Research Tools-part 1- by dr. nader ale ebrahim

Nader Ale Ebrahim, PhD
=====================================
www.researcherid.com/rid/C-2414-2009
http://scholar.google.com/citations
The Effective Use of
“Research Tools” and Resources – Part 1
Available online at:
http://files.figshare.com/1307347/MPWS_Research_Tools_Part_1__By_Nader_Ale_Ebrahim
http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.871475

Nader Ale Ebrahim
The Effective Use of “Research Tools” and Resources
©2013 By: Nader Ale Ebrahim
• Semināra
• Budapest Open Access Initiative

From: Open Scholar C.I.C. [mailto:info@openscholar.org.uk]
Sent: Friday, September 06, 2013 6:13 AM
To: Nader Ale Ebrahim
Subject: Re: Thanks - RE: Welcome to Open Scholar!
Dear Nader,
Thank you for your prompt response and for disseminating the LIBRE project. At the
moment we are very busy preparing the beta release in October. It will be great to
receive your early feedback once we start testing the platform.
By the way, I found your "research tools" mind map extremely useful. Amazing work
you did there. We will promote this work through twitter.
all best wishes,
Pandelis

Abstract
With the increasing use of information and communications technology (ICT),
researchers are able to use computer software tools to find, organize,
analyze, and share relevant information. However, there are hundreds of
such tools to select from, for various research-related uses. Nader has
collected over 700 tools that can help researchers do their work efficiently. It
is assembled as an interactive Web-based mind map, titled “Research
Tools”, which is updated periodically.
“Research Tools” consists of a hierarchical set of nodes. It has four main
nodes: (1) Searching the literature, (2) Writing a paper, (3) Targeting
suitable journals, and (4) Enhancing visibility and impact of the research.
Several free tools can be found in the child nodes. In this seminar some
tools and their application in research will be described. The e-skills learned
from the seminar are useful across various research disciplines and
research institutions.

Problem statements
The search can be time consuming and sometimes tedious task. How
can make it easier? How do deal with situations such as:
– “I just join as a new postgraduate student and I am not sure how to do a
literature search”
– “I have been in research for some time now but I spend a lot of time to get the
articles I want”
– “I am sure I have downloaded the article but I am not able to find it”
– “I wanted to write a new paper, how can I manage the references in the shortest
possible time?”
– “I have many references, some of my old papers, and some of my current
research. Sometimes, they are so many that I can’t recall where I have kept
them in my folders!”
– ……..
– “I have written an article and I am not able to find a proper Journal”
– "I want to increase the citation of my papers, how do I do?"

Objectives
The seminar seeks to serve the following
objectives:
i. To help students who seek to reduce the search time by
expanding the knowledge of researchers to more effectively use
the "tools" that are available through the Net.
ii. To evaluate the types of literature that researchers will
encounter.
iii. To convert the information of the search for a written document.
iv. To help researchers learn how to search and analyze the right
journal to submit.
v. To promote their publication for further citation.

Outline
1. Introduce “Research Tools” Mind Map
2. Developing a search strategy
3. Finding keyword
4. Finding proper articles
5. Evaluate a paper/journal quality (The impact factor-
Journal ranking)
6. To do an effective literature search
7. Keeping up-to-date (Alert system)
8. Mind mapping tools
9. Indexing desktop search tool
10.Q&A

Research Tools Mind Map

Developing a search strategy,
Finding keyword

» Developing a search strategy
» Searching the library catalogue
» Finding journal articles and papers
» Searching the Internet
» Other sources
Source: http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/myresearch/plan/searchstrategy.html
Effective searching

Developing a search strategy
• » Defining the topic
» Considering the scope of your topic
» Identifying the main or important aspects
» Compiling a list of keywords
» Developing your search strategy
• It is important to develop a search strategy
to, not only, find the information you need
but to also clarify your topic.

How to Find and Develop a Viable
Research Topic?
Step One: Identify a Topic.
Step Two: Test Your Topic.
Test the main concepts or keywords in your
topic by looking them up in the appropriate
background sources or by using them as
search terms.
If you are finding too much information and too
many sources, narrow your topic by using
the and operator
Finding too little information may indicate that you
need to broaden your topic.

