference Online SAGE Reference Online SAGE Research Methods Online Text books EBL (officially) the E-Book Library NetLibrary now hosted by EBSCOhost Ebook Collection Oxford Scholarship Online Taylor & 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 ing 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, language Allow you to View Search history Combine searches Mark and sort results Print/save/ /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 Biodiversity Climate change Amazonia

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 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 ( 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

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 spellings govern* for governance, governmentality, etc use quotation marks for searching for phrases e.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, ing, 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 ( 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: alert – you can specify a search to be repeated and the results ed 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 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 RESOURCES

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Appendix Results from Google Scholar Record for : “State of the Climate 2010” in a) Scopus b) Web of Science