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RESEARCH & WRITING HINTS You should read this guide if you are new to the University of Auckland and unfamiliar with the process of scientific publication, or unskilled in the use of library catalogues or how to access biological information from databases. Contents
Introduction
Section (1) The latest results of scientific research are published in Serials (also called Journals or Periodicals), Conference Proceedings, and Reports. Primary research can also be found in unpublished Theses and Dissertations written by postgraduate students, as well as unpublished Reports. All of these are examples of Primary Literature because they are the first instances that the information is being presented (however, if a serial contains a review article, such an article would be considered Secondary Literature, because a review assimilates concepts and results from primary studies). One that popularises science for a general readership will fall into the Popular journal category. Some journals fall into more than one category as they may publish primary research as well as reviews. You would expect to find results of the latest scientific research within the most recent issue of a serial on that topic. Each issue will (usually) contain many articles by different authors. Issues are identified by numbers and/or dates (usually in parentheses). When a certain number of issues have been published (normally one year’s worth), that set of issues will comprise one volume. Researchers write up the results of their research or discovery for publication using different section headings which normally include some or all of the following:
The Abstract is a short, concise summary of the paper. It is accompanied by a selected number of Keywords that will guide readers to the main content. These same keywords (plus others) are often used to index the articles once they are added to a database (see section 3). The Introduction gives readers the background to the research, while the Methods, Results, and Conclusion or Discussion are laid out so that readers know exactly how the research has been conducted (and can be duplicated by someone else if needs be) and what the authors concluded from their research. The References or Bibliography is a list of other articles that the author has consulted before and during conducting research. In this way, the author acknowledges the work of other scientists. Note that the author can quote text from other articles as long as he/she acknowledges the original authors. If he/she copies their work without acknowledging it, that constitutes plagiarism which is an illegal offence both within and outside of the University (see section 4). Note: A reference list usually only contains material that you have cited in the body of the text, whilst a bibliography may also contain other material consulted but not necessarily cited in the text. Assignments normally use a reference list, whereas books will often use a bibliography, as they often have fewer in text citations. Once the manuscript is submitted to a chosen serial, the editors of that serial will send copies to several other specialists in that field of research. This is called Peer review because the paper is being evaluated by the author’s peers. If the reviewers don’t feel that the content is valid or worthy, the editor may return the paper to the author and ask him/her to amend it. Only after any corrections/amendments have been made will the paper be accepted for publication. This process tries to ensure all articles in the serial are of a high standard.
Serial References A Serial Reference is a standardized way of referring to a serial article so that anyone anywhere in the world can locate it. Here is an example: Orci, L., Ravazzola, M., Amherdt, M., Madsen, O., Perrelet, A., Vassalli, J.D., et al. (1986). Conversion of proinsulin to insulin occurs coordinately with acidification of maturing secretory vesicles. Journal of Cell Biology, 103(6), 2273-2281. The authors are listed first (here there are more than six because ‘et al’ means ‘and others’) followed by the year of publication. Next is the article title, followed by the serial title and vol/ issue/pagination details. In this case, the serial is Journal of Cell Biology and the article can be found in Volume 103, issue 6, on pages 2273-2281.
Books Books are often only published once, but may be released in later editions (particularly textbooks that are regularly updated) when sections of them are revised even though the subject matter remains basically the same. Most scientific books are considered secondary literature, because they assimilate and evaluate literature from primary sources such as serials and conference proceedings. They may have one or many authors, but may also have editors. The reference to a book may look like this: Campbell, N.A. & Reece, J.B. (2002). Biology (6th ed.). San Francisco: Benjamin Cummings. The authors of the book with the title Biology are N.A. Campbell and J.B. Reece. It is the 6th edition, and was published in 2002 by Benjamin Cummings of San Francisco. A reference may also refer to a specific chapter or part of a book. Here is an example: Lockyer, M.J. & Nicholls, S.C (1988). Variation in Plasmodium falciparum gene structure. In M.J. Turner, & D. Arnot, (Eds). Molecular genetics of parasitic protozoa (pp. 12-17). Cold Spring Harbor, New York, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. The authors of the chapter called ‘Variation in Plasmodium falciparum gene structure’ are M.J. Lockyer and S.C. Nicholls. It is found on pages 12-17 of the book called Molecular genetics of parasitic protozoa published in 1988 by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. This book was edited by M.J. Turner and D. Arnot, and the chapters are made up of contributions from many different authors.
