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

2. What are you hoping to learn today?SH

3. 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

4. Citation Management DG

5. Let’s open Zotero! DG

6. 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

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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. Sample Research Question

13. Alternate terms

14. Boolean Operators
SH handout on search strategy

15. 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

16. 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!

17. 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 search/share/consult

18. 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

19. Scholarship Creation and Management

20. 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:

21. 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. 

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

24. 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

25. 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: brainstorm-SHpm
Ex: brainstorm-21May19-SH
Backup your files! (Using more than one type of backup and ideally not only USB sticks)

26. 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  /OSF.IO/YBW7J

27. Sharing and Evaluating your Contributions

28. 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             

30. 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.

31. 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

32. 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:

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

34. https://forms.gle/fkNvci4FLVmKmAH17
Feedback Form DG