UGS 302: The Art of Science Communication / Osier

Advanced researchers write these articles for other advanced researchers in their own field. No matter how good you are at engineering, you will still get lost in a psychology article because you are not familiar with the terminology, methodology and accepted knowledge within that field.

But it is still so important that we engage with research in other fields because it helps us to see connections to other areas of study thereby enriching our own lines of inquiry and understanding how our own research has significance in other fields (and vice versa).

Google Scholar is a search engine that uses a proprietary algorithm to search across "scholarly" materials. There is no way to know for sure if the results are peer reviewed. There is no useful advanced search. I do not recommend using this as a discovery tool, but I do recommend using it to follow a scholarly conversation. In the below screenshot, I have circled the Cited By link - which allows you to see who has cited an article. This is a smart way of discovering where the conversation has gone since this article's publication. The number is a relative measure of an article's impact. You will also see a Web of Science link - this is a more accurate number for a citation count, but it probably doesn't matter to you.

• Look to the right of an article's record to see what related articles the database recommends
• Scroll down to the Details of an article:
  • If the authors have published anything else, it is likely dealing with similar subject matter
  • The subjects linked give you further paths to follow through the literature: other studies that use the same methodology, research the same topics...

1. Check to see if the authors supplied keywords - these are usually terms used by researchers in the field
2. Take a look at the Introduction:
   1. What studies have the authors engaged with?
   2. Do they mention any study as being especially significant, seminal or landmark?
   3. Are there studies with which they disagree or hold in contrast to theirs?
3. Take a look at the References (works cited, bibliography)