LESSON 3

MANAGING
SOURCES AND
RESOURCES FOR A
RESEARCH PAPER
 Table des
matières
Objectifs 3

Introduction 4

I - UNTRUSTED SOURCES 5

1. sources to double-check .................................................................................................................................. 5

II - TRUSTED SOURCES 6

1. SEARCH ENGINES ...................................................................................................................................... 6

2. ONLINE JOURNALS .................................................................................................................................... 7

3. LIBRARIES .................................................................................................................................................... 8

4. Newspapers and magazines ............................................................................................................................. 8

5. How will I KNOW if a source is RELIABLE? ............................................................................................... 8

III - DATA SHARING DRIVES SCIENCE FORWARD 9

1. sharing research data ....................................................................................................................................... 9

2. MANAGING RESOURCES ........................................................................................................................ 10

2.1. Manage Your Resources ............................................................................................................................................................ 10

IV - Exercice : GROUP WORK 11

 Objectifs

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

-identify types of resource sources

-determine what makes a source reliable or not

-manage resources

-set the advantages of sharing information

3
 Introduction

With the Internet being so accessible, it might be tempting to type words into Google and use whatever comes up
first. You may get lucky and get great sources, or you may get stuck with less credible sites that leave your professor
wondering where you got such information. Learning how to evaluate sources for research paper writing is a key
component to your research paper's success. Here are five tips to help you as you gather your sources:

SOURCES

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 UNTRUSTED SOURCES

UNTRUSTED SOURCES
I
1. sources to double-check
Avoid Wikipedia, Wikihow, Yahoo! Answers and eHow. But be careful of sites such as Wikipedia, Wikihow,
Yahoo! Answers and eHow that allow multiple users to edit. Wikipedia is a great jumping-off point in terms of
figuring out what to search for, but double-check all of the facts by using credible sources of information.

The following are unreliable sources because they require confirmation with a reliable source:

-Some information and attached resources may not be reliable in blogs, tweets, Personal websites, Forums

-Sites created by organizations that may have political or biased agendas

-Sites that provide biased information

-Self-published sources

-Opinionated articles such as editorials

-Online sources with an URL that ends in html, which is the basic building blocks of web pages

-Some online sources with an URL that end in .com are unreliable

-Sites of companies that conduct their business over the internet.

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 TRUSTED SOURCES

TRUSTED SOURCES
II
1. SEARCH ENGINES
Search engines are great places to start when you're first reading up on the assigned writing topic.

1. Google Scholar

Google Scholar is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google
searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only let's you find research papers for all academic
disciplines for free, but also often provides links to full text PDF file.

Coverage: approx. 200 million articles

2. Microsoft Academic

It's Microsoft answer to Google Scholar. Microsoft Academic takes a different approach and generates for each
paper that is indexed an overview page that allows to easily explore top citing articles and references of the
article.

3. BASE

BASE is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany and that's where it name stems from (Bielefeld Academic
Search Engine).

Coverage: approx. 136 million articles (contains duplicates).

BASE: combines the entries from thousands of institutional repositories in one place.

4. CORE

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers. For each search result, a link to
the full text PDF or full text web page is provided.

Coverage: approx. 136 million articles accessible for free

5. Science.gov

Science.gov is a fantastic resources as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S.
federal agencies. There is no need any more to query all those resources separately!

Coverage: approx. 200 million articles and reports. Science.gov: one resource to access millions of papers and
reports from several federal agencies.

6. Semantic Scholar

Semantic Scholar provides relevant and impactful search results using AI powered algorithms that find hidden
connections and links between research topics.

Coverage: approx. 40 million articles

6
 ONLINE JOURNALS

7. Baidu Scholar

Although Baidu Scholar's interface is in Chinese it's index contains research papers in English as well as
Chinese.

Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 100 million articles

Baidu Scholar: the interface is in Chinese language.

2. ONLINE JOURNALS
From the following repositories and libraries, you will find tools to locate and access the information you need
to produce well-researched, compelling, and innovative writing.

1. CORE;

2. ScienceOpen;

3.Directory of Open Access Journals;

4. Education Resources Information Center;

5. arXiv e-Print Archive;

6. Social Science Research Network;

7. Public Library of Science;

8. OpenDOAR;

9. Bielefeld Academic Search Engine;

10. Digital Library of the Commons Repository;

11. CIA World Factbook;

12. Paperity;

13. dblp Computer Science Bibliography;

14. EconBiz;

15. BioMed Central;

16. JURN;

17. Dryad;

18. EThOS;

19. PubMed;

20. Semantic Scholar;

21. Zenodo

[cf. ]

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 Newspapers and magazines

3. LIBRARIES
Libraries include diaries, speeches, letters, manuscripts, memoirs, autobiographies, records of governments or
organizations, and published materials (books, journals, newspaper articles) written at the time of an event or
issue.

4. Newspapers and magazines

Newspapers and magazines can provide a great supplement to online scholarly sources as well as bring your
research up to speed on what's current and in the news. Make sure to carefully evaluate your sources, and
choose from those that are known to be objective, reputable, and of high quality.

Newspapers to start with: New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal

Magazines to start with: TIME, Newsweek, New Yorker, U.S. News & World Report, Harper's, Economist

5. How will I KNOW if a source is RELIABLE?

To determine the reliability of online sites and organizations, look at the URL's ending:

If the site ends in .edu, it is most likely an educational institution. Be aware, however, of political bias.

If the site ends in .gov, it is most likely a reliable government website. These sites usually provide good sources
for statistics and objective reports.

If the site ends in .org, it is usually a non-profit organization.

These sources vary in being good or poor sources of information and you will still need to research their
possible agendas and biases, if they exist.

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 DATA SHARING DRIVES SCIENCE FORWARD

DATA SHARING
DRIVES SCIENCE III
FORWARD

1. sharing research data

Research data are a valuable resource, usually requiring much time and money to be produced. Many data have
a significant value beyond usage for the original research.

Sharing research data:

• encourages scientific enquiry and debate

• promotes innovation and potential new data uses

• leads to new collaborations between data users and data creators

• maximises transparency and accountability

• enables scrutiny of research findings

• encourages the improvement and validation of research methods

• reduces the cost of duplicating data collection

• increases the impact and visibility of research

• promotes the research that created the data and its outcomes

• can provide a direct credit to the researcher as a research output in its own right

• provides important resources for education and training The ease with which digital data can be stored,
disseminated and made easily accessible online to users means that many institutions are keen to share research
data to increase the impact and visibility of their research.

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 Manage Your Resources

2. MANAGING RESOURCES
2.1. Manage Your Resources
To manage your resources, you must understand why and how you will use them in your paper. You will have to
keep accurate records of what you use from your resources and how you think these resources will contribute to
your developing paper.

Good management of your research paper starts with keeping accurate and complete records from the
beginning. Ordinarily honest students can be tempted to plagiarize when their record-keeping has been poor and
they face an impending deadline. To keep good records, you must first understand the documentation standards
you are using or what your style guide requires. Then, you devise a system for recording and keeping essential
information. Your research resources are your notes, summaries of articles, bibliography cards, and any articles
or pages you photocopied for your research.

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 Exercice : GROUP WORK

Exercice : GROUP
WORK IV

For your essays or reports, you need some resources. Where do you often look for them? How do you decide
whether a source is reliable or not? How fast do you find resources? Do you use paid articles or books? What
about open-access books and articles? Do you share resources with other students all other the world? How do
you keep record of the resources you find? Write a paragraph about 15 lines where you will give answer to
these questions. Work in groups of 5 students then submit your work on the Master platform

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