COMPUTER TOOL FOR A RESEARCHER Burairah Hussin

SYNOPSIS This module will equip researchers with information on computer applications that enable them to capture related skills for their daily tasks. It consists of basic fundamental knowledge for a researcher such as Information Literacy, Networking, Communication and Disseminating result. This module demonstrates few software applications for a researcher to be familiar with. It is hope that this will help the researcher to do research in an efficient and in timely manner. Learning Outcomes: At the end of this unit, students will be able to: i. Equip them with fundamental knowledge being a researcher. ii. Equip them with sufficient ICT applications for their daily task iii. Link theoretical knowledge with computer tools to assist researchers to do research.

Information Literacy Before we plan for a new research, findings ideas and related literatures are very crucial activities. Thus a skill for finding good research materials is a must for a researcher. Generally, research materials can be found in
University Library (Collections or Subscriptions) Research Centres Publisher (Proceedings, Journal, Books) Digital repositories (e-prints, e-books, etc.)

The later is the biggest contributor as the advancement of Web 2.0 enables research communities to share the works with others. They are too many information nowadays at internet. It is a challenge for us to select the relevant information. Hence the skills on how to use the search engine are crucial and important to researcher. One need to understand how it works will all functions provided by this search engines. We could find such data in various formats for research materials. The format include
Web pages Journal Articles (free access and subscribe) Academic work ( projects, dissertations, thesis) e-Books bibliographic reference

Example 1.0

The retrieved documents in the search engine results page may be:
Free (web pages, open access peer review journal articles, etc.) Free if you are in the campus or connected to the campus network (articles of the peer review journal that are subscribed by your University) Not free: by payment because the journal is not subscribed by your university (articles of the peer review subscription-based journal) References only (not the document: you have to find out the full text document by other ways)

We could found similar document if we use the electronic databases provided by our institution. Example 2

The main challenge to find the relevant information is knows where to start with. Here the list of sites may help researcher. Typical searching engines used for finding research materials Google Scholar (Google) (free) scholar.google.com Scirus (Elsevier) (free) www.scirus.com Academic (Microsoft) (free) http://academic.research.microsoft.com Network Digital Library for Thesis and Dissertation (free) http://www.ndltd.org/serviceproviders/scirus-etd-search

 Mendeley (free) http://www.mendeley.com Scopus (subscribe) http://www.scopus.com DOAJ (free) http://www.doaj.org/ Electronic Database(Subscribe by Institution) http://library.utem.edu.my University of Cornell (free) http://www.arxiv.org The main idea is how the researcher does a search for finding good research material. In order to do that you need to:
Know what youre looking for Choose the best searching engine mentioned above Know how to use the searching engine

Such skills needed when using a searching engine are is

i. Narrowing your search - How to focus when you get too many results Use Advanced Search Searching: Abstract Title Subject Phrase Searching (with quotes) Using and

ii. Expanding your search - What to do when your search comes up empty You might be using too many search limits (e.g. date, title, type of study). Truncation e.g. build* = build, building, buildings Using or with parentheses ( )

Hands-On: For the practical session, we will use Google scholar **Tips We could download multiple documents from a page, just with one click. If you use Mozilla browser, download the Plug-in named DownThemAll and install to your Mozilla browser. It will enable you to select all files and download it to your place with only one click.

Managing research materials Research materials as mentioned above need to be managed properly. Previously with conventional way of filing system it is an extra burden for a researcher to do that. This is because
Our research material contains huge informations. We need to syntheses all the information as a reference. We need to cite those research materials while writing the academic publications

Example 3 How many research materials to be read?

Level Graduate on Time Time to complete literatures Average materials read/week Expected materials to read Expected material to read within first 6 months/week Doctor of Philosophy 42 months (3 years 6 months) 6 months 1 42x4 =168 168/(6x4) = 7 materials/week Master Degree 24 months (2 years) 6 months 1 96 96/(6x4) = 4 materials/week

** This is the minimum expectation from a candidate. Thus, you need to manage your research materials. Of course we can use the conventional filling system however, using reference management software saves time, effort and most importantly it helps during the writing stage. Common tools for managing your research
Mendeley (free) www.mendeley.com Endnote (commercial) www.endnote.com Microsoft (commercial) Microsoft word

