Literature Search Techniques 1

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Literature Search Techniques 1

• Digital libraries

• In this lecture you will learn
• How academic research is published
• How to use keyword and Boolean searching
• How to access some key digital libraries
• The stages of a keyword search

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1. How academic research is published
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What is the scholarly literature?

• Journal articles
• Conference papers
• Books
• Not usually magazine articles, web pages
• Quality controlled
• In a good journal, many papers rejected, most
  revised after referees comments

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What are the types of publication?

• Primary research
• Experiments
• New ideas/arguments/critical analyses
• Secondary research
• Review articles
• Specialist for a research topic
• General for a wider field
• Books
• Research monographs tend to be specialist
• Educational textbooks tend to be more general

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The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Different
Sources

• Books vs. journal articles vs conference
  proceedings vs. the web
• Which tend to be the best for
• Currency
• Authority
• Understandability?
• Which types of task would each source be best
  for?
• Academic papers are quality controlled many are
  rejected as being incorrect or uninteresting

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Not the scholarly literature

• Hello Mike,
• I've now had both referees' reports and I'm
  afraid that they aren't very enthusiastic,
  suggesting rejection.
• If you think it is worth working on a
  resubmission, I'd be happy to receive one, of
  course.
• Kind regards,
• The Editor

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The reviewers decision

• Is the paper suitable to publish
• As it stands?
• After minor revision
• After major revision?
• If shortened?
• OR unsuitable because
• Insignificance
• Lack of originality
• Incomprehensible
• Major flaws in the evidence

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Where is the scholarly literature?

• The Library
• Look through the list of journals and browse the
  books on the shelves to find relevant ones
• Digital Libraries
• Need to use keyword searches to identify relevant
  articles
• The Web
• Use keyword searches in Google (which indexes PDF
  and PostScript academic publications)

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2. How to use keyword and Boolean searching
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Keyword Searches

• Keyword searches are an essential skill for
  literature searches
• STEP 1 Brainstorm to think of words that might
  be used to describe the topic
• Email, e-mail, electronic mail, online
  communication
• STEP 2 Try lots of different searches to see
  which ones work
• If you are getting too few/many results, try to
  make the terms more general/specific
• Vet the article titles/abstracts to find the
  relevant ones and order/print them

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Example of a keyword search

• Idea has anyone done any research on how to find
  music from a database of music files?
• STEP 1 Brainstorm terms
• Music, audio, sound, database, search, look,
  seek, find
• STEP 2 Try searches
• Find music, find audio, search for sound, music
  database search
• This search will eventually show you that the
  best keyword phrase is.
• You might also have found this out from a book

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Boolean searching

• Most libraries allow you to AND or OR search
  terms together
• word1 AND word2 means both must be in the
  document
• word1 OR word2 means either can be in the
  document
• Many, like Google, assume AND
• E.g word1 word2 means word1 AND word2
• But you can enter word1 OR word2 in Google

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Exercise

• Idea has anyone done any research on what the
  best way is to automatically group together web
  pages that are about the same topic?
• STEP 1 Brainstorm terms
• STEP 2 Write down some searches (include some
  Boolean searches)
• A prize for anyone who writes down the correct
  words or phrases!

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Keyword Search Options

• Common options are
• Search only in title
• Search only in title and abstract
• Full text search
• Author search
• Need to play with different search options in
  order to get good results
• TIP Look out for the words used to describe your
  topic in the publications you find
• E.g. HCI is CHI in the USA

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Boolean searching 1 Expand

• Expand a search that gets too few matches
• Replace terms with more general ones
• E.g. Music-gtaudio
• E.g.Oracle AND music -gt Oracle AND audio
• Remove ANDed terms
• E.g. digital AND electronic -gt digital
• Add extra ORed terms
• E.g. digital -gt digital OR electronic
• Search article full texts instead of just
  titles/abstracts?

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Boolean searching 2 Contract

• Contract a search that gets too many matches
• Replace terms with more specific ones
• E.g. Music-gt pop AND music
• Add extra ANDed terms
• E.g. digital -gt digital AND electronic
• -gt Remove extra ORed terms
• E.g. digital OR electronic -gt digital
• Search article titles/abstracts instead of full
  text?

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2. How to access some key digital libraries

• For this module, you need to search one real
  digital library and two web search engines

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The Web/Google

• Use Google for greatest coverage and inclusion of
  PDF and PostScript files
• Use Google Scholar for primarily academic
  information
• Use to find very up-to-date information
• Most importantly, use to find easy topic
  introductions, overviews and definitions

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ACM Digital Library 1

• Contains the full text of all journals and
  conferences run by the Association for Computing
  Machinery
• http//www.acm.org/dl/
• UNIVERSITY COMPUTERS ONLY
• Communications of the ACM
• A general journal which is highly rated but
  relatively easy to understand. A good first
  choice for a literature review
• Topic organisation
• Journals and conference proceedings are mainly
  organised by topic, e.g. Transactions on Internet
  Technology, Computer Human Interaction

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ACM Digital Library 2

• Many ACM journals are highly technical and their
  articles are difficult to read
• May contain mathematical theorems and proofs
• You need to judge how much effort to put in to
  reading each relevant article
• Need to fully understand article if it is
  essential to the method or core to the topic

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ACM Digital Library 3

• Boolean searching is automatically OR
• Go to advanced search to access Boolean searches

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Google Scholar

• scholar.google.com
• Academic papers available from the web
• Abstracts of academic papers from digital
  libraries
• Not all the papers are scholarly, there are
  mistakes
• Its coverage is not complete
• Some free papers that are restricted elsewhere
• Also try the CITED BY link

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Some other digital libraries

• Sciencedirect.com
• Elseviers library full text access to some
  articles, abstracts of all
• Swetswise.com
• Hosts journals from multiple publishers full
  text access to some articles, abstracts of all
• The Web of Knowledge
• Covers all top journals in all subjects, but
  abstracts only

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4. The stages of a keyword search
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Specialist vocabularies

• Researchers tend to use specific words or phrases
  to refer to their subject
• Knowing these phrases is a big help when
  searching for information
• E.g. digital libraries, collaboratories,
  human-computer interaction, software engineering
  (not programming!),
• Articles often have keyword lists, which can help
  you identify the specialist vocabulary in your
  area
• You will learn a specialist vocabulary as you
  progress through your literature search

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Exercise
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Homework Task

• Conduct a literature search for your chosen area
  for the second assessment to get introductory
  articles
• Use (a) keyword searches, (b) author chaining,
  and (c) citation chaining at least once each
• Report
• The searches conducted (digital libraries, OPAC
  etc)
• The titles found from each search
• Make a list of problems/issues that arose with
  your search and report your success with (a), (b)
  and (c)
• You do not need to print out all the articles you
  found