Author AID Workshop on Research Writing Ethiopia November

Author. AID Workshop on Research Writing Ethiopia November 2011 1

Effective Use of Electronic Information Resources Accessible to Ethiopian Scientists Teklemichael Wordofa Addis Ababa University Libraries, Ethiopia teferat@gmail. com 2

What are E-resources? • An electronic resource (e-resource) is an electronic information resource (bibliographic or full-text) that you can access through the Internet. It includes electronic journals, databases and electronic books, websites, subject gateways, etc. 3

Advantages of E-resources • Currency and timeliness of the information • Ability to do full text searching across a huge number of resources in one go • Provision of time-saving features • Ability to download, print, or send the desired document instantly • Convenience of accessing articles any time from your computer • Ability to link directly to additional information 4

Arrangement and Licensing • INASP and the Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (PERII) - Supports research sector capacity building by strengthening the production, access and dissemination of information and knowledge • Country coordinators, research community and INASP identify resource requirements • INASP negotiates access to resources • Cost of resources is related to the GDP of the country (98% discounts!) 5

Access Model • The resources are available on a country-wide licence basis for: – Academic & Research Institutions – Other non-profit Organizations • Institution within the country needs to register itself – CC assist the process 6

Major Resources List - 1 • African Journals On. Line (AJOL) : TOCs, abstracts & fulltext from over 400 African journals • American Chemical Society(ACS) : provides over 35 high quality, high impact journals in the chemical and related sciences. • American Institute of Physics (AIP) : AIP publishes over 15 journals, magazines and conference proceedings series. • American Physical Society (APS) : provide access to the Physical Review Online Archive (PROLA) and journals produced by APS. • American Society of Civil Engineers : ASCE Journals Online provides unprecedented access to 32 journals. • British Library Document Supply Centre : Online document delivery from over 20, 000 journals and other documents • Cambridge University Press : provides over 230 leading titles in Linguistics, Politics, Medicine, Science, Technology, Social Science and Humanities. 7

Major Resources List - 2 • EBSCO Host Research Databases : Over 11, 000 full text, peerreviewed journals and over 15, 000 abstracted and indexed titles. • Emerald Group Publishing Ltd : Emerald features over 150 Business a, Management Engineering journals. • IOP Publishing : IOPscience provides over 60 of the world's most prestigious journals in physics and related sciences. • JSTOR : is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping the scholarly community discover, use, and build upon a wide range of intellectual content in a trusted digital archive. • Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. : Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. delivers electronic access to peer-reviewed journals in areas of biotechnology, biomedical research/life sciences, clinical medicine and surgery, and law. • Publishing Group (NPG) : publishes journals and online databases across the life, physical and applied sciences and, most recently, clinical medicine 8

Major Resources List - 3 • OECD : is the world's largest think-tank, renowned for its authoritative, internationally comparable statistics, analysis, and outlooks in Economics, Public Policy, Social Sciences and Environmental issues. • Oxford Journals (OUP) : Oxford Journals provides over 200 journals from science, technical, professional, medical, humanities, arts and social science disciplines. • Project MUSE : Project MUSE provides online access to almost 500 full-text journals from 140 non-profit publishers in the humanities and social sciences. • Taylor & Francis Online Journals : More than 1, 300 titles in humanities, social sciences and applied sciences. • University of Chicago Press : UCP provides access to nearly 50 scholarly journals in the fields of social sciences, humanities, education, and biological and physical sciences. 9

Major Resources List - 4 • Wiley Online Library : Wiley, a leading international resource for scientific, technical, medical and scholarly content providing access to over 1000 leading journals. • World Bank E-Library - provides access to the following databases: – – World Development Indicators (WDI) Online Database World Bank – Global Economic Monitor World Bank Global Development Finance (GDF) Database World Bank: Africa Development Indicators • AAU ETD : http: //etd. aau. edu. et/Dspace Full List of the resources is available at: http: //www. inasp. info/peri/resources. html www. aau. edu. et/index. php/library-e-resources 10

