Review of Literature

Review of Literature

You cannot propose a scientific project unless you have a good idea of what has been done already

Literature Survey

What are the most important things about a literature survey?

Literature Survey

Literature survey should be a good, logical story.....

Literature Survey

.......which should provide a firm basis to increase knowledge and/or improve applicability of a system.

Literature Survey
Must be up to date
Must show that you are familiar with the previous advances in the proposed field of research and that you are going to build on those achievements You have to stand on the shoulders of previous researchers and look further than anyone else has before

Literature Survey

Should focus on the problem in a local and global context

Need to know what has been done

in other countries which is relevant and helpful for your project

DO NOT JUST QUOTE LOCAL LITERATURE!!

Literature Survey

So, your literature survey provides the backdrop for your research project what is known already. You emphasise the gaps and how your research will take the subject forward

Literature Survey

General hints for online searches

Literature Survey

General hints for searches

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Spelling (e.g. Behaviour, behavior) Phrase searching (sustainable development) Boolean searching:

Literature Survey

AND (retrieves records in which both of the search items are present)
OR (retrieves records which contain either of the search items) NOT (excludes records which contain the keywords you specify)

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Truncation
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Agricultur* (will retrieve documents that contain e.g. Agriculture, agricultural etc) *ethylene Wom*n (will retrieve documents that contain the words woman and women)

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OPACs Online catalogue of publications in a (university) library.

Union catalogues cover all universities in a given country e.g.Libris (Sweden), COPAC (UK). Many have links to libraries in other parts of the world, including Africa, South America

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HINARI: 3,400 journals. Managed by WHO. 90 publishers contribute. Medicine, health, social sciences.
Focus is on health.

www.who.int/hinari

Databases

OARE: UNEP with University of Yale. Over 1000 titles many environmental, geographical themes.

www.oaresciences.org

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AGORA: FAO with University of Cornell. 1000 titles in agriculture, fisheries, food, veterinary sciences etc.
www.aginternetwork.org

Databases

Who is eligible to access these databases? HINARI/OARE/AGORA

Databases

Who is eligible to access these databases? HINARI/OARE/AGORA

Certain countries are eligible for free service. Eligible institutions include universities, res. Inst., local NGOs

Databases

PubMed Free Access to full texts for some references. Mostly titles and abstracts

Databases

OPEN J-Gate 7566 journals (open access)

World's biggest Open Access English Language ...

DOAJ 2355 journals Directory of Open access journals (Univ. Lund)

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HighWire (Stanford Univ.): large archive full of free text articles. Tells you which journals have an embargo period then journal is free access.

Earth's Largest Free Full-Text Science Archives

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AJOL 320 journals

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INASP Peri (Programme for enhancement of research information)

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Google Scholar

Free, accessible to anyone, quite good

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Scielo

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CABI subscription required (except in Madagascar, Mozambique and Zimbabwe).

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www.sciencedirect.com

Newsletters

www.scidev.net

Databases
www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

www.philpapers.org
www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse www.eric.ed.gov

www.oclc.org/oaister
www.agricola.nal.usda.gov

Databases
www.citebase.org www.base-search.net/about/en/ www.philjol.info/philjol/index.php www.repec.org