Title: Section 1.2: Where to search
Course: MSc level academic and professional (information) skills > Section: Part 1. Information skills, Plagiarism and Referencing

Introduction to where to search

Learning objectives

In this section, you become familiar with various types of scientific information, where you can find them and also when and how to use them. The last section is on the Open Internet and that different search engines get different results.

After this section you will be able to:

- Recognize different types of information
- Recognize different types of scientific publications and their characteristics
- Recognize the different properties of a literature database
- Use the most suitable type of information/publication in different situations
- Understand why different search engines get different results.
- Recognize the occurrence of a ‘Filter Bubble’ and understand why this can be a problem when working as a scientist.

Types of (scientific) information

The information in a glossy magazine differs from a report of a scientific conference. The scientific community has her own rules and practices with respect to communication. This section discusses the differences between information sources (scientific journals, magazines, newpapers, books, webpages), and the consequences for their quality and thus the usability in an academic environment.

(E-)Books

Book (physical) and e-books (digital) are about a defined major subject of a part of science. Since publishing a book takes a considerable time, the information they contain can often be found in previous conference reports or articles. Successful books may be reissued and updated in a new edition. So a second or higher edition is a kind of quality mark.

Textbooks or study books can be a good starting point. They will give you an ordered overview of the fundamentals of a subject you should know before you can get into the latest developments. They are useful when exploring a subject or developing problem statements and search questions.

The same is true for handbooks. Handbooks give short systematic summaries of different subjects within a scientific field. They can also be used as reference work.

Periodicals

Periodicals are publications that apear at regular intervals. On this page we will discuss three types of periodicals.

Scientific peer reviewed journal

We know different kinds of journals. As a scientist the most important kind is the scientific peer reviewed journal, which focuses on results and developments in scientific research, and is an important means of communication between scientists. Most scientific journals are only published online (usually not free of charge).

Peer review: before publication the scientific articles are reviewed by other researchers in the field. Watch the video below to learn more about the peer review process.

Trade journals

Trade journals present developments and news for use in a discipline. Editors write or assess the articles. Trade journal articles do not have a high scientific status, but can be very informative when you are not yet familiar with the subject.

Magazines

Magazines present news and background for anyone interested. Magazine articles are not meant for scientific communication, but can sometimes be of use to give insight in social relevance of research.

Which one do you think is the scientific one?

Journal articles and Conference proceedings

A scientific article can be seen as a part of a scientific conversation. In an article, a scientist explains his research in light of research done by others. The research question is embedded in an analysis of the scientific field, the research method is described in such a way that the research can be verified, an overview of the results are given and again discussed in comparison with other research. A scientific article will always have a reference list.

When an article is used as a reference (citation) in other publications, this can be seen as a quality mark. But keep in mind that such a quality mark favors older publications. In the same way, the Impact Factor is sometimes seen as a quality mark for Scientific Journals. The Impact Factor is the mean amount of citations of the articles in the journal within 2 years after publication.

Journal article

Before publication most journal articles are reviewed by other scientists. Watch the video below to get tips on how to read a journal article.

Conference proceedings

Another form of scientific articles is Conference papers. Conference proceedings contain the papers (and sometimes posters) people have presented at a conference. On scientific conferences, the most recent information is given because speakers need comments on their actual work. They also want to establish their new results as their own, so nobody can claim them later on.

The importance of conference papers depends on the scientific field. Especially in the technical sciences, a great part of scientific communication is done through conferences.

Dissertations, encyclopedia and patents

Dissertations

Dissertations or PhD-Theses are academic writings on the basis of which the author obtains the doctor’s degree after successful defence of their thesis. Before the author is admitted into that defence, a committee of specialists assesses the content of his/her thesis. Theses usually furnish the reader with an extensive literature review and new results (obtained from research) on the subject. Therefore, they can be very valuable sources of information.

