Literature Survey
11.12.2015
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Please note
Literature Survey is not Google
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Outline
1 Literature Survey: Why?
2 Sources of Literature
3 Strategies
4 Publishers
5 Writing it all up
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Outline
1 Literature Survey: Why?
2 Sources of Literature
3 Strategies
4 Publishers
5 Writing it all up
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Literature Survey: Why?
What approaches have others used?
What are the gaps?
What difference are you making?
Novelty in Familiarity and Familiarity in Novelty
Placing in Current Context
Avoiding duplication
Clarification of controversial results
State of the art: extend and build on the work of others.
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Literature survey in the context of thesis
Theses should be based on original research
Unintentional duplication is not acceptable
To gain knowledge of the background work
To establish context of your work
To question, point out anomalies / gaps
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Outline
1 Literature Survey: Why?
2 Sources of Literature
3 Strategies
4 Publishers
5 Writing it all up
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Sources of Literature
Open access
INDEST Arrangement
Your Library subscriptions
Peer sharing sources : ResearchGate, academia.edu
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Sources of Literature
Primary Sources
Periodicals
Research Reports
Conference Proceedings
Official Publications
Standards
Theses, Dissertations
To be published works
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Sources of Literature
Secondary Sources
Compilations
Reviews
Reference Books / Handbooks / Encyclopedia / Dictionaries
Textbooks / Monographs
Indexing and Abstracting services
Tertiary Sources
Directories, Year books, Bibliographies
Lists of secondary sources
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Some terminology
International Standard Book Number (ISBN)
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number: Online publication
Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) Catalogue : Books
Research Information Services (RIS) format: Bibiographic Information
BibTeX (.bib) format: Bibiographic Information
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Awareness
Journal Impact Factor
Citation Index
h-index
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Outline
1 Literature Survey: Why?
2 Sources of Literature
3 Strategies
4 Publishers
5 Writing it all up
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Strategies to search
Keyword search : systematic manual search
Backward chronological search : snowball or back reference method
Forward chronological search : citation based
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Systematic manual search
Abstracting databases
INSPEC and COMPENDEX (EngineeringVillage)
PubMed
MathSciNet
Chemical Abstract (CA) Service
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Backward chronological search
Back references
Identify the latest relevant paper in your area
Look up each of the references listed
Repeat to extend the tree backward
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Forward chronological search
Citations
Identify the citation classic in your area
Look up which all papers refer to it
Find out which of these are well cited
Repeat to extend the tree forward
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Citation Information
Websites
Thomson ISI / Web of Science (isiknowledge.com)
SciFinder (www.cas.org)
Scopus (www.scopus.com)
Scitation (scitation.aip.org)
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Outline
1 Literature Survey: Why?
2 Sources of Literature
3 Strategies
4 Publishers
5 Writing it all up
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Major Publishers
Elsevier
Springer
Taylor and Francis
Nature
Maney Publishing
APS, AIP, ACS, AIChE, TMS, ASM, ACM, IEEE, etc.,
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Online access
ScienceDirect
SpringerLink
InformaWorld
IngentaConnect
crossref.org
prola.aps.org etc.,
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Get others to work for you
Contents subscription
RSS feed subscription
Subscribe to mailing lists
Watch out SIG sites (eg., imechanica.org)
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Outline
1 Literature Survey: Why?
2 Sources of Literature
3 Strategies
4 Publishers
5 Writing it all up
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Thesis / Paper
Numerical / Chronological + Alphabetical
Be aware of style guides for each purpose
Use a reference manager
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Reference Managers
JabRef
EndNote
ReferenceManager
ProCite
Mendeley
Zotero
Comparison of reference management software on Wikipedia
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Acknowledgements
Prof. K. Ramamurthy
Colleagues and Students
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Thank you and all the best!
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