Keywords
Selecting keywords lead to get more
citation.
©2014 Nader Ale Ebrahim
MeSH (Medical Subject Headings)

Master Keywords List
An Introduction to The Effective Use of “Research Tools
Box” and Resources ©2013 By: Nader Ale Ebrahim

Google AdWords - Keyword Planner

Google AdWords – Keyword Like

Google AdWords - Keyword Output

Keywords Plus
• KeyWords Plus® are index terms created
by Thomson Reuters from significant,
frequently occurring words in the titles of
an article's cited references.
Source: http://images.webofknowledge.com/WOK46/help/WOS/h_fullrec.html

Keywords and Keywords Plus®
Authors sometimes provide a list of keywords or terms that they feel best
represent the content of their paper. These keywords are contained in the ISI
record (1991 data forward, depending on the database) for each article and are
searchable. In addition, ISI generates KeyWords Plus for many articles.
KeyWords Plus are words or phrases that frequently appear in the titles of an
article's references, but do not necessarily appear in the title of the article itself.
KeyWords Plus may be present for articles that have no author keywords, or
may include important terms not listed among the title, abstract, or author
keywords.
Source: http://wos.isitrial.com/help/helpdefs.html

KeyWords Plus- Example
• New Product Development in Virtual
Environment (ISI Indexed)
• Author Keywords: New product Development;
Virtual teams; Concurrent Collaboration; Review
paper
• KeyWords Plus: DEVELOPMENT TEAMS;
PERFORMANCE; TECHNOLOGY;
KNOWLEDGE; COMMUNICATION;
PERSPECTIVE; INTEGRATION; INNOVATION;
NETWORK; WORKING

1- Initial Appraisal:
Author
Date of Publication
Edition or Revision
Publisher
Title of Journal (Distinguishing Scholarly Journals from other Periodicals)
2- Content Analysis:
Intended Audience
Objective Reasoning
Coverage
Writing Style
Evaluative Reviews
Critically Analyzing Information Sources

h-index (Jorge E. Hirsch)
• A scientist has index h if h of [his/her]
Np papers have at least h citations each,
and the other (Np − h) papers have at most
h citations each.
H-index from a plot of decreasing citations for numbered papers

Source: http://guides.is.uwa.edu.au/content.php?pid=372347&sid=3050052
A scientist has index h if h of his/her Np papers have at least
h citations each, and the other (Np-h) papers have no more than
h citations each.

Source: Rousseau, Ronald. "New developments related to the Hirsch index." (2006).

Publish or Perish
Publish or Perish is a free program that retrieves citations
from Google Scholar and allows users to calculate:
• Total number of papers
• Total number of citations
• Average number of citations per paper
• Average number of citations per author
• Average number of papers per author
• Average number of citations per year
• Hirsch's h-index and related parameters
• The contemporary h-index
• The age-weighted citation rate
• Two variations of individual h-indices
• An analysis of the number of authors per paper
Source: http://guides.library.vu.edu.au/content.php?pid=251876&sid=2079929

Source: Making Research Count: Analyzing Canadian Academic Publishing Cultures

Web of Science
• Web of Science® is perhaps the most well-
known tool for determining the number of
times a publication has been cited.
• Web of Science® is made up of three citation
indexes owned by Thomson Scientific:
– Science Citation Index ®
– Social Sciences Citation Index ®
– Arts & Humanities Citation Index ®.

Evaluate a paper/journal quality
&
Do an effective literature search

Paper/journal quality
• Another guide to paper/journal quality is
the general reputation of the association,
society, or organization publishing the
journal.
• Leading professional associations such as
American Psychological Association (APA)
or the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE) publish a range of
journals that are highly regarded.

Web application to calculate the
single publication h index
Source: http://labs.dbs.uni-leipzig.de/gsh/
The single publication h index has been introduced by Schubert (2009) as the h-
index calculated from the list of citing publications of one single publication.

How to do an Effective
Literature Search?
Application Training Module Series I
by Customer Education Team
ts.training.asia@thomson.com
Stop Searching, Start Discovering
For More Info.

The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)
• The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was founded by Eugene
Garfield in 1960. It was acquired by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare in
1992, became known as Thomson ISI and now is part of the Healthcare &
Science business of the multi-billion dollar Thomson Reuters Corporation.
• ISI offered bibliographic database services. Its speciality: citation indexing
and analysis, a field pioneered by Garfield. It maintains citation databases
covering thousands of academic journals, including a continuation of its long
time print-based indexing service the Science Citation Index (SCI), as well
as the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and the Arts and Humanities
Citation Index (AHCI). All of these are available via ISI's Web of Knowledge
database service.

