1. Research and Design Team Project
Use it!
Research and Design Team Project
(MAT7400)
School of Engineering and Material Sciences

2. Learning Outcomes After this session you will:
Have a greater understanding of why evaluating information is essential
Understand why you would want to use reference management tools
Have a greater understanding of how you will work together as your group

3. Seven Pillars of Research
Identify
Scope
Plan
Gather
Evaluate
Manage
Present
Identify
Scope
Plan
Gather
Evaluate
Manage
Present
Identify: Know that you need to do a search
Scope: Finding out what you don’t know
Plan: Identify your search question, choose search tools and then pick keywords
Evaluate, manage and present we will cover in this lesson… but let’s look back what we learned last year!

4. Defining your topic

5. Clarify within your group!
Allow 5-10 mins.
What is your topic?

6. Choosing a database

7. Choosing the right keywords
Report on the force-extension behaviour of a polymer
Report on the force-extension behaviour of a polymer

8. TROUBLESHOOTING YOUR RESULTS
Jack begins
TROUBLESHOOTING YOUR RESULTS

9. What to do if you only get a few results?
Include all possible synonyms. Use a thesaurus to find alternative terms that describe the subject you are researching
Use broader search terms

10. What to do if you only get a few results?
Spelling – If you are using a US database you may need to use either US spelling or wildcards such as ? to replace the letter that is different in each spelling. E.g. to search a US database for organisations you could use the US spelling organizations or type organi?ations into the search box
Snowballing – If you find one relevant reference you can use it to help you find others. Check the references and bibliography at the end of the article for related works
Truncation – E.g. microscop*

11. What to do if you get too many results?
Build a more specific search using additional search terms linked with AND between each term
E.g. if you wanted to find references about cancer immunotherapy especially concerned with cytokine therapies, type cancer AND immunotherapy AND cytokine

12. What to do if you get too many results?
Exclude irrelevant subjects by typing NOT before the term you wish to exclude
E.g.: if you wished to find references about cancer immunotherapy, but not those about cytokine therapies, you might use immunotherapy NOT cytokine

13. What to do if you get too many results?
Use the search fields to limit your results by date range. E.g. if you were looking for the very latest research on a particular subject you could type in the date field of the search options
Limit your search to particular fields, e.g. enter your search terms in the title field of the search options
Jack ends

14. Discuss within your group!
Allow 5-10 mins.
How will you go about finding your information?

15. EVALUATING SOURCES

16. Explore within your group!
Allow 5-10 mins.
How would you judge if a text is of high-quality?

17. 5 basic questions WHO WHAT WHY WHEN RELEVANCE
Who wrote the text you are reading? Can you determine the author's credentials?
WHO
What is it? Is it a journal article or perhaps a passage from an e-book, or does it come from a company report, a tweet or a newspaper article?
WHAT
Why was this text written? Consider the motives of the author – are they trying to persuade, to demonstrate or prove something?
WHY
When was it written? It is not always the case that the most recently published information is the best so think carefully about this.
WHEN
Relevant to your own work?
RELEVANCE
I work with academic colleagues and other staff
teams in the Library to ensure that research is appropriately supported – by developing the Library's print and electronic collections of books, journals, databases and audio-visual materials

18. Tools for evaluating
Within Academic research, there are tools for you to use to give more context to who wrote a text and in which journals you are likely to find high-quality articles. These measurements are called H-factor and Journal Impact.

19. H-index
H-index was created by J.E. Hirsch to measure a scientist’s/researcher’s whole body of work.
It put into correlation the amount of articles the scientist has published with how many times these articles have been cited.
NOV 2015

20. Journal Impact
Journal impact was first created for libraries to choose good material for purchase. It was important with shrinking or stagnant budgets and an ever growing field to have the journals which would benefit the most amount of users.
NOV 2015

21. Journal Impact
Journal impact captures how many times articles from the journal has been cited. As we established with H-index one statistical way of showing someone’s success rate is to see how much they have been cited. This is also true when it comes to journals.
NOV 2015

22. Research materials are usually designed for single use
Talking about copyright etc. Dichotomy between copyright and the collaborative nature of modern research. How will you share your material…

23. Reference Management Collect and organize references
Import references and related PDFs directly from databases
Insert citations and bibliographies into Word documents

24. Desktop version free on networked computers
Need to pay if you want it on your own computer
Desktop version free on networked computers
Need to pay if you want it on your own computer
Cite while you write
More functionality
Some add-ins are only possible to access through the online version.
On-the-go version

25. Endnote: A hands-on exploration

26. Collaboration in There are different ways of collaborate in Endnote.
1. Sharing groups (only references no attachments)
2. Sharing libraries (only works on Endnote Desktop x7.2+ for everyone but the primary owner of the library who can access the library with all his/her account)
3. Sharing an account (not recommended as you might end up with many duplicates and loose changes)

27. Links to Endnote
Sharing library:
Sharing groups:

28. Collaboration in Mendeley is popular for its collaboration options
However you will need to pay if you are more than three members in your group

29. Collaboration in
In Knovel you can share folders where you can save and share all material you find in Knovel
However, it is only possible to include material from Knovel and for this project you will most likely want to include other sources as well

30. Discuss within your group!
10 mins discussion, 5-10 minutes feedback
How will you keep track of your material?

31. Discuss within your group!
Allow 10 mins discussion – 5-10mins feedback.
How will we do the reading?

32. Discuss within your group!
Allow 10 mins discussion, 5-10 mins feedback.
How will we present the outcome?

33. Discuss within your group! How will we present the outcome?

36. The Library on QMplus

37. Further Help
Welcome Desk on the Ground Floor - entry/exit issues and circulation problems & general enquiries
Roving Staff on all floors - general enquiries
Online:
Subject-related enquiries – Faculty Liaison Librarian – see subject webpages for contact details

38. How to contact your S&E team? Email: library-sande@qmul.ac.uk
For news and recent developments: