IC 601

Research Methodology
Working with literature
aka literature search
What should I be reading and what do I do with it all?

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The Importance of Working with Literature

Working with literature is an essential part of the

research process that:

• generates ideas
• helps form significant questions
• is instrumental in the process of research design
 Finding literature

Finding relevant literature can be made easier if you are able to readily
access and draw on a wide variety of resources such as:
• reference materials
• books
• journals
• grey literature(reports, policy literature, working papers, newsletters, government
documents, speeches)
• official publications
• archives
 Working with
Literature

Find it! Manage it! Use it! Review it!

Knowing the Reading Understanding the

Choosing your research topic
literature types efficiently lit review’s purpose

Keeping track Ensuring adequate

Using available resources Developing your question
of references coverage

Honing your Arguing your Writing

Writing relevant annotations
search skills rationale purposefully

Working on
Informing your work with theory
style and tone

Designing
method
Finding literature
Don’t do it alone!!
When looking for literature be sure to call on the experts such as:
• librarians
• supervisors
• other researchers
• practitioners
Intersecting Areas of Literature

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Strategy for search

◼ Exploratory
◼ Refining
◼ Focused
 Managing the literature
• Assessing relevance
• Assessing quality
• Have researcher subjectivities been acknowledged and managed?
• Have they used logical methods that lead to valid and/or authentic
truth?
• Are their methods approached with consistency?
• Are arguments relevant and appropriate?
• Can the research be audited/verified?

• Being systematic
 Managing the literature
It also pays to be organized and diligent when it
comes to keeping references.
• Keep and file copies of relevant books, articles, etc.
• Avoid lending out your ‘only copies’

• Find out about the recommended referencing style and use

it from the start

• Consider using bibliographic file management software

such as Mendeley, Procite, Endnote, or Reference Manager
Annotating Sources

Annotating your sources provides you with a record of

relevant literature. It should include:
• the citation
• articulation of the author and audience
• a short summary
• critical commentary
• notes on relevance that remind you of the significance,
accuracy, and quality of the sources cited
Using the Literature

Literature is used for disparate purposes throughout the

research process. Whether it be:
• focusing interests
• defining questions
• arguing a rationale
• theoretically informing your study
• developing appropriate design, or writing a formal literature
review
every stage of the research process demands literary
engagement
Where to look for

◼ Google or other usual search engines

◼ How about specialized and domain-dependent
search engines
◼ Google-scholar
◼ Sci finder
◼ Web-of-knowledge, scirus
◼ Citeseer, DBLP
◼ Digital Libraries, like ACM-digital, IEEE-Explore
◼ Journal and conference web-sites
Lets start with Google-scholar

◼ Objective:
◼ Start with few keywords
◼ Find important and relevant articles (based on citation
history, year published etc)
◼ Refine your keywords
◼ Identify key journals, conferences and research groups
Continuing with Google-Scholar
What I observe ?

• Many articles look out-of-place compared to my

intented meaning
• However, some of them do look what I actually
meant
• What else I see ?
• Related articles
• Cited by
What I still able to do ?
◼ Refine my keywords
◼ Get hold of some key papers
◼ Where they got published

Basically, more pointers

Could I have done even better than this ?

OR

Can I further refine or be more focused ?

Web of Knowledge
Advantage of using Web of Knowledge

◼ Refine results options

◼ Various options
◼ Can identify important groups working on similar topic,
journals and conferences
◼ Managing your searches and important papers
◼ Citation alert for Tracking citations
◼ My Saved Searches
CiteSeer
CiteSeer: Advanced Search Option
ACM Digital Library
ACM Digital Library
ACM Digital Library
Assessing results

◼ How many citations

◼ % of self-citation
◼ % of co-citation
◼ Where it was published
◼ One of top conferences or journals
◼ Peer-group reputation
◼ Only when attend conferences
◼ discussion with experts in related research area
Managing and Organizing Search
Results
◼ Mendeley
◼ Desktop-version
◼ Web-browser add-on
◼ Web-based
◼ Sharing and collaboration
◼ Cite u like
◼ Recommend you papers also once you have saved few
papers in your account
◼ Web-browser add-on
◼ Web-based
◼ Sharing and collaboration
Mendeley
Mendeley
Cite U Like
Am I Done?

▪ Time-Line
▪ Too-long vs too-short
▪ Continuous process?
▪ Keeping track of relevant research
▪ Citation alerts
▪ TOC alerts from journals
▪ Keeping eye on recent conferences
▪ Keeping track of few leading research group