Christopher Parker

Friday, October 15th, 2021

Communicating Scientific Knowledge

Lesson 3

What is knowledge?
- patterns of facts, understanding of the world
Source
- A source is where you get your information from
- Primary Source – Going directly to a source without information being mediated
- Secondary Source – information that has been filtered/interpreted by others first
What makes your source objective?
- Objectivity – the idea that the image that you have in mind corresponds to reality
Searching and Finding Literature: For the Midterm Essay and Final Essay
- Specify context: for example, “here in the US.” Also narrow down geographically
- Don’t limit yourself to scholarly articles. Use podcasts, interviews, magazines etc.
- Use search engines like Google Scholar, Web of Science, field-specific databases
- Also try Unicat and Worldcat (Belgian database and international database)
- Use the VUB and University of Gent databases https://student.vub.be/en/library
- Make sure to always evaluate the sources you use and take notes while researching
- How to not plagiarize: Little Brown Handbook pages 614-621 (check slides on canvas)
- Reference everything you use in your bibliography even if it is a minor thing
- Synthesizing is when you summarize an entire article or a chapter. Stating main idea
- Always use APA formatting (double check slides by Joke on Canvas)
- Referencing software – Mendeley, Zotero and Endnote