Advanced Research Skills :

Water Science, Policy & 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

Timetable

Week Michaelmas

1 Research design

2 Epistemology and methodology

3 Writing a policy brief

4 Presenting arguments

5 Fieldwork Planning

6 Topic selection

7 Research Question

8 Literature review

19 November 2014 3

Research Design & Skills Wk 8

• Literature review

– Identify 3 key papers on your topic/research question

– Discuss in groups

• How did you identify them?

• Literature gaps identified and how it relates to your topics

• Common characteristics?

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

Water resources

Climate change

Middle East

SCOPUS

THE bibliographic database for the Earth,

Geographical and Enivronmental 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 to

extend your search.

Bibliographic Databases

ProQuest

• Aqualine

• ASFA: Aquatic Sciences & Fisheries Abstracts

• Environmental Sciences & Pollution Management

• Oceanic Abstracts (under ASFA)

• Water Resources Abstracts (under ESPM)

• IBSS: International Bibliography of the Social Sciences

• Sustainability Science Abstracts (under ESPM)

• EconLit

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

• ProQuest

• OvidSP

• 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 hypertext links esp. subject headings

• 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.

Bibliographic Databases

Search :Integrative water resources management (IWRM) (2011 only)

Scopus = 94 articles (2012-14 = 323)

ProQuest = 21 articles (adds another 7 to the total) (2012-14 = 88)

Ovid = 29 after de-duplication (gives a further 7) (2012-14 = 214)

Web of Science = 38 articles (only a further 3 unique items) (2012-14 = 201)

RefWorks de-duplication = 111 unique items!! (for the 2011 search)

GUIDE to RESOURCES

http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/geography

Advanced Bibliographic Skills

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