1. Information Sources for Doing Literature Survey
T. S. Kumbar
Resource Centre
DA-IICT
July 28 & Aug. 17, 2010

2. Outline Introduction Types of Information Sources Research Process
Literature Survey
Information Sources (subscribed & free)
Bibliographical databases
Institutional Repositories & E-Print Archives
Books ( bibliographic information)
Full Text of Articles
Websites- virtual libraries
Theses & Dissertations
Patents & Standards
Technical Reports & Reference/Citation Style Resources
Sources for Staying Current & Web Searching Techniques
Conclusion

3. Introduction Information is published in different types & forms
Web has revolutionized publishing- more in digital form
Web serves as source and means to access
Knowing right source of information- a challenge
Use scholarly resources for research
Scholarly Resources
authoritative, credible, accurate and objective
Peer reviewed and highly valued in academia and research community
Understanding search techniques has become more important
Retrieving pertinent information is needed
Literature survey- an important part of research

4. Types of Information Sources
In an information professional’s terminology, the scholarly information sources are grouped in to,
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Tertiary Sources

5. Primary Sources
Sources that include first publications of original research findings, record of events, original thoughts, ideas etc.
Journals & magazines
Conference proceedings
Dissertations/Theses
Patents
Standards
Technical reports
Working papers
Research monographs
Autobiographies
Manuscripts
Annual reports
Correspondences
Speeches
Plan & policy documents, etc.

8. Secondary Sources
Sources that digest, analyze, evaluate, interpret & present information in organized manner contained in primary sources
Indexing, abstracting and bibliographic databases
Citation databases
Review db, e.g. Annual Reviews, Advances, Surveys
Bibliographies on specific subjects, themes
Book reviews
Encyclopedia
Handbooks
Dictionaries and Thesauri
Directories
Geographical sources- Atlases, Almanacs etc.
Biographical sources and many such other sources

11. Tertiary Sources
These sources are compilation of primary and secondary sources.
These serve as a guide in locating various primary and secondary sources information sources on specific subjects
Usually compiled keeping in view researches and academicians in mind
Library Subject Guides, Guide to Resources (pathfinders)
Guide to Information Sources in Engineering
Using the Engineering Literature
Computer Science and Computing: A Guide to the Literature
Computer Science Resources
Guide to Information Sources in Mathematics and Statistics.

13. Research Process Selecting an area of interest
Reading background information
Selecting research problem (proposal)
Determining types of information needs
Searching literature- from all types of sources
Refining the topic & restating the problem
Analyze the literature
Work on the research problem, get results
Putting it together (writing)
By following specific reference & citation format/style
Listing references & citation of sources used
Presenting the final report/dissertation/thesis

14. Literature Survey… What is Literature Survey?
Process of locating, reviewing, analyzing and documenting published and unpublished information from various types of information sources in areas of specific interest to researcher
Need for literature survey
To know what others have done
To follow the trend and identify the problem
To avoid duplication
To support your argument
To follow theoretical, empirical, methodological and design work of related fields
To gather data to extend your methods, findings & discussions
Basically, it serve as basis for presenting new research findings

15. Literature Survey ( suggested steps)
Selecting specific area
Split in to sub topics
Identify keywords, phrases, subject headings, etc.
Subject Dictionaries, Thesauri, etc.
Selecting materials for background reading (use RC resources)
Encyclopedia
Handbooks
Text books, Monographs
Select articles, reviews, (print& e-resources)
Dissertations (previous batch) & other sources
Refine your area/select the topic/proposal
Write down the statement, proposal with scope, objective, hypothesis, methodology, data collection and analysis, deciding style format, compiling bibliographies

16. Bibliographical Databases
Sources for Doing a Comprehensive Literature Survey (Subscription based)
Bibliographical Databases

17. For Comprehensive Literature Survey…
INSPEC Direct (IET & IEEE)
Subjects covered: Electrical & electronics engineering, communication, Computer science, control engineering and information technology
Over peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings are covered
Over 11 million abstracts from 1898 and onwards
COMPENDEX: Engineering Index (Elsevier)
Comprehensive & covers all engineering disciplines Indexes articles from5600 journals and conference proceedings
Over 12 million records from 1884 & onwards

21. For Comprehensive Literature Survey…
Web of Science (Thomson)
Bibliographic and citation database
Mainly from Science & Technology disciplines
Covers over 10,000 high impact journals & 1, 10,000 conference proceedings from 1900+
SCOPUS ( Elsevier)- All disciplines
Index to articles from18,000 peer reviewed journals, 3.6 million conf. papers from
40 million records, includes 23 million patent records and 435 million web pages
435 million scientific web pages