Characteristics of the EResources • Posses basic common functionality – Searchable, browseable – Simple/Advanced search features – Provision of information updates: • Alerts (TOC, Keyword) by email • Personal work spaces 11

Characteristics (continued) • Different user interfaces – worth spending some time with system familiarisation prior to information seeking • Requires Effective Search Strategy and Technique as Key to effective Use of the Resources 12

Effective Search Strategy Planning • • • Define your information need Decide which sources to use Find out how they function Run your search Review and refine your search 13

Define Your Information Need • What sort of information are you looking for? – Specific information, e. g. a fact or date • Reference source, e. g. data book, encyclopaedia, dictionary, the Web or even a textbook are usually best. – General information, e. g. research areas • May require more thought, including how much information is needed and at what depth 14

Define Your Information Need (continued) Careful choice of search term(s) is vital • What key words do you think will appear on the site/article you want? • What key concepts is it a part of or related to? • Are there any synonyms for these keywords or concepts? • Are there any alternative spellings for your keywords/concepts • Are plurals or capitalisation involved? 15

Define Your Information Need cont… Example: I want to find information about the health implications of water pollution Keywords–’water’ ‘pollution’ ‘health’ Concepts–‘environmental degradation’ or ‘agricultural management’ or ‘health’ Synonyms • rivers, lakes, sea, coastal, ‘domestic water’, etc • ‘oil spills’, chemical, biological, etc Alternative spellings: none Plurals: river(s), lake(s), disease(s) Capitals: maybe the name of a specific lake, disease, region 16

Decide Which Sources to Use What sources are appropriate for your information need? • • Individuals’ and organisations’ home pages Newspapers and magazines Subject gateways, databases, catalogues Journals— abstracts or full text Reference resources, e. g. , encyclopaedias, dictionaries Books Grey literature, e. g. government publications Print or electronic 17

Search Functions Electronic search tools may interpret your search terms using • Boolean operators • Phrase and proximity searching • Truncation or wildcard functions • Case sensitivity • Fields • Stop words • Relevance sorting 18

Boolean Searching • Uses commands (operators) such as: AND, OR, NOT • Different search tools may use different symbols AND + NOT – • Different search tools may use OR or AND as a default setting 19

Nuclear Radiation Query: I would like information on Nuclear or Radiation 20

Nuclear Radiation Query: I'm interested in the relationship between Nuclear and Radiation 21

Radiation Nuclear Query: I want information on Radiation, but I want to avoid seeing anything on Radiation caused due to Nuclear substances 22

Phrase and Proximity Searching • Using quotation marks allows you to search for an exact phrase, e. g. “Nuclear Medicine” • Using NEAR allows you to specify how close to each other the terms you are searching for should be 23

Truncation or Wildcard Searches • Truncation: place a symbol at the end of the word so you search for variant endings of that word – E. g. Pollut$ would look for Pollutant, Pollution, Polluting • Wildcards: place a symbol within a word to find variations on it – E. g. analy*e would find analyse or analyze • Different symbols— including $ * # ! : —are used by different search tools 24

Other variations in search tools • Case sensitivity: use of upper or lower case in search terms • Fields: searches in fields such as the title, URL or links • Stop words: searches may ignore common words such as ‘and’, ‘if’, ‘an’, ‘the’ • Relevance sorting: relevance is measured in different ways in different search tools • Brackets may be used to order the search, e. g. (Nuclear AND Application) NOT (Energy OR Power) 25

Run the search • Take the terms/keywords you have decided on • Find the sources you are going to search • Read the ‘Help’ page to find out how that particular source uses Boolean commands, wildcards, etc • Run the search 26

Review and Revise Your Search • Review and revise your search scope and strategy in light of the results obtained – Too many results – Too few results – Too basic/Advanced – Not in a language you understand • Try new sources of information • Evaluate the information to ensure it is relevant, accurate, of high enough quality, etc • Ensure you keep a complete record of the source of the information for citing later 27

Thank you