MMAN3000 – Professional Engineering and
Communication
Dr Mark Whitty
Research Skills
What is research?
“the systematic investigation into and study of materials
and sources in order to establish facts and reach new
conclusions.”
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How to do research?
Define a problem
Identify existing work
Examine the limitations of existing work
Propose a solution
Use the scientific method
Identify your contributions
Write up results and publish
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Types of literature
Various ways of getting your research ‘out there’
Primary – original research papers
Secondary – review articles in scientific journals, scholarly monographs
Tertiary – textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries (compiled from primary
and secondary sources)
Popular – news reports, videos, blog posts
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Types of literature
Original research papers
Original
Unbiased (?)
Accurate (?)
Complete
Should provide ALL the
information to determine the
validity of the work
Journals
Conference papers
Conference proceedings
Conference posters
Technical reports
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Types of literature
Other sources
Good places for background information or pointers to original research
Include author bias
May be incomplete or superficial
May be inaccurate, introduce or perpetuate errors of fact
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Anatomy of a publication
https://litreactor.com/columns/library-love-anatomy-of-the-book
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Anatomy of ‘papers’: research articles and review articles
Review article
Title
Authors
Dates
Contact details
Abstract
Introduction
Body of paper (structured)
Body of paper
Body of paper
Conclusions or summary
Acknowledgements
References or bibliography
Research article
Title
Authors
Dates
Contact details
Abstract
Introduction
Materials and methods
Results
Discussion
Conclusions or summary
Acknowledgements
References or bibliography
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Where to find information
Websites
Google Scholar, Scopus, Trove
www.library.unsw.edu.au
Search by people
Search by research groups
FOR codes
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How to find that elusive item
At UNSW
• www.library.unsw.edu.au has services for postgraduates and honours
students
• Interlibrary loans (ILL)
• Outreach librarians
• Purchase recommendations
Google Scholar  Settings  Library Links, search for ‘UNSW’ to save time
entering login details
External services
• Worldcat
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Verifying the veracity of information
Papers: Citations
Journals: Impact factors - Scimago. Journal Citation Reports, ERA rankings /
University High Quality Publications listing
People: H-index, example.
Word of mouth
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Citation
A way of formally listing the source of information
Many formats exist: APA, IEEE, …
Magnusson, M.; Vaskevicius, N.; Stoyanov, T.; Pathak, K.; Birk, A., "Beyond
points: Evaluating recent 3D scan-matching algorithms," in Robotics and
Automation (ICRA), 2015 IEEE International Conference on , vol., no.,
pp.3631-3637, 26-30 May 2015, doi: 10.1109/ICRA.2015.7139703.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
http://dx.doi.org/
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Reference Management
Many software tools are available
http://www.mendeley.com/
http://www.zotero.org/
http://www.bibtex.org/
http://endnote.com/
Papers (for Mac)
MS Word built in reference manager
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Reference Management
Be consistent in how you store papers and references
http://pinterest.com/
http://evernote.com/
https://getpocket.com/
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Annotated Bibliographies
https://student.unsw.edu.au/annotated-bibliography
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Where to get help
The Learning Centre at UNSW: http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/
Postgraduate students and staff: http://research.unsw.edu.au/
What do I do when I don’t understand the source?
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Check a textbook
Compare with other sources
Look for definitions of terms in the source itself
Use specialist dictionaries
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Exercise
Find:
1) A conference paper published in 2015 which contains a given term
2) Extract the full reference
3) How many papers have cited it
4) The year of the most recent reference it contains
5) The titles of two papers with similar keywords
6) The homepage of one of the authors
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