As soon as the requirements for the assignments were posted on Stream, I picked a topic for my position paper and started doing research for it. However, after completing some of the lessons, especially from week 2; I realized that the information I collected so far may not be valuable at all. I only used “Google” up until last week, so I had to go through the material I had in hand to check for veracity. It turned out that I had a lot of tertiary literature and some papers that weren’t actually published scientific papers. It wasn’t all a waste though, I did find some useful information, and as mentioned in lesson 1 from week 1, “tertiary literature gives you a good overview on the topic and it can be a good starting point”.
After learning about
“Google Scholar” and the “Massey Library” I was able to find more reliable data
for my research. To be honest, I did have some difficulties finding the
information I wanted using these tools. I think I wasn’t using very clear terms
for the search, so I went back to the papers I found on Google and noted any
references to the authors that I could find. I then did a search using the
authors’ names and was able to find some publications related to my topic. Also,
from the tertiary literature, I found the names of some scientific journals, so
I went straight to their websites to look for more information.
Another thing I found
to be very useful was looking at the Reference lists on the first papers I had
in hand; it led me to other very good sources of information. There are still a
couple of papers that I cannot verify the authenticity just yet though. One is
a paper that was presented in a conference in 2009, so I am trying to find more
recent data from this presentation or if it was actually published in any
journal after 2009… but I will get there!
The researching
methods presented in the lessons, the importance of distinguishing the different
types of sources when doing a research, and how and where to find these sources
are all very interesting topics. I had never used “Google Scholar” before and
had no idea on how scientific information was published. Very interesting
indeed! I am so glad I started my BSc with this communication paper. I am sure
I will be much more prepared for future research assignments!
“The important
thing is to never stop questioning.”
-Albert Einstein
Hi Ana, I can totally relate to having trouble finding the right subject terms to search with. I am constantly searching all throughout the writing of an assignment as I find the more you know and understand of the subject, the better your ability to construct search terms that produce the articles you need. The massey library offer online seminars about searching for research using the library and they have some fantastic tips on search terms. I have attended these previously and found them very helpful.
ReplyDeleteGoogle is great if you just want start up information on a subject e.g. so you can get to know some of the terms you wish to search for.
ReplyDeleteI found sometimes if I really wanted an article that Massey did not have a access to, Google scholar usually had a straight link to it.
Yes this course will be a good foundation for us in our future studies.
It seems we all struggled initially with research and I agree that the massey liabrary wasn't the easiest place to find the information we wanted unless we used very specific search terms.
ReplyDelete