Referencing In past decades, people often used reference cards to store reference details. The cards were divided up into boxes in which you would record the information on the title of the source (ie serial or book), author, title of item (eg serial article or book title), volume no (if serial), year etc. Nowadays, people are more likely to use software packages such as Endnote or RefCite. Endnote Endnote is an electronic way of storing the same information in collections of references on similar topics called libraries. You can use the software to download many references on similar topics from databases (and in some cases, also download the URLs and reference lists), or manually input the reference details. Whichever way you choose, it is advisable to manually enter at least the first few references so as to ensure that you are familiar with how Endnote populates the various fields of each reference. This is so that you can easily spot when information is missing from certain fields (which can happen with automatic downloads in Endnote). Endnote can also be used to insert these references into the text of your essay or thesis if written in Word. Note however, that Word is not available on public PCs within the General Library, but is loaded on all PCs at the KEIC student commons.
http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/about/sis/sis_refstyles.htm In Biology, the APA referencing style is used for all papers at undergraduate levels unless you are directed otherwise by your lecturer. At postgraduate level, you may be writing papers for specific journals, many of which will have their own reference requirements. Information and examples of the APA style as used in Biology can be accessed at or by going via Library homepage to: Subject Guides/Science/Biological Sciences/Online Guides/Referencing for Biological Sciences If you are still unsure about the format of the reference style you are supposed to be using, check with your subject librarian who should be able to answer such questions. Section (2) To see if our library has access to the item you need, you have to consult the online catalogue. This contains records of everything available via the library from books to serials (both hard copy and electronic), theses, conference proceedings, reports, CDs, DVDs, videos etc. Most scientific serials are now available online, and many of these are available from more than one host (vendor), although the time coverage that they supply may vary between them. Although the catalogue is comprehensive, note that it only catalogues whole items. That means that a whole book or serial, or a whole Conference Proceedings will get catalogued but the chapters within the book and the papers within the conference proceedings do not normally get catalogued. The articles within serials would not normally be catalogued by the library either, but they are indexed by databases, so you can still find them using keyword/title/author searches. Search strategy using Boolean operators 1. 2. 3. In diagram 1, the shaded area represents A AND B (ie. articles on penguin behaviour, which is the most specific search) In comparison to library catalogues, databases do contain records of serial articles. They may also include records of conference papers, books, theses, dissertations, reviews, and reports. Using keywords from serial articles (often the same keywords as were used by the original authors in their abstract – see section 1), databases index the primary literature so that readers can search by keywords (and by author/title etc) to find serial articles and other literature of interest to them.
THE GROWTH OF WORLD SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE In past decades, printed indexes and abstracts were often used by scientists. For example, some key biology abstracting services historically were Biological Abstracts provided by BIOSIS in the US (beginning in1926), and the Science Citation Index provided by Thomson Reuters (back to 1900). Both are now available online through the library interface (Science Citation Index as Web of Science, by ISI), as is the primary biomedical database Medline, supplied by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, and ScienceDirect, a major European database from Elseviers. In 2004, the University of Auckland Library subscribed to the most comprehensive science database, Scopus, which is also an Elseviers product. Scopus harvests data from a wide range of other databases including Science Direct and Medline. Bear in mind that the content of US-sourced databases such as Medline and Biological Abstracts is primarily American, whereas that of Scopus is primarily European (~ 60% of Scopus content is non-US). So whilst there will often be overlap in content between Scopus and US databases, in some instances Scopus will have unique data (it is possible to do searches on specialist topics where there is no overlap in the results). Both Scopus and Web of Science also provide comprehensive citation data for much of their content. Citation data allows users to see who has been using and citing which articles. Generally, a high citation rate indicates that the article is of key importance and therefore worth consulting (unless those citing the article are criticising it as being unscientific which does sometimes occur). Scopus provides citation data as far back as 1996, whereas Web of Science goes back to 1900 in some cases.The number of times that articles in journals are cited by others are sometimes used as a measure of that