Science Citation
Index
Arts &
Humanities
Citation Index
WOK 4.0
Social
Sciences
Citation
Index
ISI Web of
Knowledge
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2007 2008
SciSearch
Century of
Science TS Innovation
Essential
Science
Indicators
PC-based Indicators
for journals, nations,
institutions
PC-based citation sets
Custom citation projects
and national indicators -
mainframe
Thomson Reuters (formerly ISI) has been the
authority on citation data for over 50 years.
The Effective Use of
“Research Tools” and
Resources ©2013 By:

Eugene Garfield, Ph.D.
Founder & Chairman Emeritus
Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)
For more Info

The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)
• The ISI also publishes annual Journal Citation Reports which list an impact
factor for each of the journals that it tracks. Within the scientific community,
journal impact factors play a large but controversial role in determining the
kudos attached to a scientist's published research record.

Impact Factor
• The most commonly used measure of
journal quality is Impact Factor. This is a
number which attempts to measure the
impact of a journal in terms of its influence
on the academic community. Impact
Factors are published by Thomson-ISI

Source: How to Write Great Papers From title to references From submission to acceptance (2012) By: Anthony Newman, Publisher, Elsevier, Amsterdam

Impact Factor-Journal Ranking
• Relative impact factors are often a better guide to the
importance of a journal than raw numbers. JCR allows you to
compare the impact factors of different journals in the same
subject area
• The Economic History Review has an impact factor of 1.051.
At first glance, it would appear that this journal is relatively
unimportant. In fact, it is arguably the premier English-
language journal in its field (its major competitor, the Journal
of Economic History Review, has an even lower impact factor:
a mere 0.529!). Far more illuminating is the journal's relatively
high impact factor compared to other journals in the history of
the social sciences. Economic History Review ranks first out
of 15 journals in the Thomson-ISI's list of journals in this sub-
discipline.

What are journal impact factors?
Impact factors are a measure of the "quality" of a journal - they identify
the most frequently cited journals in a field.
Impact factors can be used to:
identify journals in which to publish
identify journals relevant to your research
confirm the status of journals in which you have published
The Impact factor formula
The impact factor of a journal is based on the average number of times
that articles published in that journal in the two previous years (e.g.
2008 and 2009) were cited in the subsequent year (i.e. 2010). This is
calculated using the following formula:
= Cites in 2010 to items published in 2008 and 2009
Number of items published in 2008 and 2009
If an impact factor is lower than 1.0 that means there were more articles
published in the journal than there were cites to those articles in any
given year.

Be aware that...
• Many journals do not have an impact
factor (sources other than JCR need to be
consulted).
• The impact factor cannot assess the
quality of individual articles.
• Only research articles, technical notes and
reviews are “citable” items. Editorials,
letters, news items and meeting abstracts
are “non-citable items”.

Cites in 2008 to
items published in:
2007 = 144
Number of items
published in:
2007 = 278
2006 = 280 2006 = 270
Sum: 424 Sum: 548
Calculation: Cites to recent items 424 = 0.774
Number of recent items 548
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH
Impact Factor in 2008

Impact
Factor

Total Cites

Keeping up-to-date (Alert system)

Keeping up-to-date
Alert services are an effective
means of keeping track of the
latest research.

What is an alert service?
• Many journal databases and book publishers offer free alert
services. These are an effective means of keeping track of the
latest research.
• Alert services come in different forms. The most common
include:
– a search alert. This is a saved search which alerts you when a
book or article that matches your search terms is published.
– a TOC (Table of Contents) alert. Such an alert notifies you when
a new issue of a journal is published, and provides you with the
issue's table of contents.
– a citation alert. This advises you when a new article cites a
particular work.
– Most alert services are email-based. An increasing number are
now offered as an RSS feed. If you are just beginning, you might
like to try email alerts first. These are generally easier to create.

