Recently finding information is not an issue, but making sure that it is reliable, authentic, and relevant to the focus of your research is a challenging task. I think readers will agree with me that we can find ten articles that have the key words we are looking for and end up using one or two out of those ten sources. As a first-time postgraduate student, I am learning and growing as I go. A good example for this is research conducted by Umoquit M. and et al, (2011) to test the use of multidisciplinary review using diagrams to collect data, in their research a collection of 2690 documents were collected and only 80 were used for analysis.
So how I tackle this problem? I have three ways to locate and analyze literature, first method is to use advanced search options to narrow results. Second thing only use the secure website that starts with (https), so you can confirm is a trustworthy and secure website. The last thing that I learned after starting this program is to use peer reviewed sources which increases their credibility.
I would like to share with you the three sites I use regularly and have been helpful are (Google scholar), it has a great collection of resources and a lot of advanced search options that helps you narrow search results and get the research resources you need more efficiently, for example you can choose to see sources after a specific date, like after 2020 for example, you can specify a start and end date for the results you receive, sort by date or relevance and a great tool is that it can save articles for on a list to read them later. I came across a study that used google tools to help university level students develop skills needed for scientific research using Google scholar tools, this study which was done in 2020 by Mufleh Q. and Bashier A., which showed a significant difference on the scientific skills premeasurement and post measurement among the students who used Google scholar tools compared to other groups.
Then my second resources would be American college of education (ACE) library, it free accessible and helps you and also offers advanced search tools to assist you in your search for resources it allows you to see complete PDFs, choose peer reviewed sources only, you can search by title or author and there is a tool to that helps confirming that you citations done correctly according to APP style. The only downside for ACE library is that it can be down sometimes so if it is the only sources, you are using you might need to reconsider that. The third source that I would use in case the previous one was not helpful is (SpringerOpen) which provides peer reviewed resources on different disciplines include science, technology and humanities, what I like about this website that it would have the complete article that I cannot find on Google scholar or ACE library, also allows you to choose peer reviewed sources only.
A few tricks I have learned through my journey. The first tip, with google scholar make sure to add a plus sign (+) between your keywords to make sure that all your keywords are included, the less the keyword the better the results. A second tip always choose peer review it narrows results and finally double check citation using ACE library tool that says cite, it was a great help to learn and practice APA style.
References
B. Al-Judea, M. Q. (2022). Advance program to develop scientific research skills by using Google scholar tools among students of the university of Tabuk. Journal of Research of the University of Quindio, 34(1), 70–79.
Comments
Post a Comment