Preparing for a Research Assistantship ARIA Library Workshop Preparing for a Research Assistantship DG David Greene Sandy Hervieux May-June, 2019

What are you hoping to learn today? SH

Learning Objectives Identify the main features of Zotero (citation manager) Apply Boolean operators and efficient search strategies Use the (new!) McGill library catalogue Understand the difference between keyword vs. subject heading searching Compare the uses of multidisciplinary vs. subject specific databases Recognize the importance of the scholarly literature continuum Apply content management practice and the research workflow Describe open access and research metrics Know about additional library services available to you SH

Citation Management DG

Let’s open Zotero! DG

WorldCat Discovery McGill’s library catalogue Contains (theoretically) all of the library’s information resources Books, journals, articles, databases, multimedia, etc. Print and electronic Great for: Known item searching Browsing for books and e-books (not for articles) DG

Library Services Scan requests Holds Interlibrary Loans (ILL) Subject specialists Rare books and archives

Activity Find a book and subject heading related to your research project  Find the liaison librarian for your discipline Try grabbing some items with the Zotero connector! Now's the time to ask us burning questions! DG

Multidisciplinary Databases Useful for topics that cover different disciplines Can be access from the database list or in the library catalogue Examples: Web of Science Scopus Google Scholar Academic Search Complete SH

Subject-Specific Databases Useful for topics that relate to one specific discipline Often have a thesaurus which can be used to look up the subject headings used in the database Access them through the Subject Guides, Databases A-Z, or by searching them by name in WorldCat Discovery Examples: ERIC (education) PsycInfo (psychology) ATLA (religious studies) Art Full Text (art history) ...many, many more! SH- not sure what else to say except showing them an example

Creating a Search Strategy Think about your topic: What is the main question that you are trying to answer? What are the most important concepts in your question? These are your keywords. Think of a few synonyms or alternate terms. Avoid words like: cause, effect, reason, impact. Join the keywords with Boolean operators If you have a lot of keywords = Use parentheses for clarity Ex: (social media OR social network OR facebook) and privacy Use handout

Sample Research Question

Alternate terms

Boolean Operators SH handout on search strategy

Truncation: * All the words with the same root will be represented in the results Increases the number of results Ex: Canad* = will show results with: Canada Canada's Canadian Canadians Canadiens

Phrase searching: " " When you require more than one word to appear alongside one another in your results, employ phrase searching by using " " quotation marks E.g. "social media marketing" Without quotation marks, each term is searched separately Useful for searching for books or articles by title Works in most search engines... including Google!

Activity Explore and search one multidisciplinary database and one subject specific database. How do they compare to one another? Did you get similar results in both databases? Does your subject-specific database contain a thesaurus? Which one do you think is more useful to you and your project? SH 15-20 search/share/consult

Scholarly Literature Continuum No work of scholarship exists in isolation Stand on the shoulders of giants! Use citation tracking databases such as Google Scholar to see who is citing a given piece of scholarship Set up database alerts to track citations and searches DG

Scholarship Creation and Management

Content Management Intentional organization of information through the use of digital and physical tools and processes. It can help you curate and preserve information in any form or medium. The most well-known are: Web content management Enterprise content management Digital asset management Records management See also: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/web-content-management/9781491908112/ch01.html

Research Workflow Six primary stages Discovery Analysis Writing Publication  Outreach Assessment Stages are not independent of each other and clear cut.  Disciplines differ in their approaches and the tools they use.  https://101innovations.wordpress.com/workflows/

Source:  https://101innovations.wordpress.com/workflows/

Computational Reproducibility Can you open a Word document from the early 2000s?  The issue with proprietary software Losing access to work when you no longer have access to your software (eg. Stata)  Long term maintenance is reliant on a for-profit venture Long term expense Can be difficult to export or convert into a different format

Setting yourself up for success! Making sure a text format is available of your work (.txt, .csv, .md, .html) Include information about how to read and understand your project files (eg. a ReadMe) Include a codebook with your data to explain all of the labels Decide on a consistent naming scheme for files and stick to it What is most important to you? File name then date? Or date then name? Ex: 20190521-brainstorm-SHpm Ex: brainstorm-21May19-SH Backup your files! (Using more than one type of backup and ideally not only USB sticks)

Open Science Framework “OSF is a free, open source web application that connects and supports the research workflow, enabling [scholars] to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their research. Researchers use OSF to collaborate, document, archive, share, and register research projects, materials, and data.”  Can be used to organize your research and collaborate Use it as a hub to link all the different components of your research Compatible with Google Drive, Dataverse, Github, Zotero, Dropbox, Onedrive, etc… Can make research projects public or private Provide a doi and citation for your project OSF example for ARIA: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/YBW7J https://osf.io/4znzp/wiki/home/

Sharing and Evaluating your Contributions

Open Access – What is it? “Open Access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.” Peter Suber             

Activity: Success Metrics You groups of 3-4, discuss what you think shows the success of a piece of scholarship. Write down a few metrics that you would use to access this on the flash cards that you were given. Some things to think about: Why do you think this shows the impact of the research? How do you measure the success of research in the Humanities and Social Sciences? We'll discuss your findings in 5-10 minutes.

Journal Metrics Based on the number of citations a journal receives over a number of years Available in Web of Science (Impact factor) and Scopus (Cite Score) Some things to consider... Journal metrics are not indicators of the quality of all articles published in a journal They have an Anglo-American bias Fail to show the real impact in many disciplines of the Humanities and Social Sciences especially those who publish in monographs

Author Metrics – H Index The number of papers with citations higher or equal to h. So… a scholar with an h- index of 5 has published 5 works that have each attracted at least 5 citations. Example:

Altmetrics A new way to evaluate articles Takes into consideration online tools and social media shares and activity

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