Reference no: EM133087869

Research Gap - finding and organising articles

Exercise 1: Finding a research topic

For the research proposal and related assessment tasks, you have freedom to select your own topic. This might be something which is relevant to your intended future career, or which builds on your prior learning (for example, if you have prior experience in a different industry, you might consider how particular types of IT technology might be used to transform that industry). It might be inspired by a recent news article you have seen about either a problem which might be solved by IT, or an exciting new area of IT research. Or it might just be a topic which you found interesting in another course.

Exercise 2: Searching for papers using Google Scholar

Once you have a topic you can begin searching for prior literature to build your understanding of the existing knowledge in this field. This will help you identify gaps in the literature which can be used to frame good research questions.

Google Scholar is a very useful tool for carrying out a literature review, as are the various research article databases available through the Federation University library website.

Your tutor will provide a demonstration of how to use Google Scholar to carry out the following tasks:
• Searching for papers on a particular topic
• Restricting that search to particular years or journals, using the Advanced Search option
• Exporting the citation information for a particular paper
• Finding papers which have cited a particular paper
• Looking up the research profile (complete list of publications) for a particular author

Once they have done this, try to do the same process to start identifying papers and authors which are relevant to one of your potential topic areas.

Exercise 3: Searching for papers using library databases

While Scholar may find papers, you may not always have access to them, particularly when working from home. The Fed Uni library has subscriptions to several online databases which may provide access to the papers which you need. Using the Databses tab on the library home-page you can specify which database you want to search.

Exercise 4: Installing and Using Endnote

Once you find useful papers, it is important to keep them organised. You should record the citation details for each paper and keep notes on the key points of the paper. EndNote is a referencing tool which will make the job of maintaining your references far easier.