by Dr. T.S. Kumbar

Scholarly Information Sources in
Support of Research
T. S. Kumbar
Resource Centre
DA-IICT
24th July, 2009
ts_kumbar@daiict.ac.in
Outline
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Introduction
Types of Information Sources
Research Process & Literature Survey
Scholarly Information Sources ( subscribed & free)
 Bibliographical sources
 Books
 Articles
 Websites
 Theses & Dissertations
 Patents & Standards
 Technical Reports & Reference/Citation Style Resources
 Sources for Staying Current
Conclusion
Introduction
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Information explosion
Published in different forms
Web has revolutionized publishing
Knowing right source of information-a challenge
Understanding search techniques has become more
important
Retrieving pertinent information- an issue
Use of scholarly resources for teaching & research
Scholarly Resources
 authoritative, credible, accurate and objective.
 Peer reviewed and highly valued in academia and
research community
Types of Information Sources
In a information professional’s terminology, the
scholarly information sources are grouped in to,
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Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Tertiary Sources
Primary Sources
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Sources that include first publications of original research
findings, record of events, original thoughts, ideas etc.
 Journals & magazines
 Conference proceedings
 Dissertations/Theses
 Patents
 Standards
 Technical reports
 Working papers
 Research monographs
 Autobiographies
 Manuscripts
 Annual reports
 Correspondences
 Speeches
 Plan & policy documents, etc.
Secondary Sources
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Sources that digest, analyze, evaluate, interpret & present
information in organized manner contained in primary
sources
 Indexing, abstracting and bibliographic databases
 Citation databases
 Review db, e.g. Annual Reviews, Advances, Surveys
 Bibliographies on specific subjects, themes
 Book reviews
 Encyclopedia
 Handbooks
 Dictionaries and Thesauruses
 Directories
 Geographical sources, Atlases, Almanacs etc.
 Biographical sources and many such other sources
Tertiary Sources
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These sources are compilation of primary and secondary
sources.
These serve as a guide in locating various primary and
secondary sources information sources on specific subjects
Usually compiled keeping in view researches and
academicians in mind
 Library Subject Guides, Guide to Resources (pathfinders)
 Guide to Information Sources in Engineering
 Using the Engineering Literature
 Computer Science and Computing: A Guide to the
Literature
 Computer Science Resources
 Guide to Information Sources in Mathematics and
Statistics.
Research Process & Literature Survey…
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Selecting an area of interest
Reading background information
Selecting research problem (proposal)
Determining types of information needs
Searching literature- from all types of sources
Refining the topic & restating the problem
Analyze the literature
Work on the research problem, get results
Putting it together ( writing)
By following specific reference & citation format/style
Listing references & citation of sources used
Presenting the final report/dissertation/thesis
Research Process & Literature Survey
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Need for literature survey
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To know what others have done
To follow the trend and identify the problem
To avoid duplication
To support your argument
To follow theoretical, empirical, methodological
and design work of related fields
To gather data to extend your methods, findings
& discussions
Basically, it serve as basis for presenting new
research findings
Sources for doing a Comprehensive
Literature Survey (Subscription based)
Bibliographical Databases
For Comprehensive Literature Survey…
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INSPEC Direct (IET & IEEE)
 Subjects covered: Electrical & electronics
engineering, communication, Computer science,
control engineering and information technology
 Over 4000+ peer reviewed journals and 2000+
conference proceedings are covered
 Over 11 million abstracts from 1898 and onwards
COMPENDEX: Engineering Index (Elsevier)
 Comprehensive & covers all engineering disciplines
Indexes articles from5600 journals and conference
proceedings
 Over 12 million records from 1884 & onwards
For Comprehensive Literature Survey…
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Web of Science (Thompson)
 Bibliographic and citation database
 Mainly from Science & Technology disciplines
 Covers over 10,000 high impact journals & 1,
10,000 conference proceedings from 1900+
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SCOPUS ( Elsevier)- All disciplines
 Bibliographic and citation database
 Index to articles from18,000 peer reviewed
journals, 3.5 million conf. papers from 1823 +
 38 million records, includes 23 million patent
records and 435 million web pages
For Comprehensive Literature Survey…
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ACM Guide to Computing Literature
 Bibliographic database. Covers ACM & few other
publishers publications
 Covers bibliographic records of books, articles,
conference papers, Doctoral and Masters Theses
and Technical reports
 Holds 1.2 million records from 1950+
ACM Computing Reviews
 Review of select book and journal articles in the
area of computer science and information
technology
 Reviews by the experts in the respective area
 High quality database for identifying most relevant
articles and books
Sources for Doing a Comprehensive
Literature Survey (Free/Open Access)
Bibliographical Databases
For Comprehensive Literature Survey…
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IngentaConnect ( e-journal aggregator)
 Platform for accessing 13000 + e-journals from most
disciplines
 Hosts over 45,47,834 articles
 Provides free access to bib. Information
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Scitopia ( from 21 learned societies)
 Federated Search portal/engine
 Index to articles from journals & conference pub.