24. For Comprehensive Literature Survey…
ACM Guide to Computing Literature
Bibliographic database. Covers ACM & few other publishers publications
Covers bibliographic records of books, articles, conference papers, Doctoral and Masters Theses and Technical reports
Holds 1.2 million records from 1950+
ACM Computing Reviews
Review of select book and journal articles in the area of computer science and information technology
Reviews by the experts in the respective area
High quality database for identifying most relevant articles and books

27. Sources for Doing a Comprehensive Literature Survey (Free/Open Access)
Bibliographical Databases

28. For Comprehensive Literature Survey…
IngentaConnect (e-journal aggregator)
Platform for accessing e-journals from most disciplines
Hosts over 45,47,834 articles
Provides free access to bib. Information
Scitopia ( from 21 learned societies)
Federated Search Portal/Engine
Index to articles from journals & conference pub.
Hosts over 3.5 million documents spanning 150 years literature

31. For Comprehensive Literature Survey…
Scirus (Elsevier)
Comprehensive science specific search engine
Indexes over 370 million web page & latest reports, peer-reviewed articles, patents, pre-prints and journals
Major publishers & repositories are participating
Google Scholar
Search engine for retrieving scholarly literature
Searches across many subjects
Sources include peer-reviewed material
Considered as comprehensive source for recent literature

34. For Comprehensive Literature Survey…
CiteSeer.IST (old)
Search engine for computer & inf. science literature
Indexes peer-reviewed articles & covers over 7, 67, 558 documents
Does automated citation indexing & uses citation linking method
CiteSeerx Beta (new)
Scientific Literature Digital Library and search engine
Index to over 1,625,228 articles
Provides links to 31,527,460 citations
Provides details about most cited documents, authors, impact ratings etc.

36. For Comprehensive Literature Survey…
Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies
Contains 3 million references of articles, conference papers and technical reports
clustered in to 1500 bibliographies
Further lists over 0.6 million cross references
Links to over 1 million full text of papers (free)
DBLP Computer Science Bibliography
Provides bibliographic information on Computer Science
Indexes more than 1 million articles
Contains 10,000 links to home pages of Computer Scientists

39. For Comprehensive Literature Survey (Institutional Repositories & e-Print Archives)
WorldCat OAIster
Index to 23 million resources available in 1153 institutional repositories
ScientificCommons.org
Index to 37 million documents from over institutional repositories and archives
BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
Index to over 25 million academically and research oriented documents from 1720 repositories
arXiv.org : an e-print archive
Covers preprint and post print papers
Over 6.1 million papers in physics, maths. computer science and related areas

40. Sources for Finding/Locating Books (bibliographic information)

41. Sources for Finding/Locating Books
Your Library Catalogue (OPAC)
Catalogues of National Libraries
Library of Congress, British Library, Europian Library
National Library of Australia
National Library Singapore
Union Catalogues
IndCat: Online Union Catalogue of Books (INFLIBNET)
WorldCat (OCLC)
COPAC: Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL)
Libraries Australia
AMICUS (Library and Archives Canada)
Melvyl: Catalogue of University of California Libraries
Catalogues of Major Libraries
IITs, MIT, CalTech, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge

42. Sources for Finding/Locating Books
Major Publishers Catalogue
CRC Press/ Taylor and Francis group
Elsevier
Cambridge University Press
John Wiley & Sons
McGraw-Hill
Oxford University Press
Pearson Education
Springer
World Scientific & other publishers
Online Bookshops
Infibeam
A1Books India
Firstandsecond.com, flipkart
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble online bookstore & others

44. Sources for Finding Full Text of Research Papers (Subscription based)

45. Sources for Finding Full Text of Papers…
IEEE Xplore
Publications of IEEE & IET and few others
Covers 165 journals, 175 annual conferences, 1800 IEEE standards going back to (older in some cases)
Hosts over 2.3 million articles
ACM Digital Library
ACM and affiliated organizations publications
Covers 70+ journals , 100+ conferences, 45 newsletters
Covers papers from 1950 and onwards
JSTOR Archive
Serves as archive for journal back volumes
Covers journals in S & T, Soc. Sci. & Humanities
Covers only journals (1866 titles) from vol. & issue No1.

