Content last reviewed:
Measuring Quality of Research
- Peer-review process
- Citation count
- Seminal papers
- Methods papers
- Reputation
- Author
- Journal
- Predatory journals
- Your own expertise
Evaluating Research
- CRAP test
- Currency
- Reliability
- Authority
- Purpose
Developing a Research Question
- Preliminary search
- Background information
- Terminology
- What questions come to mind?
- Ask your self as you read – what, how, why
- What interests you?
- Particular application? context? model?
- Did you find a paper that really interests you?
- How much information is available?
- Is there too little/too much to do a research report?
- Too little – broaden your search
- Too much – narrow down further
Search Process
Techniques
Boolean operators 
- AND
- Many databases don’t need AND, it is assumed
- The more terms you AND together, the fewer results you find
- OR
- Used to combine synonyms/related terms
- The more terms you OR together, the more results you find
- Use brackets when using synonyms with OR
- NOT
- Use to remove irrelevant results that use the same term
- When you use NOT you will find fewer results
Phrase searching
- Quotations - “biological signaling”
Truncation
- Asterisk (sometimes other symbol) – signal*
Search Tips
- Synonyms or related terms
- Discover new terms in your search results
- Controlled vocabulary
- Author search
- Refine/Filters
- Citation tracking
- Citation counts
- Search history
Getting Started
- Review articles
- Dissertations/Theses
-
How accurately can an electrocardiogram measure the respiration rate in Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia?
- How accurately can an electrocardiogram measure the respiration rate in Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia?
- accurately < > accuracy
- electrocardiogram < > ECG
- respiration rate < > respiratory rate
- Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia < > RSA
accura*
AND
(electrocardiogram OR ECG)
AND
(respira* rate)
AND
(“Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia” OR RSA)
- choose a search tool
- Too many, too few?
- Results useful?
- Discover new search terms?
- Repeat as needed
Background Information
- Knovel library
- inlcudes handbooks, reference material
- Library Search
- limit to Content Type - Reference, Discipline - Engineering
- Review articles
- Thesis/Dissertations
Engineering
- Library Search
- Carleton library contents
-
- engineering specific
- IEEE Xplore Digital Library
- engineering specific
- Google Scholar
- academic works
- Web of Science /Scopus
- general science/engineering, citation tracking
Biomedical
- Pubmed
- research literature
- look at reviews to get an overview
- Mayoclinic
- diseases and conditions
- Medline Plus
- health topics
News and Opinion
- News databases webpage
- all news sources available through the library
- LexisNexis
- Advanced Search > Source Type > Article Type
- Factiva
- Change date
- Subject > Content Types
- Historical Archives
- on the news databases webpage, scroll down to find newspaper archive of interest
- Google News
- for recent news
- Social Media
- for recent news
Ethics
- Library Search
- Bioethics AND engineering > Refine with Subject filter or Journal filter
- PubMed
- Advanced search > select Mesh Terms (drop down menu) > type in - Bioethical Issues > click Add > click Search
Citation Managers
Formatting Tool
- Bibtex
- works with Latex
Citation Styles
Videos
- Mendeley (11:00min)
- Export from IEEE (0:39min)
- Export from Engineering Village (0:46min)
- Zotero vidoes (uOttawa)
Worksheet
Find
Choose a topic of interest:
- in IEEE find a 2020 article then find a relevant reference from this article
- in EngVillage find a review article
