Tracking academic discussion

Transcription

1 Tracking academic discussion Contents Pages Aims 2 About this workbook 2 1. Finding and entering Web of Knowledge 3 2. Finding the Citation Indexes 4 3. Cited Reference Searching. Who else has cited this paper? 4 4. Which articles have references in common? 5 5. What are people in my research area talking about? 7 If you require this information in an alternative format (i.e. large print, braille or audio cassette), please contact any library enquiry desk or telephone (0113) and staff will make the necessary arrangements.

2 Tracking academic discussion Perspectives on ideas, discoveries and research change in the course of discussion and debate. Finding out how these debates take place through journal articles etc., is a good way to see how ideas evolve. This workbook will help you to find out more about who said what using a number of resources including Web of Knowledge. Web of Knowledge is a multidisciplinary set of databases that can be used to find journal articles on particular topics, or by particular authors, and it also allows you to find citation information. It is a service which you can access via the Library webpages. Web of Knowledge consists of several databases including citation indexes: Science Citation Index ( ) Social Sciences Citation Index ( ) Arts & Humanities Citation Index ( ) Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Science (CPCI-S) present Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH) present Citation indexes list articles from over 8,700 peer-review journals. It includes abstracts and references and some links to the full-text of the articles. It only covers the top journals in each subject area. Aims This workbook contains a number of tasks and activities which will introduce you to tracking academic debates. By the end of this workbook you will be able to: Access the Web of Knowledge service Find out who has cited a paper you are reading Find out which papers have references in common Find out what other people in your research area are discussing online Access conference proceedings About this workbook Things that you need to type are displayed in Courier New bold font Instructions assume that you are using the Internet Explorer browser (the ISS supported web browser). But you can use any web browser.

3 Page 3 of 9 1. Finding and entering the Web of Knowledge Exercise 1: Accessing Web of Knowledge (on-campus) 1. Start Internet Explorer and go to the Library homepage: 2. Use the Library Catalogue search box to search for Web of Science 3. Select the first link Web of Science [electronic resource] in your results. Web of Science is part of the Web of Knowledge service. 4. Once inside the Library Catalogue record, find the link under the Available online box and click on Web of Science - - Web of Knowledge 5. When prompted type in the username and password you generally use to access the PCs in the University. 6. Now you can see the Web of Knowledge:

4 Page 4 of 9 2. Finding the Citation Indexes Exercise 2: Accessing Web of Science 1. From the front page of the Web of Knowledge you need to select Web of Science from the tabs: 1. Click on Web of Science 2. Click on Cited Reference Search. This is the type of searching we are going to concentrate on. 3. Cited Reference Searching. Who else has cited this paper? You have a paper on Studies in statistics: social, political and medical by George Blundell Longstaff which is a wellknown work and since its publication in 1891, the paper has been cited by other authors. By using the Cited Reference search, you can find out which papers in the database have referenced Longstaff s paper. Exercise 3a: Cited reference search 1. In the first box type longstaff gb and select cited author from the drop-down menu to the right of the search box. 2. In the second box type 1891 and select Cited Year(s) from the drop-down menu to the right of the search box. 3. Click on Search You should have found a few references, which slightly differ from one another. This is common in a cited reference search as each author may cite the same paper differently (or wrongly) so you may get more than one result for the same paper. In this case, Longstaff appears to have published two papers in we are only interested in the one beginning with the word studies. 4. Tick the boxes next to the references which start with the word studies and click on Finish search The results you get will be those papers in the Web of Science database that have cited Longstaff s paper. There is no way to do a comprehensive citation search as Web of Science only indexes journal articles. It could be that Longstaff s paper has been cited in a book, report or conference paper, but there is no way of finding that out in this database. You have another paper by P.M. Napoli on Deconstructing the diversity principle which was published in the Journal of Communication in You are interested in finding other papers which have referenced this work.