journal's scientific standing or prestige. ISI uses such data to produce Journal Citation Reports which calculate impact factors of various types, in an effort to gauge the value or status of the journal. Although this is a popular measurement, it is often subjective and there can be pitfalls of using such data in isolation and without relevance to other factors. The University of Auckland Library subscribes to a large selection of science databases. In previous years, biological/biomedical databases such as Medline, Biological Abstracts and Science Direct were very popular. After its introduction in 2004, Scopus quickly became one of the most popular databases due to its ease of use, ready access to full-text links, citation data, and functionality. Medline continues to be popular, as it features an online thesaurus hierarchy with verifiable and approved indexing terms (called MeSH headings) as well as very targeted search functionality for biomedical topics. However, its citation tracking ability cannot compare with those of either Scopus or Web of Science. Medline (plus PubMed) Biological Abstracts Scopus New Zealand Science Click HERE for a more comprehensive listing of databases relevant to biological sciences. Section (4) The key to a good essay is using quality references and substantiating your arguments in your own words. Reference your essay fully and use scientific (unbiased) terminology. Edit your work carefully. There are several websites to help with essay writing available at Be aware that although you are citing other authors’ work and using their results, you cannot copy their articles word for word (that is plagiarism). The standard for submitting your essay at the University of Auckland is similar to that of an original researcher submitting a paper to the editor of a serial to be considered for publication.
Note that you are able to quote another author, as long as you use quotation marks around the text concerned and that you clearly cite the paper from which you are quoting. First check with your lecturer as some academics may not allow quotes within smaller word-limited essays (eg. it may appear that you are using another person's work to boost your word-count). As part of the system for checking that you are not plagiarising someone else’s work, in many courses at University of Auckland you will be asked to submit your paper to a web-based software program called Turnitin at Turnitin.com. This is a database that links to much of the world’s scientific literature and is able to check the text of your essay against all its content to see if there is overlap between the two. To find some overlap is normal with your referencing list, but a large overlap will alert your lecturer to the fact that the text that you presented may not be your own. Do not think of copying sections from a friend’s essay that was done in a previous year either, because Turnitin matches text not only with published content, but also with every other essay submitted to it.
In conclusion, always make sure you re-write what others have written in your own words. This proves to your lecturer that you fully understand the concepts and results that you are discussing in your essay. Section (5) Everyone will be familiar with internet search engines such as Google and more particularly Google Scholar. Please note that you should not be using popular web sites to find reference material for you assignments, because 1) they are not peer reviewed, and 2) in most cases, do not represent primary literature. However, having said that, it is possible to sometimes find recent serial and other articles in PDF format on the World Wide Web via Google and/or Google Scholar. As a PDF version of an article is an exact scan of the original, this can be very useful if you have not been able to locate the article via the library resources. For this reason, the library links found on databases such as Medline also offer Google as a back-up search. Another useful search engine for biology students is Scirus which can be accessed from ScienceDirect. Scirus only gives results from science related web pages, and currently covers 450 million of them. It also indexes a number of special sources, including Medline citations (15.2 million) articles from PubMed Central (over 285 000), over 149 000 full text theses and dissertations, and 5.6 million full-text articles from ScienceDirect. Results are ranked by relevance (but this is not always as well sorted as it is on Google Scholar), but can be resorted by date. Scirus is of less use in locating websites on a specific topic, and in many cases it is easier to use Google Scholar for this purpose. Another useful source of information is Wikipedia, especially for specialist or very recent topics or events that you may not have found in standard reference texts. You should never automatically accept the accuracy of the Wikipedia text because anyone can contribute content. However, for specialist topics there is often a useful list of references given at the end of the entry, and you should always refer to these in each case. Also bear in mind that whilst anyone can in theory add Wikipedia content, in fact it is often those directly involved in the areas of research under discussion who will be the main contributors (and sometimes these same people will monitor new entries and check them for accuracy). Again, the proof of what is said in the main text will lie in the references that it cites, so always check these before you re-use information from Wikipedia. |
