The document provides information about conducting research for the European Project Semester 2012. It outlines the research process and covers topics like planning a research assignment, developing search strategies, identifying relevant document types and information search tools, and reformulating searches to improve results. Tutorials and additional resources on open learning tools, document types, search strategies, and more are referenced to help students improve their research skills.

1. EUROPEAN PROJECT SEMESTER 2012
Technical
Information
Resources

2. RESEARCH PROCESS
Scientific research is a process that, by the
application of scientific method, seeks
relevant and reliable information to
understand, verify, correct or applying
knowledge.

3. INFORMATION LITERACY
Planning is essential to writing a good research assignment

4. RESEARCH PROCESS
Project aims…
 Obtaining the methodology to drawing up a scientific
work
 Facing the student up to a higher work than normally
found in laboratories and practices throughout their studies
 It is essential to obtain the engineer’s degree

5. RESEARCH PROCESS
The research work must…
 Being planned
 Treat on a particular topic
 Provide news
 Be objective
 Provide data to permit verification or
refutation of which is explained
 Be helpful to others

6. OPEN LEARNING TOOLS
Additional
information
to improve
your
research
skills
http://www.nature.com/scitable/ebooks/e
nglish-communication-for-scientists-
14053993/contents

7. Tutorials about Information literacy
and research assignment
Decipher your research assignment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWFoRVoHvrU
Information literacy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I2m_tXqBnc
Discover information iiteracy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWzigkpR7yg&fea
ture=related

8. DOCUMENT TYPES
 Handbooks  E-prints
 Monographs  Research reports
 Dictionaries  Technical standards
 Encyclopaedias  Patents
 Scholarly or academic  Degree projects and
journals dissertations
 Technical magazines  Doctoral theses
 Conference proceedings  Industrial catalogues
 Conference papers  Maps and plans
… On paper or electronic version!

9. INFORMATION SEARCH TOOLS
 Library catalogues
 Bibliographic databases
 Search engines
 Thematic guides
 Deep web
 Web portals
 Lecturers and experts

10. SEARCH STRATEGIES
A search strategy is what we call the query that is
put to an information retrieval tool to obtain
results.
In order to perform queries, you will need to be
familiar with search terms and how to combine
them.

11. STEPS TO FOLLOW
1. Formulating information need
Express the topic or subject in a concrete sentence
Example: Physiotherapy on elder people with femur fracture
2. Identifying keywords
Identify the most important concepts
Example:
Concept 1: Physiotherapy
Concept 2: Elders
Concept 3: fracture
Concept 4: femur

12. STEPS TO FOLLOW
3. Choosing terms
Select the terms to fine-tune you search query (key words)
and pull apart of stop words. Search for synonyms
Term 1 Term 2 Term 3 Term 4
Physiotherapy Elderly Femur Fracture
Manual Older Femoral Luxation
therapy bone
Therapeutic Aged Dislocation
massage
Ancient

13. STEPS TO FOLLOW
4. Matching terms
4.1 Boolean operators
Make it possible to combine search terms to fine-tune a
search and retrieve exactly what we are looking for.
AND Returns items It will find all items talking about femur
(I) that contain A B fracture. Is used to limit the number of
both terms results and to obtain those that actually
meet your information needs.
OR Retrieves It will find all items talking about different
(O) documents kinds of fractures and moreover all items
that contain A B about any aspect concerning femur. Is
any of the used to increase the number of results. It is
terms useful for searching for synonyms or terms
in other languages.
NOT Exclude any It will find all items about fractures except
(NO) results that those talking about femur fractures. Is used
contain the A B to limit the number of search results and
terms narrow them down to those actually
following the needed.
NOT operator
A = Fracture / B = Femur

14. STEPS TO FOLLOW
4. Matching terms
4.1 Boolean operators
This way we can combine synonyms with OR and different
terms with AND AND
Term 1 Term 2 Term 3 Term 4
Physiotherapy Elderly Femur Fracture
Manual Older Femoral Luxation
O therapy bone
R Therapeutic Aged Dislocation
massage
Ancient
And the query comes like: (Physiotherapy OR manual therapy OR therapeutic massage)
AND (elder OR ancient OR old OR aged)
AND (femur OR femoral bone)
AND (fracture OR luxation OR dislocation)

