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Advanced Research Skills :
Environmental Change & Management Autumn 2014
Sue Bird Bodleian Subject Librarian Geography
Elective Essay Assessment
Aims: Does the essay have a clear aim, question or
perspective that is relevant to the literature or an issue?
Presentation: You are expected to know how to cite
references
Literature: Does the essay address a range of relevant
literature, and demonstrate a good level of understanding of the
literature on the topic.
You need to conduct initial scoping lit review – key themes, etc.
Followed by a more focused & deeper literature review. Peer-
reviewed literature acts as a form of substantiation
Resources for Writing a
Literature Review
• University of Toronto (Writing a literature review)
A very detailed guide on how to write a literature review.
Includes a set of questions to ask yourself.
And a very detailed set of questions to ask about each article.
• University of Washington: Writing a Psychology
Literature Review http://www.psych.uw.edu/writingcenter/writingguides/pdf/litrev.pdf
A step by step guide on how to begin & conduct a literature
review.
Section on how to cite and create a bibliography using APA.
Good sound principles apply across all disciplines.
Resources for Writing a
Literature Review
• Deakin Library - Australia http://www.deakin.edu.au/library/research/literature-review.php
This site has a nice set of reasons for doing a literature review.
Once you’ve found your 'reason‘ you can frame/format your
literature review.
• University of Wisconsin-Madison http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/ReviewofLiterature.html
Overview of the parts of a review of the literature and what
should be contained within them.
• University of Toronto: Using Internet Resources http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/reading-and-researching/research-
using-internet
A good guide for how to use general internet resources in your
work, including how to evaluate the validity of the sources.
Dissemination of your Research
Research Partners: What are their expectations?
Ethics: Should you be communicating with your partners?
Short Resume: Will you allow this to be made publicly
available?
You need to specifically allow publication on a web-site or
users could infringe your copyright.
This session
More on Bibliographic Databases
Searching techniques for journal articles,
conference papers, book chapters etc
Keeping up to date
Subject searching
Better to use specialist indexes covering the
world’s literature to find articles
Access via OxLIP+ (http://oxlip-plus.bodleian.ox.ac.uk)
Use inter-library loan for items not held in
Oxford and not online
E-Journals
“I didn't check for the hard copy
- so used to getting online access!”
“I had just googled the article rather
than using SOLO, so that was the
issue & why I’d been asked to login,
or use Athens”
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
Electronic newspapers
• Factiva - from Dow Jones & Reuters Company
• Business news & challenges, market trends & info.
• 14,000 + sources inc. local & global newspapers,
newswires, trade journals, newsletters, etc.
• Archive back to 1969 - 28 languages from 159
countries
• Dun & Bradstreet company profiles, Reuters
Fundamentals, etc.
Legal Resources
Jurisdictions, topics, cases etc.
• Lexis Library
• WestLaw – both UK & US editions
• But there are a lot more
(if necessary ask the Law Library for help)
Bodleian Maps
Catalogues The main map catalogue is a physical card
catalogue in the Map Room, containing records of
all of the sheet maps in the collection, together with
most of the atlases. The general arrangement is by
map scale, but records for maps dated before 1851
and all atlases are arranged chronologically
Currently in the process of digitising our
physical catalogue and deploying it on SOLO.
Our aim is to complete this by the end of 2014. A
small percentage of the collection is already
catalogued on SOLO: approximately 5000 post-
1850 sheet maps and atlases published after 1988.
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/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 (Scopus or Web of
Science) enable you to:
• Refine results overview to find the main journals, disciplines and authors that publish in your
area of interest.
• Click on the cited by and reference links to track research trends and make connections.
• Find out who is citing you or your supervisor, and how many citations an article or an author
has received.
• Use Author Identifier to automatically match an author’s published research including the h-
index
• Use Journal Analyzer to provide quick insight into specific journal performance
• Analyze citations for a particular journal issue, volume or year.
• Use this information to complete grant or other applications quickly and easily.
• Use Alerts, RSS and HTML feeds to help you stay up-to-date
• Data export via bibiliographic managers such as RefWorks, EndNote and BibTeX
Bibliographic Databases
Vast range
SCOPUS
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
Environmental policy
Climate change
E.U. / European
union
SCOPUS
THE bibliographic database for the Earth,
Geographical and Ecological Sciences
Scopus --
Abstract & citation database containing both peer-reviewed research literature
and quality web sources. 22,000 titles from more than 5,000 international
publishers. Now starting to include more book material
53 million records: 29 million records back to 1995 (of which 78% include references).
21 million records pre-1996 which go back as far as 1823.
6.5 million conference papers from proceedings & 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.
Bibliographic Databases
ProQuest
• Environmental Sciences & Pollution Management
• Environmental Impact Statements
• IBSS: International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
• Sustainability Science Abstracts (under ESPM)
• EconLit
• PAIS International
• Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
Bibliographic Databases
OVIDSP
• CAB Abstracts – natural resources
• Forest Science - biogeography
• GeoRef – physical geography & geology
• Zoological Abstracts (1864-2009 only)
Web of Knowledge
Similar but not the same : a.k.a. Web of Science WEB of Science: Core Collection Broad Coverage – all subject areas (Journal Citation Reports – help choose the most effective title in your area)
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”
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 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 indexed keywords.
• 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 Searching
Three ways to keep up to date:
• Saving and rerunning searches – you save a search and run it
again in the future.
• E-mail alerts / RSS feeds:–
– Specify a search to be repeated and the results emailed to you at
chosen intervals or on a continuous basis
– Select your favourite journal(s) & the database will tell you when
the next issue of a journal is available.
• Citation Alert – you will receive an email every time a particular
article is cited in another WoS or Scopus indexed article.
Direct export Easiest way to move references into your
library
WoS
SCOPUS
ProQuest
OVID
Bibliographic Databases
Search :Food security following global warming or climatic change
& its effects on behaviour (2009-2012 only)
Scopus = 31 articles (39 articles in 2013, 53 in 2014)
ProQuest = 16 articles (adds another 13 to the total) (38 articles in 2013, 40 in 2014)
Ovid = 18 (overlap of 5 with Scopus giving a further13 unique items – all from CAB
abstracts) (31 articles in 2013, 46 in 2014)
Web of Science = 14 articles (9 overlap with 1 or more databases – so a further
5 unique items) (20 articles in 2013, 30 in 2014)
RefWorks de-duplication = 62 unique items!! (for 2009-12 search)
GUIDE to RESOURCES
http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/geography
Advanced Bibliographic Skills
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