49. Sources for Finding Full Text of Papers…
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) (Springer-Verlag)
Series in Computer Science & Communications
Covers mainly conference proceedings and some research monographs,
Tutorials, state of the art surveys and hot topics included
6200+ volumes and 500+ volumes added every year
Grouped in 7 sub-libraries
Theoretical computer science, information systems, security and cryptology, computer communication networks and telecommunications, image processing, computer vision, pattern recognition and graphics, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics

50. Sources for Finding Full Text of Papers…
ASA (Acoustical Society of America) Digital Library
Collection of papers from journals, magazines, newsletters and conferences
Covers from 1929 & onwards
Content pages of books, standards etc
USENIX ( Advanced Computing Systems Association) Publications
Conference, symposia and workshop papers from 1993
Compendium best papers
:login magazine
Network and System Administration

51. Sources for Finding Full Text of Papers
ScienceDirect (Computer & Communication)
Online access to over 142 journals
Covering the period from 1995
Springer Online Journal Collection
Online access to over 1600 journals
Covering the period from 1997 till date
Other Major Publisher Journal Collection
Professional Societies & Universities
OUP,CUP,SPIE,SIAM,AMS
Commercial Publishers:
ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, Wiley, Taylor & Francis
Many other publishers

57. Sources for Finding Full Text of Research Papers (Open Access/Free)

58. Sources for Finding Full Text of Papers…
DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals
Covers free full text quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals from all major disciplines
Covers over 5218 journals with 4,27,245 articles
Initiated as a project of Lund university and is one of the popular free resources
Open J-Gate
An initiative by Informatics India Pvt. Ltd.
Provides access to 7,379 open access journals
Of which, 4334 are peer reviewed journals

61. Sources for Finding Full Text of Papers…
WorldCat OAIster
Index to 23 million resources available in 1153 institutional repositories
ScientificCommons.org
Index to 37 million documents from over institutional repositories and archives
BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
Index to over 25 million academically and research oriented documents from 1720 repositories
arXiv.org : an e-print archive
Covers preprint and post print papers
Over 6.1 million papers in physics, maths. computer science and related areas

66. Sources for Finding Scholarly Web Resources (Virtual Libraries/Subject Gateways)

67. Virtual Libraries/Subject Gateways
INFOMINE
Virtual library of internet resources
High quality resources identified and catalogued by librarians and faculty members
Has over 1,00,000 web resources covering all major subjects
Organized by subject using the classification system
Intute
Provides access to high quality web resources selected and catalogued by subject specialists
Covers all major subject disciplines
Other Virtual Libraries
Internet Public Library (Librarian’s Internet Index)
BUBL
NSDL
WWW Virtual Library

71. Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Sources for Finding
Electronic Theses & Dissertations

72. Sources for Finding Electronic Theses and Dissertations…
IndCat: Theses
Bibliographical database of Doctoral Theses submitted to universities (238) in India
Contains lakhs bibliographical records
Centre (Full Text- new)
Vidyanidhi: E-scholarship Portal and Digital Library
Project initiated by University of Mysore
Over 1.5 lakh bibliographic records and
12000 full text theses submitted to Indian universities
Ethos: Electronic Theses Online Service (British Library. UK)
Single point access to thesis submitted to UK higher education institutions
Provides access to over 2.5 lakhs theses

78. Sources for Finding Electronic Theses and Dissertations…
Theses Canada (Library and Archives Canada)
Central access point for theses submitted to Canadian universities
Holds over 3 lakhs theses (50,000 are in e- form)
ADT-Australasian Digital Thesis Program
Database of theses produced by 43 uni. in Australia
A gateway to major collection of Australian Theses
NDLTD: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (mainly US)
Union catalogue of theses contributed by 100+ member universities
Provides access to metadata and large number of full text theses

82. Sources for Finding Electronic Theses and Dissertations…
DART-Europe E-Theses Portal
Provides access to over 1,64,461 full text research theses from the universities in 13 European countries
Contributed through European libraries and consortia
Serves as single access point for European theses
PQDT OPEN: ProQuest Digital Theses
Provides access to full text of theses submitted by the researcher himself under open access initiative
Mostly covers, but not restricted to, US theses

85. Sources for Finding Patents & Standards
Indian Patent Office
Indian Patents Facilitating Centre (TIFAC)
European Patents
United States Patents & Trademarks Office and others
Standards
Bureau of Indian Standards Online Catalogue
ISO Online Catalogue
IEEE Standards
International Telecommunication Union (ITU-R)- Recommendations
International Electro-technical Commission

