Research Skills for Dissertations: 2012

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

2. Cloud computing Oxford Libraries Information Platform Cloud computing e-Journals e-Books Literature & Data Search Engines The digital architecture facilitating research & study Subscription Dbases Course Information Management Policies & Guidelines Data & File Sharing On-line data bases Data Portals (expanding) Research Skills Tool Kits Science & Ideas Media Networking, Communication & Living Data Visualisation Tools Data Mining & workflow tools OxFile SoGE Intranet Reference Management Tools OUCS Personal Page Science Blogs Oxford iTunes U PodOxford You & Your Devices (and WiFi connection – Eduroam, OWL) Note: commercial products cited merely represent commonly used services rather than endorsements

3. 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

4. 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

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

6. 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

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.)

10. Reference Management Systems RefWorks (web based – access your records anywhere - free to members of university – even after you leave) • ProCite, Reference ManagerandEndNote (works without web access – but software needs to be installed on own machine – charge of c£80 from OUCS) • EndNoteon 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.

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

26. 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

32. 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)

33. Dissertation Techniques • Use SOLO or OxLIP+ to access • Reference tools • Abstracting and Indexing services

34. Reference Sources General reference tools • CREDO Reference : Reference works incl. Dictionaries, encyclopaedias etc • International Encyclopedia of Human Geography • Dictionaries. OED; Oxford Reference On-line

38. English Language Reference

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

40. E-books Reference books • Blackwell Reference Online • SAGE Reference Online • SAGE Research Methods Online Text books • EBL (officially) the E-Book Library • NetLibrarynow hosted by EBSCOhostEbook Collection • Oxford Scholarship Online • Taylor & Francis Online eBooks Library

44. 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 Subject searching

45. 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

46. Google is fast • Very fast • Proudly fast • Tells you how fast • Found SoGEhome 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….

47. 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?

48. 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

49. 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

50. 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/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! Databases vs. Search engines