Why subscribe to an alert service?
There is often a time delay between the point when a new article
is published in a journal and it is indexed by one of the
database services. Alert services will automatically keep you
informed of new journal issues and articles on your topic or
research interest when new relevant material is made
available. Many of the large online research databases
provide an automated alerting service.
Before using any current awareness services you should review
the literature to establish a clear awareness of the topic that
you would like to be kept up-to-date with on a regular basis. In
this way you will increase the relevancy of the alerts you
receive to your area of research. You can receive automated
updates of newly published journal articles via email alert or
via RSS Feed.
Source: http://www.library.nuigalway.ie/support/supportforresearchers/literaturereview/keepingup-to-date/The Effective Use of “Research Tools” and Resources

Keeping up-to-date
Create a Google Alert
• Enter the topic you wish to monitor.
• Search terms:
• Type:
• How often:
• Email length:
• Your email:

Keeping up-to-date
Scopus Citation TrackerThe Effective Use of “Research Tools” and Resources

Conference Alerts
AllConferencealerts.com - Conference call for research papers
IEEE Conference AlertsThe Effective Use of “Research Tools” and Resources

Mind
Map Relationships
Between
Concepts
Ideas
Information
Source: Mind Map Tools, By:Seyyed Ali Fattahi Computer PhD Candidate FTSM UKM

Mind Map Tools
Source: Mind Map Tools, By:Seyyed Ali Fattahi Computer PhD Candidate FTSM UKM

Example: MinDomo

dtSearch
Google Desktop
Windows Search

Search Request: Questionnaire design
Total files: 259
Total hits: 1,852
Front_Cover.PDF
Hits: 8
Location: D:NaderUMUMUseful articlesOther InformationDoctorate
SGMethodsFront_Cover.PDF
Size: 242,702 Last modified: 7/9/2012
[Page 1 Paragraph 27]
a standard form on which facts, comments
and attitudes can be recorded, and facilitate data processing.
This new edition of Questionnaire Design explains the role of
questionnaires in market research,
and looks at different types of questionnaire and when and how they

Thank you!
Nader Ale Ebrahim, PhD
=====================================
www.researcherid.com/rid/C-2414-2009
http://scholar.google.com/citations

References
1. Aghaei Chadegani, Arezoo, Salehi, Hadi, Yunus, Melor Md, Farhadi, Hadi, Fooladi, Masood, Farhadi, Maryam
and Ale Ebrahim, Nader, A Comparison between Two Main Academic Literature Collections: Web of Science
and Scopus Databases (April 7, 2013). Asian Social Science, Vol. 9, No. 5, pp. 18-26, April 27, 2013. Available
at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2257540
2. Ale Ebrahim, N. (2013). The effective use of research tools and resources. [Presentation material]. Retrieved
from http://works.bepress.com/aleebrahim/73/
3. Ale Ebrahim, N. (2014). Citation Frequency and Ethical Issue. Electronic Physician, 6(2), 814-815. doi:
10.6084/m9.figshare.1027327
4. Egghe, L. (2006). Theory and practice of the g-index. Scientometrics. 69, 131-152.
5. Ale Ebrahim, Nader, Introduction to the Research Tools Mind Map (June 14, 2013). Research World, Vol. 10,
No. 4, pp. 1-3,. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2280007
6. Farhadi, Hadi, Salehi, Hadi, Yunus, Melor Md, Aghaei Chadegani, Arezoo, Farhadi, Maryam, Fooladi, Masood
and Ale Ebrahim, Nader, Does it Matter Which Citation Tool is Used to Compare the H-Index of a Group of
Highly Cited Researchers? (March 27, 2013). Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, Vol. 7, No. 4,
pp. 198-202, March 2013 . Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2259614
7. Fooladi, Masood, Salehi, Hadi, Yunus, Melor Md, Farhadi, Maryam, Aghaei Chadegani, Arezoo, Farhadi, Hadi
and Ale Ebrahim, Nader, Does Criticisms Overcome the Praises of Journal Impact Factor? (April 27, 2013).
Asian Social Science, Vol. 9, No. 5, pp. 176-182, April 2013.. Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2257552
8. Gasparyan, A. Y. (2013). Choosing the target journal: do authors need a comprehensive approach?. Journal of
Korean medical science, 28(8), 1117-1119.
9. N. Ale Ebrahim, H. Salehi, M. A. Embi, F. Habibi Tanha, H. Gholizadeh, S. M. Motahar, et al., "Effective
Strategies for Increasing Citation Frequency," International Education Studies, vol. 6, pp. 93-99, October 23
2013. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2344585

Research Tools-part 1- by dr. nader ale ebrahim

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