Product Comparison

Hands-On: For the practical session, we will use Mendeley **Tips Measuring good journals Before we publish our papers, we need to choose the best journals or proceedings as possible. Choosing a good journal increases the chance for our paper to be read and referred as many researchers usually refer to the top journals or proceedings. There are many indicators of good journal have been developed in recent years. It has been found that all of these indicators are correlate closely with each other. In other words, journal rankings based on these indicators tend to be similar, though there may be differences in the absolute journal rankings. So researchers should feel free to use any one of the following indicators: 1. Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) Data source: Scopus Can be found at: http://www.scimagojr.com (free) How its calculated: Citations from prestigious journals are given more weight

than citations from lower-tier journals (similar to Googles PageRank algorithm). SJR for 2010 is calculated by counting 2010 citations to papers published in 2007, 2008, and 2009 (three-year period). Why its useful: SJR indicates which journals are more likely to have articles cited by prestigious journals, not simply which journals are cited the most. 2. Journal Impact Factor (JIF) Data source: ISI Web of Science Can be found in: http://thomsonreuters.com Journal Citation Reports (subscription required) How its calculated: All citations are given equal weight. The IF is calculated over a two-year period. Why its useful: It is the traditional and most widely accepted measure of journal prestige. Most people in the academic world know about and use the JIF. 3. Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) Data source: Scopus Can be found at: http://www.journalindicators.com/ (free) How its calculated: SNIP is computed so that citations are normalized by field. Thus, it eliminates variations found in JIF wherein the IFs are high in certain fields and low in others. They calculate several other metrics as well, like citation potential in the journals subject field. Why its useful: SNIP is a much more reliable indicator than the JIF for comparing journals among disciplines. It is also less open to manipulation by journals. 4. Eigenfactor score (ES) and Article Influence Score (AIS) Data source: ISI Web of Science Can be found at: http://www.eigenfactor.org/ (free) How its calculated: ES is similar to SJR; it also gives greater weight to citations from prestigious journals. ES is calculated over a 5-year period. Like SNIP, it also normalizes citations by field. Finally, it tries to mathematically model the time that a researcher spends with each journal. The AIS is similar to the IF, except the AIS is calculated using the ES, making it a more robust calculation than the IF. Why its useful: The evidence indicates that ES and AIS are more robust indicators of journal prestige and influence than the IF. Hands-On: For the practical session, we will use Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) and Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP)

Findings Good Conferences Conference ranking by the Australian CORE (Computing Research and Education) http://core.edu.au/index.php/categories/conference%20rankings IEEE Conference Calendar http://www.computer.org/portal/web/conferences/home ACM Conference Calendar http://www.acm.org/conferences Microsoft Academic Search http://academic.research.microsoft.com Hands-On: For the practical session, we will use Microsoft Academic Search and ACM Conference Calendar **Tips: Careful with the SCAM conferences

Managing your profile In academic word, let others decided what have you done. How many papers being cited by other is an indicator that your work is referred. In order to monitor your progress in academic or to check where you are in academic we could use such applications. It is a transparent way of checking works by other researchers for project or paper collaborations. The tools are Google Scholar
http://scholar.google.com (free)

Publish or perish Download this software from http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm and Download and install Publish or Perish in your computer (free) Academic Research free http://academic.research.microsoft.com/ Scopus subscribe http://www.scopus.com

Hands-On: For the practical session, we will use Google scholar and Microsoft Academic Search **Tips:

Academic Writings Using right computer software is important in academic writings. Researcher may use any applications such as Latex and Microsoft Word for their writings. Many of us are using Microsoft Word, however, we are not using the software capabilities in order to help us producing fast and neat outcome. Each of the function in Microsoft Word helps us a lot. This include
Document Maps Formatting Managing References

We need to have good skills while using this software as academic documents can be in many types such as Thesis Journal Proceedings

Each of this type had its own format.

Hands-On: For the practical session, we will use Microsoft Word and Mendeley

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Plagiarism check Plagiarism is a big sin in academic world. It is unethical to copy others work as our work. May be it is not our intention of doing that or because of bad references and etc. Thus to minimized the possibility of plagiarism we can use these tools to check any similarity with existed materials.
DOC Cop www.doccop.com/ (free)

Plagium http://www.plagium.com/ (free)

Turnitin www.turnitin.com (subscribe)

Viper (download this software and install) www.scanmyessay.com (free)

Tools for save and locate your files In order to ensure that our files in secure and able to open anywhere, we may save it using Internet accessible application such as Dropbox. Dropbox is a free service that lets us bring our documents anywhere and share them easily. You may download it:
Dropbox (download this software and install) www.dropbox.com (free)

Next, we also need to do backup or synchronize all our references and documents in order to keep our files in secure. You may backup it as many as you want using simple instruction with SyncBack application.
SyncBack (download this software and install) http://download.cnet.com/SyncBack-Freeware/3000-2242_410413802.html (free)

Tools for English grammar checker We can check our English grammer using:
WhiteSmoke (download this software and install) www.whitesmoke.com (free)

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Post-publication After we had published our publication, there is a need to monitor the progress. Tools for post publication Google Scholar
http://scholar.google.com (free)

Publish or perish Download this software from http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm and Download and install Publish or Perish in your computer (free) Academic Research (free) http://academic.research.microsoft.com/ Scopus (subscribe) http://www.scopus.com

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Tools to get connected online

ResearchGate ResearchID

WARNING No method is perfect Dont get hung up on methodological purity Pick something and get on with it

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Some knowledge is better than none

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