Encyclopaedias

Encyclopaedias can be considered as a descriptive and educational dictionaries. Per entry descriptions are presented, mostly written by specialists. Occasionally some literature references are given along with those descriptions. There are roughly two kinds of encyclopaedias that need to be distinguished: general encyclopaedias (e.g. World Encyclopedia) and subject encyclopaedias as Encyclopedia of Adolescence. Encyclopaedias are often used in the exploration phase of the search process, when the problem statement and the search strategy are under discussion.

Most University Libraries offer entrance to online encyclopaedias. A free online encyclopaedia is Wikipedia. Everyone can contribute content and there is a limited form of quality control. The quality and depth of the items therefore varies considerably.

Patents

A patent is a right of ownership for a certain invention awarded by the government. This means that the invention may only be exploited by others after an arrangement has been made with the inventor, i.e. a licence agreement. This ownership is granted on the condition that the description of the invention in the patent is in the public domain. What kinds of inventions can be patented differs per country.
Use also classification codes when searching for patents. You can find Patents via the database Espacenet.

Exercise: Click here

Literature Databases

When you’re looking for reliable basic information on a specific field of study, you will usually find this in (electronic) books.
Detailed scientific information on a smaller subject within a field of study can be found in scholarly articles. You can find these articles in databases offered by the University Library, or through Google’s Scholarly search engine.

The specific databases have the advantage of being able to easily narrow your search results. So, from a huge number of results you will be able to quickly and properly select the best results.
Google has a ranking system, so you never know if the best results for your research will be displayed on the first few pages.

Patents (technical inventions that are or have been protected by law) can be found in the freely accessible database Espacenet.

All other types of information can of course be found online by using search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Dogpile or Duckduckgo.

Where to find databases?

Databases can be found via your Universities Library website: [LINK]

Exercise: Click here

Open Internet

Learning objectives: In this section you learn that different search engines get different results, and the term ‘Filter Bubble’ is explained.

After this section you will be able to:

- Understand why different search engines get different results.
- Recognize the occurrence of a ‘Filter Bubble’ and understand why this can be a problem when working as a scientist.

Exercise: Click here

Page ranking

The exact way of ranking the results is a secret operation which is different for each search engine. It is an important quality of a search engine: which results do appear on the first pages, are they indeed the results that you were looking for? Users mostly don’t browse past page 3.

Rule of thumb: a page will appear in the top of the list if the search words appear multiple times and on prominent places. The quality of the links in a page and the quality of links to that page are also important triggers for high ranking.

Earlier we saw that in the free scientific search engine Google Scholar the number of citations plays a prominent role in the ranking of the default version. So you see an overrepresentation of older books and articles of famous authors in the top of the result list, being cited more often.

Be aware of the 'filter bubble'

Internet services in general, including search engines, try to personalize their results. For instance Google stores all searches of their individual users, logged in or via IP-address. The ranking mechanism is adapted to a user after each search and, more importantly, the results that a user clicked on. So if you search on jaguar and Google knows from your search history that you are a car enthusiast, you’ll get different results than someone else who searched for all kind of animals before.

The danger of this personalization is that you get into an information filter bubble, only seeing the information that you are used to. You don’t find the needle in the haystack anymore. See an interesting speech (first 4 ½ minutes) of the famous ‘inventor’ of the internet ‘filter bubble’ Eli Pariser below.

If you are in a filter bubble (who is not, in some way?) you don’t have a bright and colorful view on your environment. Countries like North Korea apply strong filter bubbles around their citizens.

For easy web searches in daily life a light filter bubble can be comfortable, but for scientific work it should be strongly condemned. Scientific databases like Scopus or Web of Science via the University Library do not cause filter bubbles. Also the free internet search engine DuckDuckGo does not store your search history for personalization.

Excercise: Click here

The end of section Where to search?

Here ends the section Where to search?.

In this section you learned what types of scientific information there are and where to find them. You also learned about search engines like Google and to be aware of the 'filter bubble'.

Deciding in which databases you want to search for information is step two in the cycle of systematic searching. Go to one of the next sections to go deeper into the other steps in the search cycle.