 Hosts over 3 million documents spanning 150 years
literature
For Comprehensive Literature Survey…
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Scirus (Elsevier)
 Comprehensive science specific search engine
 Indexes over 450 million web page & latest reports,
peer-reviewed articles, patents, pre-prints and journals
 Major publishers & repositories are participating
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Google Scholar
 Search engine for retrieving scholarly literature
 Searches across many subjects
 Sources include peer-reviewed material
 Considered as comprehensive source for recent
literature
For Comprehensive Literature Survey…
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CiteSeer.IST
 Search engine for computer & inf. science literature
 Indexes peer-reviewed articles & covers over 7, 67, 558
documents
 Does automated citation indexing & uses citation linking
method
CiteSeerx Beta
 Scientific Literature Digital Library and search engine
 Index to over 13,94,737 articles
 Provides links to 26,972,168 citations
 Provides details about most cited documents, authors,
impact ratings etc.
For Comprehensive Literature Survey…
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Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies
 Contains 2 million references of articles, conference
papers and technical reports
 clustered in to 1500 bibliographies
 Further lists over 0.6 million cross references
 Links to over 1 million full text of papers (free)
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DBLP Computer Science Bibliography
 Provides bibliographic information on Computer Science
 Indexes more than 1 million articles
 Contains 10,000 links to home pages of Computer
Scientists
Sources for Finding/Locating Books
(bibliographic information)
Sources for Finding/Locating Books
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Your Library Catalogue (OPAC)
Catalogues of National Libraries
 Library of Congress, British Library, Europian Library
 National Library of Australia
 National Library Singapore
Union Catalogues
 IndCat: Online Union Catalogue of Books (INFLIBNET)
 WorldCat (OCLC)
 COPAC: Consortium of University Research Libraries
(CURL)
 Libraries Australia
 AMICUS (Library and Archives Canada)
 Melvyl: Catalogue of University of California Libraries
Catalogues of Major Libraries
 IITs, MIT, CalTech, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge
Sources for Finding/Locating Books
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Major Publishers Catalogue
 CRC Press/ Taylor and Francis group
 Elsevier
 Cambridge University Press
 John Wiley & Sons
 McGraw-Hill
 Oxford University Press
 Pearson Education
 Springer
 World Scientific & other publishers
Online Bookshops
 A1Books India
 Firstandsecond.com
 Amazon.com
 Barnes & Noble online bookstore & others
Sources for Finding Full Text of
Research Papers (Subscription based)
Sources for Finding Full Text of Papers
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IEEE Xplore
 Publications of IEEE & IET and few others
 Covers 165 journals, 175 annual conferences, 1800 IEEE
standards going back to 1988+ (older in some cases)
 Hosts over 2.3 million articles
ACM Digital Library
 ACM and affiliated organizations publications
 Covers 70+ journals , 100+ conferences, 45 newsletters
 Covers papers from 1950 and onwards
JSTOR Archive
 Serves as archive for journal back volumes
 Covers journals in S & T, Soc. Sci. & Humanities
 Covers only journals (1460 titles) from vol. & issue No1.
Sources for Finding Full Text of Papers
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Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS)- grouped
in 7 sub-libraries (Springer-Verlag)
 Series in Computer Science & Communications
 Covers mainly conference proceedings and some
research monographs,
 Tutorials, state of the art surveys and hot topics
included
 5,065 volumes and 500+ volumes added every year
Other Major Publisher Journal Collection
 Professional Societies & Universities
 OUP,CUP,SPIE,SIAM,AMS
 Commercial Publishers:
 ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, Wiley, Taylor & Francis
 Many other publishers
Sources for Finding Full Text of Research
Papers (Open Access/Free)
Sources for Finding Full Text of Papers
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DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals
 Covers free full text quality controlled scientific and
scholarly journals from all major disciplines
 Covers over 4270 journals with 2,96,491 articles
 Initiated as a project of Lund university and is one of the
popular free resources
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Open J-Gate
 An initiative by Informatics India Pvt. Ltd.
