Foundation of Science Research Skills

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Foundation of Science Research Skills
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Research Skills 5 steps

• Define your topic
• Select your sources
• Locate and access
• Evaluate
• Use ethically

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Understand / Define a Topic

• Get a topic
• Break down the topic into its main concepts
• List synonyms, broader terms, narrower terms

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Internet Reference Sources

• Merriam Webster Online - dictionary and thesaurus
  - www.m-w.com

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Identifying keywords/main concepts
1. Define your topic

Is global warming leading to more extreme
weather?
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Is global warming leading to more extreme
weather?
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Primary vs. Secondary
2. Select your Sources
Review or report about research/ Summary
orcompilation of reports
Original research
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Popular vs Scholarly

• POPULAR
• Written
• for non-specialists, general public
• Editorial review
• E.g. Discover,
• Scientific American, Time

• SCHOLARLY
• Written for specialists, academics
• Peer-reviewed
• E.g. Nature, Science, Journal of the American
  Chemical Society

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Printed Sources

• Dictionary
• Encyclopedia
• Textbook
• Magazine
• Journal
• Newspaper
• Theses
• Conference paper
• Research paper

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Non-printed Sources

• Audio-visual
• CD-ROM
• Online database
• Internet / Websites

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Select Your Sources Specificity
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Select Your Sources Timeliness
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Search statement
3. Accessing sources

• Using the list of terms, construct a search
  statement
• Can combine search terms using Boolean operators
  - AND, OR, NOT

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Boolean AND

• Linking keywords with AND will find pages
  which contain all of the search terms entered.
  For example, searching
  for
• Scotland AND Wales
• The database will only retrieve documents in
  which both terms are found.

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Boolean OR

• Using the OR command when searching will
  retrieve documents containing any of the search
  terms entered. For example, a search for
• Scotland OR Wales
• The database will produce a list of all
  documents which contain either the "Scotland" or
  "Wales" search term.

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Boolean NOT

• NOT is used to exclude a particular term from
  your results.
• For example
• - Scotland NOT Wales
• The databases will retrieve all of the
  documents containing the word Scotland only. It
  will remove all documents that contain the word
  Wales.

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1. Click Save
2. Click Open
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http//scholar.google.com
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4. Evaluate

• Looking at search results
• Relevant to topic?
• Reliable source?
• Reliability of information
• Authority
• Accuracy
• Bias
• Currency

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Plagiarism
5. Use

• Plagiarism the act of presenting someone
  elses work or ideas as your own

Quoting without citing Using ideas
without citing
Cut-and-paste, copying, stealing, borrowing,
hiring
DELIBERATE
ACCIDENTAL
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What is a Citation?

• A "citation" is the way you tell your readers
  that certain material in your work came from
  another source.

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Elements of Citation

• Journal article
• - Author
• - Title of article
• - Title of journal
• - Volume number of journal
• - Date of publication
• - Pagination

• Website
• - Author
• - Title
• - Publisher
• - Place of publication
• - Date of publication
• - URL
• - Date of accessed

• Book
• - Author(s)
• - Editor(s)
• - Title
• - Publisher
• - Place of publication
• - Year of publication
• - Edition (if any)

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Harvard Style for Works Cited/Bibliography

• Book
• Kizza, JM 2002, Computer network security and
  cyberethics, McFarland, Jefferson, N.C.
• Journal article
• Parikh, M Verma, S 2002, 'Utilizing Internet
  technologies to support learning an empirical
  analysis', International Journal of Information
  Management, vol. 22, no.1, pp. 27-46.

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• Website
• Therapeutic Goods Administration 2004,
  Department of Health and Ageing, Canberra, viewed
  13 October, 2004, ndex.htm.

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Citation Guide

• Harvard Style -
• http//www.lib.monash.edu.au/tutorials/citing
  / harvard.html
• APA Style -
• University of California Berkeley Library
  -www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/
  apastyle.pdf
• MLA Style -
• University of California Berkeley Library
  -www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/
  mlastyle.pdf