5 Page 5 of 9 Exercise 3b: Another cited reference search 1. Click on Cited Reference Search to start another search. 2. Click on the Clear button to delete previous search words. 3. Select to search across the Social Sciences Citation Index only (underneath the search boxes there are current limits options). 4. In the first box type Napoli pm and select cited author from the drop-down menu to the right of the search box. 5. In the second box type 1999 and select Cited Year(s) from the drop-down menu to the right of the search box. 6. Click Search This time the references show more information in the right hand columns, including the volume numbers. This is because there are records for Napoli s papers in the Web of Science database. Napoli appears to have published 5 articles in 1999, two of which were in the Journal of Communication. 7. You need to find out which one matches the title you have do this now by using the show expanded titles links and checking which record matched the article title you are looking for (Deconstructing the diversity principle) 8. Having identified the correct paper, tick the box next to it and click on Finish search to see those papers that reference the Napoli article. If you scroll down/move to the next page of results, you will see Napoli has referenced (self-cited) his own work in later articles he has published. Another way to find out who has cited a paper is by searching for the relevant article in the General Search and looking for the Times cited link. This only works if the paper has a record inside (i.e. has been indexed in) Web of Science, so you could not find papers citing Longstaff in this way. 4. Which articles have references in common? Finding out whether there are other articles which have the same references in their bibliographies can be a good way to broaden out your search for relevant information and find out who is referencing who. Exercise 4: Related records with references in common 1. Click on the Search option to start a new search. Click on the Clear button to erase any previous searches. 2. Select 1999 from the Year dropdown menu and search the Social Sciences database only. 3. In the Topic box type: Deconstructing the diversity principle 4. Click Search

6 Page 6 of 9 You should be able to see the result, including (shown underneath it), the number of Times Cited. You can click on the blue number to get a list of the articles, as before. 5. Click on the title (Deconstructing the diversity principle) to see inside the full record. You will see that Napoli has cited 78 references in this article. You can find out whether other authors have used the same references by selecting the [view related records] link on the right. You will see a list of other papers in the database that have referenced the same articles as Napoli. Articles that cite the same works have a subject relationship. The more cited references two articles share, the closer this subject relationship is. Note this is Napoli using 35 of the same refs for another article he wrote.

7 Page 7 of 9 5. What are people in my research area talking about? Mailing lists, blogs and conference proceedings are three good ways to find out what people with similar research interests to you are discussing. Although the opinions expressed in mailing lists and blogs are not always representative of the research community, they are a good means of informal networking, and finding out about relevant conferences, and new journals. Exercise 5a: National academic mailing list service Find a useful mailing list in your research area through Jiscmail, a service for Higher Education. To explore the service go to: You could use the category listing under Groups to find relevant mailing list. To find out more about individual lists before you sign up to them, you can sometimes browse recent postings by the month. Some lists require you to register and subscribe before you can read any posts: Conference proceedings can be difficult to find. Sometimes papers will be made available from conference websites soon after the event, others will be published in journals. Here are two ways to track down conference proceedings.

8 Page 8 of 9 Exercise 5b: Finding conference proceedings 1. You can use the Library Catalogue to find conference proceedings. Go to the Library homepage, click on Find items in the right hand menu. Then select Conference papers under the tab How to find Read the information about using the Library Catalogue to search for this material. Try a few searches for conference proceedings in your own subject area. 3. You can also search for conference proceedings using databases. Many databases will include information about conference proceedings, but you may want to look further with Web of Science Proceedings (was called ISI Proceedings) 4.. Use the Library Catalogue search box to search for Web of Science 5. Select the first link Web of Science [electronic resource] in your results. Web of Science is part of the Web of Knowledge service. 6. Once inside the Library Catalogue record, find the link under the Available online box and click on Web of Science - - Web of Knowledge 7. Click on Web of Science

9 Page 9 of 9 7. Under current limits Select to search inside the Conference citation indexes only: Exercise 5c: Finding blogs There are a number of blog search engines available to help you track down useful blogs. 1. To try this Google powered search to find relevant blogs for your research go to: 2. Once you have performed a search use the advanced search option to refine your searches 3. On the results page, when there are entire blogs that seem to be a good match for your query, these will appear in a short list just above the main search results. The rest of the results may be to just individual posts within a wider blog. 4. If you find a useful blog you may want to set up an RSS feed to keep up-to-date with new posts. Remember that blogs are expressions of personal opinions, and though there are many good quality blogs with an academic and research focus, you may find these less easy to identify. Elgg: University of Leeds Community Learning Space, is a local blogging resource which you can use to start your own research blog, and interact with other researchers at the University using themed groups (the example below is from the Institute of Psychological Sciences Memory group). To join Elgg go to: (note the https) Maintained by: Skills@Library