Literature searching for postgraduate students in Engineering

•Plagiarism Guidelines

•Understand how to plan a literature search

•Identify e-resources relevant to your literature search

•Citing, referencing and organising your findings

AIMS OF TODAY’S SESSION

PLAGIARISM

‘The act of presenting the work of another person (or people) as one’s own without proper acknowledgement. This includes copying the work of another student or other students.’

(Kingston University, Academic Regulation 6).

PLAGIARISM

SELF PLAGIARISM

The University defines self-plagiarism as the act of presenting part or all of a student’s work that has been previously submitted to meet the requirements of a different assessment except where the nature of the assessment makes this permissible.

COLLUSION

The University defines collusion as the act, by two or more students, of presenting a piece of work jointly without acknowledging the collaboration.

This is the case even when those involved in the collusion are not aware that their work has been presented

PENALTIES

http://cdn.kingston.ac.uk/documents/aboutkingstonuniversity/howtheuniversityworks/policiesandregulations/documents/2016_17_AR06_academic_misconduct_taught.pdf

PREVIOUS DISSERTATIONS

http://dissertations.kingston.ac.uk

WHY DO WE NEED TO DO LITERATURE SEARCHING?

A literature search needs to be systematic and focussed – you are not looking to read everything in a broad area, only things that are relevant to your work.

A literature search must also be evaluative - you need to critically assess each reference found to determine if it is worth pursuing.

Define your problem (topic)

Review the literature Review concepts and theories Review previous research findings to check what others

have already achieved. Analyse critically Determine where is the room for improvement and where

your contribution will be.

Formulate hypothesis

WHERE LITERATURE REVIEW FITS IN

Juan (2010) estimates a building structure can last over half a century; this suggests that sustainable methods, which may be slow to recoup their costs, can be used in commercial buildings.Knowing whether it will be financially viable to use sustainable materials is critical to a development of a building. Juan states that “For support systems such as the building structure and exterior skin, their lifetime can be more than 50 years.” (2010, p. 291)

Juan, Y.K. Gao, P. Wang, J. (2010) ‘A hybrid decision support system for sustainable office building renovation and energy performance improvement’. Energy and Buildings, 42(3), pp.290-297.

WHAT WE END UP WITH

POTENTIAL SOURCES

BSI (2014) BS ISO 10816-8:2014Mechanical vibration. Evaluation of machine vibration by measurements on non-rotating parts. Reciprocating compressor systems BSI [Online] Available at: http://icat.kingston.ac.uk (Accessed: 24.9.14)

Maritime and Coastguard Agency. (2014) Offshore Renewable Energy Installations, Emergency Response Co-operation Plans (ERCoP) for Construction and Operations Phase, and Requirements for Emergency Response and SAR Helicopter Operations Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/offshore-renewable-energy-installations-orei (Accessed: 24.9.14)

Lawrence, T. Dakin, J. Norris, P. Forni, M. (2011) Noise and vibration from road and rail. Construction Information Service [Online] Available at: http://icat.kingston.ac.uk (Accessed: 29.9.12)

Fontanelli, D. Moro, F. ; Rizano, T. ; Palopoli, L.(2014) ‘Vision-Based Robust Path Reconstruction for Robot Control’ IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement 63(4) pgs 826 – 837. doi: 10.1109/TIM.2013.2289091

TYPES OF SOURCES

Academic/Scholarly journals:

•Written by researchers at universities/centres and contain the results of their research.

•They are written to be read by other experts and contain high quality information

•Easy ways to spot academic journals:• Reference list at the end• Credentials of authors listed• Word ‘Journal’ in the title (not always the case)• Split into sections (Introduction, Methodology etc)• Similar length to a book chapter

TYPES OF JOURNALS

Trade/Professional journals:

Written for practitioners in companies/industries (engineers, scientists, designers etc).

Either written by journalists who have researched areas /conducted interviews OR by practitioners who will write about their projects and discoveries.

Not just for experts - can be more easily understood by the general population.

Articles are normally practice based and will offer real life solutions to problems.

Generally articles are much shorter than academic journals and won’t be formatted in the same way.

They are normally published weekly/fortnightly

TYPES OF JOURNALS

Need to have a plan for your searching •Major areas•Synonyms •Broader terms•Limits•Spelling •Phrase searching•Journal impact factor

THINGS TO CONSIDER

HOW TO IDENTIFY DATABASES OF USE TO YOU

Ex Libris (2016) iCat Database List. Available at: https://icat.kingston.ac.uk (Accessed: 28th September 2016)

SCOPUS

Cited by documents – Advance your search forward in time

Related documents – Other useful sources on the same topic

Blue Find It button – links you back to iCat to see whether we have the full text

Indexed keywords – Suggestions for other keywords

Elsevier (2016) Scopus record. Available at: http://ezproxy.kingston.ac.uk/login?url=http://www.scopus.com/ (Accessed: 28 th September 2016)

WEB OF SCIENCE

Within Web Of Science, find out the most prestigious journals in your field by impact factor. Change the category to your chosen field and it will list the journal titles.

Thomson Reuters (2016) Journal Citations Reports record. Available at: http://icat.kingston.ac.uk (Accessed: 28th September 2016)

PERSONALISE GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Google (2016) Google Scholar Settings. Available at: https://scholar.google.co.uk/ (Accessed: 28th September 2016)

Who is the author?

When was it written?

Why was it written?

Does it agree / disagree with what you already knew or have read?

What is the evidence?

Are they quoting others work or their own?

Note down the arguments/evidence not just summary sentences

Evaluate and be critical. Don’t read it passively – separate facts from opinion/interpretation

Think as you read: Are you understanding it?

THINGS TO REMEMBER WHEN READING

Palgrave Macmillan HE (2016) Skills4studycampus. Available at: http://icat.kingston.ac.uk (Accessed: 28th September 2016)

https://mykingston.kingston.ac.uk/library/finding_info/Pages/otherlibraries.aspx

USING OUTSIDE MATERIAL

You also need some way of organising what you have found:

RefWorksZotero MendeleyWord documentNotebookPaper folder

ORGANISING YOUR FINDINGS

REFWORKS

RefWorks (2015) Davina Omar’s home screen. Available at: https://www.refworks.com/RWShibboleth?providerid=https%3A//idp.kingston.ac.uk/shibboleth (Accessed: 21/1/15)

HELP AND CONTACTS

Davina Omar

Emaild.omar@kingston.ac.uk

Phone0208 417 2095

Skypedavina.omar (appointment only)

Bloghttp://blogs.kingston.ac.uk/seclibrary

Ask a Librarian Live chat on iCat (10.30 – 8.30pm)