Reference
This is a page of resources that may (will) help you in your work for this and other courses. I will add to this over the course of the semester.
Reading science
Reading science is different than reading other forms of literature. The purpose of science writing is to communicate the results of empirical studies such that they can be used to support new science and future studies. Science is incremental. It builds on past work, allowing what we know, collectively, to grow and change over time.
The guides below will help you to read and evaluate science writing for the purposes of this class and other classes you will take.
Rapid reading, extraction of salient features, and note-taking for science articles
Differences in epistemology and approach
It's important to understand the limitations of our approaches to research. Often these limitations can be expressed through epistemology. It also helps to consider how our methods are related to our worldview. Our reading of research is also similarly affected. This guide helps to distinguish between qualitative and quantitative research. It also may help to understand the parallels between the two.
Guide to reading research - USC Evidence Based Decision Making
Thinking better
Cognitive bias cheat sheet: Because thinking is hard - Buster Benson
Literature review
The purpose of literature review is to understand the state-of-the-art and history of a given topic. Literature review can be variously applied depending on the need.
The following guides might help you in scoping and conducting your literature review.
This is probably the most succinct, straightforward, and complete guide I have come across:
How to... Write a Literature Review - Emerald Publishing
Concept matrices
Writing a Literature Review and Using a Synthesis Matrix - FIU
The following article is a particularly good resource for understanding and structuring literature review.
Memo and proposal writing
Related to literature review, another important aspect of your assignments will be to write a memo for the system/service proposal. This set of guides and tutorials by Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega may be helpful.
Literature Review - Raul Pacheco-Vega, PhD
The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) has a GREAT guide to writing memos. In the final days before you turn in your system/service proposal, you will want to look it over and perhaps follow the advice there for formulating your memo.In
Memos - Purdue Online Writing Lab
Be sure to also look over the Sample Memo, for cues about what yours should ideally look like.
Reference management
It is recommended that you become comfortable with using a reference manager in order to organize your readings and literature review.
Here is a list of reference managers. Please explore them and choose one that you think will work best for your workflow and toolchain.
- Paperpile Subscription-based ($2.99/month for academic use); browser-based: designed for Chrome and Google apps. Integrates with Google Docs for easily incorporating citations and reference lists into documents. Stores PDFs in Google Drive.
- Zotero Freemium (storage upgrade: $20/year 2GB, $60/year 6GB); cloud-/browser-based: client compatible with Linux, Mac, Windows. Plugins for Firefox, Chrome, Safari.
- Mendeley Freemium (storage upgrade: $4.99/month 5GB, $9.99/month 10GB); cloud-based: desktop client compatible with Linux, Mac, Windows, Android.
For a more comprehensive matrix comparing reference managers, check out this Wikipedia article:
Comparison of reference management software - Wikipedia
Database of readings
You can download the readings for this course in their current state as a BIB file. This file can be used to import the readings into your reference manager.
BIB database of readings for INLS500 [readings.bib]
Workflow and time management
Managing your workflow and time is difficult. No one knows this better than your instructor.
There are a huge number of techniques that can help you in managing your work and get you through grad school without being overwhelemed. I find Dr. Pacheco-Vega's guides and suggestions to be very helpful.
Organization and Time Management - Raul Pacheco-Vega, PhD
Writing style
The Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIS&T), the flagship journal for the field of information science, uses the style of the American Psychological Association (APA) as the basis for it's own style.
Given that, we will use the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th Edition (APA, 2009) in all of the writing for this class. It is important to understand this style in the immediate period, because some aspect of your grade will be related to the use of the style.
You can find guides about its use online.
APA Style - The Purdue Online Writing Lab
Epistemology of science writing
But writing style is about more than just where to put periods and commas in your reference list. There are epistemological reasons that underlie the development and use of a given writing style. The article below will help to give you a sense of what that means for our purposes (PDF available here).
Research tools
Since you will be conducting some original research for this class, there will be things that I or others in the class find helpful in this process. I will place links to them here.
Screen capture software
Here are a few links to different screencap software.Here
Windows
Mac
Free Mac screen recording tools - Hongkiat
How to video screen capture for free using a mac - thereallyupsetgamer (YouTube)