97. Sources for Finding Technical Reports
Virtual Technical Reports Center ( Uni. of Maryland)
National Technical Information Service (NTIS)
MIT Online Technical Reports
Hewlett Packard Technical Reports
IBM Technical Reports/Papers

103. Reference /Citation Style Resources
IEEE Editorial Style
IEEE Computer Society Style Guide
IEEE Standards Style Manual
Chicago/Turabian Style
AIP Style Manual
AMA Citation Style
APA Style
MLA Style
Harvard Style
For more resources visit RC site

104. Bibliography/Citation Management Tools
Subscription based
EndNote
ProCite
Reference Manager
RefWorks
Bookends
Biblioscope
OpenSource/Free
Bibdesk
HyperBIBTEX
Citeulike
Refbase
Zotero

105. Sources for Staying Current
Journal Literature : Table of Content Alerts
Journal Table of Contents Service (ticTOC from JISC, UK; Zetoc: British Library's Electronic Table of Contents, UK)
IEEE Journals
ACM Journals
ScienceDirect
SpringerLink & other publisher sites
Conference Alerts
Visit RC site regularly
Join based discussion forums
Visit Blogs
Visit professional/R&D org. sites
Visit major publisher sites
Subscribe to research news
Visit professional peer’s sites

114. IPR issues/ Plagiarism
Copyright
Patents
Designs
Trademarks
Plagiarism
Be aware & avoid
Visit RC site to see the list of free software

115. General Tips for Effective Searching…
What are you really searching/ looking for?
What kind of search tools available now?
Where should I begin?
What other tools/sources exist to find information through the Internet?
Know your search tool
Understand search techniques specific to each search tools
Prepare search strategy
Start with simple search
Use advanced search mode when necessary

116. General Tips for Effective Searching
Use unique terms to retrieve more specific results
Use subject special search engines, Virtual Libraries, Subject Gateways
Use more than one search tools
Use meta search & natural language search tools to begin and / or refine a search.
Do not go beyond search results

117. Search Techniques/Features…
Basic Searching
Searching for ALL or ANY keyword
E.g information literacy program in engineering library
E.g, information literacy OR engineering OR library
Capitalization
Capitalization does not matter in most search engines
Common words
E.g. a, and, the, who, how and in etc are eliminated
If we want to include, then use “ “

118. Search Techniques/Features…
Include a keyword +
+ intellectual
+ property+ patents
Finds websites where the term after + appears in results
Exclude a key word -
+intellectual
+ property – patents
Search for a phrase “ “
“how to do library research”
Search within the title of a website title:
Title: library research
Search within a site or domain site:
Library research
Site : library.iitb.ac.in or site: ac.in or edu or org

119. Search Techniques/Features
Search using truncation *
librar*research
Use Boolean operator AND
library AND research
Use Boolean operator OR
library OR research
Use Boolean operator NOT
library NOT research
Search using nesting ()
(college OR university) “ bookstore”
Search file type
Filetype: ppt site:edu “global warning”

120. Ranking Search Results (web resources)
Search engines use algorithms to sort the results and rank them according to relevancy
Presumed that, most relevant sites appear in top
Some basic criteria used by search engines are,
Number of terms matched
Proximity of terms to each other
Location of terms within the document
Frequency of terms in the document
Number of links to the page

121. Evaluation of Web Resources…
Authority
Accuracy
Objectivity
Currency
Coverage

122. Evaluation of Web Resources
Is it somebody’s personal page?
What type of domain does it come from?
Is it published by well known organization?
Is the page dated? Is it current enough?
What are the author’s credentials on the subject?
Are sources documented with footnotes or links?
If it is reproduced information ( from some other source), is it complete, not altered, not fake or forged?
Are there links to other resources on the topic?
Is the page listed in one or more reputable directories or virtual libraries?
What do others say about the author or responsible body?

123. Avail RC Services & Assistance
Send us your research topics to assist you better
Assistance in literature searching/locating
Inter Library Loan Service
Document Delivery Services
Purchase of Reading Materials
Permission to visit other libraries
Delivering documents when you are off campus
Any question with regard to information required for successfully completing your dissertation work

124. Conclusion Use appropriate resources
To start with, make use of RC resources & services
Look up on the web for scholarly resources
Seek RC assistance in,
Getting documents not available in RC
Locating required information
Literature survey
Searching web
Stay in touch with recent developments
Refer resources with due credit to authors

125. Questions & Clarifications?

126. Thank you for the kind attention!