Information retrieval and reference management
Teacher: Jytte Emanuelsson, research librarian, Ph.D.
Training Program
Purpose
To develop the participants' knowledge and ability to work methodically with information retrieval and reference management, and to cite references properly in the preparation of manuscripts for scientific papers.
Background
When writing a scientific article it is necessary to follow the format requirements of a given journal, so that references in main text and bibliography meet the journal's convention. This work will be immensely facilitated by using a reference management program.
The University of Copenhagen subscribes to 2 programs : EndNote and Reference Manager (RefMan).
Today most of the relevant scientific literature are available on the Internet.
Just to search for scholarly articles with Google Scholar or REX is not enough, because a subject search here only to some degree is possible. You will not reach all the relevant literature with these search tools.
Therefore it is necessary to do your information retrieval in the international bibliographic databases (see list below), available on the Internet. Here you will find the scientific literature that is written on a given topic.
By using a search strategy and a search technique that suits the individual interface of the database you will locate the relevant literature. The references can be downloaded electronically and stored in your own database in either EndNote or RefMan.
General about the course
The course is aimed at academic staff and PhD students at the University of Copenhagen’s Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences and Faculty of Science.
The participants can choose between EndNote or RefMan as reference management program.
Lectures will alternate with exercises on the participant's own computer for your own topic.
There are for this course produced several topics for the participants to work with if they want more time to develop their own search strategy.
Course – 1st Part - Information retrieval: How to search for literature
Demonstration
The course begins with a brief demonstration of the literature search in two selected bibliographic databases on different platforms. Then demonstration of how to download some references into a database in a reference management program. From this database it is demonstrated how to use citing of the references in a text in Word and two different ways of how to write references and bibliography (i.e. author/date or citation order).
At last a review of some of the various information systems interfaces that vary greatly from information system to information system. Thus, varying the way you search, download and store references and search profile.
Search strategy
You will learn how to formulate your search questions and find the best search keyword terms. Which database to choose, how to combine your keywords, search strategy and search techniques in general, and how to build a search profile and combine items, followed by exercises.
More specific:
• Introduction to subject search in 2 of the bibliographic database interfaces, followed by exercises.
• Introduction to citation search in the Web of Science interface, followed by exercises.
• Demonstration of how to store the search profile in a database, and later by email to receive the results of the search profile every time the database is updated (this is called alerts). Followed by exercises.
• Demonstration of how the references from the literature search are saved to a reference management program. Followed by exercises.
• Demonstration of the verification of articles. Followed by exercises.
• Ranking of journals in topics in the ISI database 'Journal Citation Report', followed by exercises.
If there in a reference is no link to the article in full text (i.e. to a PDF article) try to search for the article in Google Scholar, REX or Bibliotek.dk. If there is still no fulltext you
can get a paper version of the article by ordering in REX for delivery at your Institute.
Relevant database interfaces
Web of Knowledge (Biosis, Medline, Web of Science, Zool. Rec.)
WebSPIRS or OvidSP (Cab Astr., Agricola, Medline, Embase, Fsta, etc.)
Proquest (EconLit, Sociol. Abstr. and.others)
PubMed (Medline)
Scifinder (Chem.Abstr..)
REX
Google Scholar
Bibliotek.dk (Library.dk)
Course – 2nd part – Reference management
Focuses on reference management with either EndNote or RefMan. Introduction and hands-on exercises:
• How to build a database with references from direct electronic import of references found in your literature search.
In addition, manual entry of a reference, for example from a printed thesis.
And how to upgrade a reference, fx. for a book, eg by entering the chapter titles manually.
• And how to use this database to cite references in a text written in Word and create a bibliography to a format that suits a given journal's convention.
Chosen example: the New Scientist format, so the citations in the text and the bibliography suits the format for this journal.
• Demonstrating in either the EndNote or the RefMan database
-How all fields in the reference management program's database is searchable.
-How you can add more fields in the reference list display, all to be sorted separately
-How to retrieve references in the database by keywords or authors.
-How to edit a reference if there are errors in the author or journal names.
-How to insert a pdf file in a reference.
• The use of a reference management program in a Word document. This technique is called 'Cite While You Write', ie the inserting and formatting of citations in your document from an open database.
• How to delete a reference, and
• How to change a cited reference from the default form (Bryson, 2002) to .. According to Bryson (2002).
Output styles
The way to write citations in the text and in the bibliography for a particular journal is called an output style. In the referent management program several thousand different styles are included.
• The course teach you how to select, change and use the correct output style – something the experience shows may be problematic.
Unfortunately, there may be changes or errors in the style to a journal format, so there will also be a demonstration of how you can change or edit an output style.
Other features:
• About import filters
• Options in Bibliotek.dk and in Google Scholar so that you can save references to a reference management program.
FOLLOW-UP-Course -
One afternoon ca. four weeks after the 2nd course.
• Discussion and review of the participants' problems.
• Establishing a course blog with questions and answers.