15. STEPS TO FOLLOW
4. Matching terms
4.2 Proximity operators
These are sets of symbols that are used in databases to
search for terms that are close to each other.
WITH Is used to search for terms in the same field
ADJ X Is used to search for terms that are
separated by at least X number of words
that the user specifies
NEAR Is used to search for terms that are in the
same sentence or paragraph
“ ” Are used to search for exact terms in a
particular order

16. STEPS TO FOLLOW
5. Amplifying the search query
 Truncations: are used to retrieve words with the same root
but different endings.
 Wildcard: operators are used to replace one or more
letters in a word
The symbol used varies in each database: *, $, ?, !, #
Example 1: therap* = therapy, therapies, therapeutic,
therapeutics, therapist, etc.
Example 2: fem?r* = femur, femoral, etc.

17. STEPS TO FOLLOW
6. Redifining searches
Advanced search options in databases make it possible to
limit or expand results. Each database offers different options:
features, fields, etc.
Some limits are:
 Geographic or cultural: ex. Only results in spanish scope
 Language: ex. Only results in english
 By fields: ex. Search only by author field
 By number of results: ex. shows first 10 results
 By type of document: ex. Only journal articles
 Full text: ex. Access to full texts only

18. STEPS TO FOLLOW
7. Performing search and assessing search result
 Exhaustiveness: When all of the data that has been published on the topic
of interest is retrieved (when the search finds all the documents in the
database that contain the term used in the search strategy with the specified
conditions)
 Precision: When all of the information that is retrieved is of use to the project
in question
 Noise: Is produced when non-relevant information is retrieved in the search
 Silence: when we cannot retrieve the information that a database
has on a specific topic
 A good search is exhaustive and precise
 If noise or silence occurs, the search should be reformulated

19. STEPS TO FOLLOW
8. Reformulate the search query and start again…
If our results are poor…
If we’ve obtained too much noise or silence…
And anyway, we want to explore more the database…
We should to
REFORMULATE
THE SEARCH QUERY

20. Looking for keywords?
Strategic keywords for your project proposal:
“Improving airport security”
Airport security Security
systems Safety systems
Explosives Electric power
detection Computer crime system protection
Fire Safety
detectors Terrorism devices
Airport
Aircraft Airport Airport passenger
landing vehicular ground transportation
guidance traffic equipment

21. Looking for keywords?
Strategic keywords for your project proposal:
“Interactive information point”
Interactive Multi-touch
terminals Cultural
advertising
Interactive
Touch- tourism point
screen Information access
Touch Information Guidance
sensitive source software
screens
User
interface

22. Looking for keywords?
Strategic keywords for your project proposal:
“Digital talking books: DAISY convertor”
Audiobooks Handicapped
persons Handicapped
aids
Disabled
people Blindness Braille readers
Navigation Impaired
aids vision
Navigation
search
Reading Vision loss
disability Print
disabilities

23. Looking for keywords?
Strategic keywords for your project proposal:
“Acoustic buoy mesh alarm system”
Oceanographic Autonomous
survey Buoy positioning
underwater
vehicles
Sound Warning systems
monitoring
Underwater
sounds
GPRS
GSM
AUV’s
RAP MESH
Subsurface networking
systems Acoustic structure
tracking

24. Looking for keywords?
Strategic keywords for your project proposal:
“Applications of aluminium foams in automotive
industry, mainly in crash boxes”
Coated Metal foam
Aluminum alloy
aluminium
foams
Al foam
Crash box
Nanonickel
coatings Alporas Porous
foams metals
Carbon
foams Open cell
structure

25. Looking for keywords?
Strategic keywords for your project proposal:
“Influences of pulse (deceleration) in a full frontal
crash at 56km/h”
Passenger Passenger cars
safety Deceleration
pulse
Car crash
SRS
Intelligent
transportation
systems Crash-pulse
Air bags
Biomechanical Seat belts
analysis
Occupant Occupant
Crash injury injuries response

26. NOW KEEP IN MIND THESE RESOURCES
Quick guide (in your hands)
UPC Catalog
UPC Databases by Metalib
Thematic guides
Scirus and
Google Scholar

27. EUROPEAN PROJECT SEMESTER 2012
Technical
Information
Resources
Thank you!