Research Survival Guide: Mastering Your Dissertation or Project

Research Survival Guide:

Mastering your

Dissertation or Project

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Liz OsmanCollege Librarian

Annie GleesonSenior Library Assistant

In this session…

• Finding material• Evaluating print and online sources• Referencing • Tools to make referencing easier

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Ask us to buy books!

Useful…

…but watch out!

Museums, archives & rare books

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The literature search

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A detailed and organised, step by step search for all the material available on a topic

What is a literature search?

How do I know what to search for?

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Synonyms Variant spellings

Concept ConceptConcept

Research topic

Research question

Adolescent? Young people

Youth?Teen?

Television Eating habitsAdvertising

Teenagers

Does television advertising have any influence on the eating habits of teenagers?

Impact of advertising

Are you getting too many results?

…or too few?

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Evaluating sources

Books

Why was the book written?Who published the book?When was it published?

Is the book well organised?Has the book got a bibliography?

Who is the target audience?

Journal articles

Databases

Newspapers - Be aware of bias

How trustworthy or accurate are the results?

Websites

Why was the site written?Who wrote the content?

When was it last updated?Who is the target audience?

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Why is referencing important?

Michael Stothard ‘1 in 2 admits to Plagiarism’, Varsity (October 2008)

49%of Cambridge studentshave plagiarised during their time at University

13%did not know that failing to cite sources could be considered plagiarism

Michael Stothard ‘1 in 2 admits to Plagiarism’, Varsity (October 2008)

Why is referencing important?

GIVE credit – for the work that you are building

on

GET credit – for the work that

you have done yourself

How do I do it?

Referencing means…

…in-text references

You need to include a citation every time you use another author’s work in your essay. To do this, you will either put the reference in brackets (Smith 2014, p. 123) or you will use footnotes/endnotes.1

1 Smith, J. Reference Like a Boss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) p. 123

Referencing means…

…a bibliography

Copyright Licensing Agency. “Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) : Licences for Education,” 2012. http://www.cla.co.uk/Licencesforeducation.Curley, Duncan. Intellectual Property Licences and Technology Transfer: A Practical Guide to the New European Licensing Regime. Intellectual Property Series. Oxford: Chandos, 2004.Pedley, Paul. Digital Copyright. 2nd ed. London: Facet Publishing, 2007.Secker, Jane. Copyright and E-Learning : A Guide for Practitioners. London: Facet, 2010.

When should I start to think

about referencing?

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RIGHT

NOW!

For books… author/editor, full title, page numbers, publisher, date and location of publication, edition

For articles… author, article title, page numbers journal title, date, volume/issue/number of the journal

For websites… author, date of publication, website title, full web address, date accessed

What information do I need?

How do I keep track?

• Desktop application – Windows/Mac/Linux• ‘Cite while you write’ plug-ins for the most

popular word-processing programmes• Ability to create groups to share references,

PDFs, comments etc. with peers• Back-up and synchronisation across

different devices

Both have…

• Zotero is alternatively available in an online only version as a Firefox extension

• Mendeley has an official iPad/iPhone app, with 3rd party apps available for Android. No official Zotero apps, but 3rd party available for both Android and iOS.

• PDF annotation feature in Mendeley.

But…

A detailed comparison of several reference managers:

http://library.wisc.edu/citation-managers/comparison.html

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in action

For more information…

Pop in and see us in the Library, or email library@homerton.cam.ac.uk

The UL runs further research skills courses: http://training.cam.ac.uk/cul

This session was adapted from some of Emma Coonan’s presentations at:

http://researchcentral.wordpress.com/