 Provides access to 5,693 open access journals
 Of which, 3200 are peer reviewed journals
Sources for Finding Full Text of Papers
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OAIster
 Index to 23 million resources available in 1153
institutional repositories
ScientificCommons.org
 Index to 28 million documents from over 1000+
institutional repositories and archives
BASE: Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
 Index to over 21 million academically and research
oriented documents from 1284 repositories
arXiv.org – e-print archive
 Covers preprint and post print papers
 Over 5.5 million papers in physics, maths.,computer
science and related areas
Sources for Finding Scholarly Web
Resources (Virtual Libraries/Subject Gateways)
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INFOMINE
 Virtual library of internet resources
 High quality resources identified and catalogued by
librarians and faculty members
 Has over 1,00,000 web resources covering all major
subjects
 Organized by subject using the classification system
Intute
 Provides access to high quality web resources selected
and catalogued by subject specialists
 Covers all major subject disciplines
Sources for Finding
Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Sources for Finding Electronic Theses
and Dissertations…
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IndCat: Online Union Catalogue of Theses (INFLINET)
 Bibliographical database of Doctoral Theses submitted to
universities (238) in India
 Contains 2.19 + lakhs bibliographical records
Vidyanidhi: E-scholarship Portal and Digital Library
 Project initiated by University of Mysore
 Over 1.5 lakh bibliographic records and
 12000 full text theses submitted to Indian universities
Ethos: Electronic Theses Online Service (British
Library. UK)
 Single point access to thesis submitted to UK higher
education institutions
 Provides access to over 2.5 lakhs theses
Sources for Finding Electronic Theses
and Dissertations…
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Theses Canada (Library and Archives Canada)
 Central access point for theses submitted to Canadian
universities
 Holds over 3 lakhs theses (50,000 are in e- form)
ADT-Australasian Digital Thesis Program
 Database of theses produced by 43 uni. in Australia
 A gateway to major collection of Australian Theses
NDLTD: Networked Digital Library of Theses and
Dissertations (mainly US)
 Union catalogue of theses contributed by 100+ member
universities
 Provides access to metadata and large number of full
text theses
Sources for Finding Electronic Theses
and Dissertations…
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DART-Europe E-Theses Portal
 Provides access to over 1,08,578 full text research
theses from the universities in 13 European countries
 Contributed through European libraries and consortia
 Serves as single access point for European theses
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PQDT OPEN: ProQuest Digital Theses
 Provides access to full text of theses submitted by the
researcher himself under open access initiative
 Mostly covers, but not restricted to, US theses
Sources for Finding Patents & Standards
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Patents
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Indian Patent Office
Indian Patents Facilitating Centre (TIFAC)
European Patents
United States Patents & Trademarks Office and others
Standards
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Bureau of Indian Standards Online Catalogue
ISO Online Catalogue
IEEE Standards
International Telecommunication Union (ITU-R)Recommendations (Free)
International Electrotechnical Commission
Sources for Finding Technical Reports &
Reference/Citation Style Resources
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Technical Reports
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Virtual Technical Reports Center ( Uni. of Maryland)
National Technical Information Service (NTIS)
MIT Online Technical Reports
Hewlett Packard Technical Reports
IBM Technical Reports/Papers
Reference /Citation Style Resources
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IEEE Editorial Style
IEEE Computer Society Style Guide
IEEE Standards Style Manual
Chicago/Turabian Style & more (visit DA-IICT RC site)
Sources for Staying Current
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Journal Literature : Table of Content Alerts
 Journal Table of Contents Service (tictoc from JISC, UK)
 IEEE Journals
 ACM Journals
 ScienceDirect
 SpringerLink & other publisher sites
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Conference Alerts
 DA-IICT Resource Centre maintains list of forthcoming
national and international conference in the area of ICT
and related field held in India
Resource Centre @ DA-IICT
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Visit our Resource Centre and explore what we
offer to our DA-IICT Community & you
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URL: http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/
Conclusion
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Most scholarly information in digital form
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Several search tools have emerged & facilitated
retrieval of required information
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Knowing & evaluating web-based resources
important
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Make best use of available scholarly resources for
your academic & research work, specially those
which are free
Questions & Clarifications?
Thank you for the kind attention!