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AGORA Basic Course: Module 2. Searching Skills; Evaluating Web Sites
The document provides a comprehensive guide on planning a search strategy for water management issues related to rice production, detailing steps from formulating a research question to evaluating sources. It outlines techniques for effective searching, including the use of Boolean operators, phrase searching, and evaluating web information based on criteria like accuracy and authority. It concludes with references to specific resources and databases like Google Scholar and CAB Abstracts for scholarly research.
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AGORA Basic Course: Module 2. Searching Skills; Evaluating Web Sites
- 1. Searching Skills; Evaluating WebSites AGORA Basic Course: Module 2
- 2. Planning a SearchStrategy
- 3. Steps 1-4: Example– water management issues AND rice production 1. Ask: What water management issues are associated with rice production? 2. Need: scholarly primary research 3. Main Concepts: water, management, rice, production 4. Select terms: a) Broader terms: ‘cereal’, ‘cultivation’, ‘farming’, b) Synonyms: H2O, farming/cultivation, usage/ issues/complications c) Alternative spellings: none d) Plurals: cereal(s) e) Capitalization: be aware of relevancy ranking
- 4. Step 5. Selecta Source
- 5. Step 6. Search:Construct a search using the appropriate commands and best practices Question: What water management issues are associated with rice production? Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3 Concept 4 water management pollutionriceissues 5. rice 6. cereal 3. issues 4. problems 1. water management 2. water usage 9 = 1 OR 2 10 = 3 OR 4 11 = 5 OR 6 12 = 7 OR 8 7. production 8. cultivation 13 = 9 AND 10 AND 11 AND 12
- 6. Step 7. Revise Reviewand refine your search • Be prepared to review/revise your search • Keep your search terms in concept sets/zones but remember to explore subtopics • Try new sources of information • Save the search and citations for future use • Promote use of high-quality resources
- 7. Step 8. ManageResults Step 9. Evaluate-Who? What? When? Where? Why? • Download, print, save, e-mail results & search history • Cite using a scientific citation style • Save search, set up alerts • Accuracy • Authority • Objectivity • Currency • Coverage Step 10. Apply – Answer the question.
- 8. Boolean Operators AND Operator (tocombine two concepts) the AND operator is used to combine two concepts e.g. livestock AND drought – results are in the combined area of the two circles livestock drought
- 9. the AND operatoris used to combine three concepts e.g. bean AND cultivation AND pests - in the combined area of the three circles bean cultivation AND Operator (to combine three concepts) pests
- 10. the OR isa means of combining synonyms e.g. beans OR legumes - in each circle’s area with the overlap in the middle having both search terms beans legumes OR Operator (info containing one or other term)
- 11. NOT Operator (in oneterm or the other) pig NOT guinea – in the shaded area; eliminates items in 2nd term (guinea) or both terms
- 12. Other search enginefunctions • Phrase or proximity searching: “…” or (…) – allows you to search for an exact phrase, e.g. pests and (bean cultivation) • Truncation/wildcards: * – allow you to search alternative spellings and plurals river* for river OR rivers pesticide* for pesticide OR pesticides program* for programme or program • Alternate spellings: ? – can be used to substitute for characters anywhere in a word wom?n for woman or women
- 13. Africa AND (beanOR maize) bean maize Africa Africa AND (bean or maize) – in the shaded area The (OR) operator retains items in each term and the AND operator is used to combine two concepts
- 14. More Search Techniques •Field Specific Searching – author, title, journal, date, url, etc. • Language Restrictions, Humans or Animals and other limits • Relevancy Ranking – a grading that gives extra weight to a document when the search terms appear in the headline or are capitalized – every found document is calculated as 100% multiply by the angle formed by weights vector for request and weights vector for document found
- 15. Evaluating Web Information •Criteria for Evaluation - Accuracy - Authority - Currency - Coverage - Objectivity - Design/Navigation
- 16. This is theGoogle search engine - www.google.com Queries are typed into the Search box – AGORA FAO in this case
- 17. The results fora maize production search in Google is 18,100,000 – including links to many types of resources.
- 18. Google Scholar – scholar.google.com providesa simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature This is the Scholar search engine -scholar.google.com Queries are typed into the Search box – maize production in this case
- 19. The results forthe maize production search is 1,480,000 citations with primarily academic type material
- 20. CAB Abstracts andAGORA • CAB generously offers a subset of CAB Abstracts to AGORA users • Also provides full-text articles found in AGORA • Covers 50% of journals in AGORA • To search in CAB Abstracts, you must be logged into AGORA. • After completing a search in CAB Abstracts, you can return to AGORA to access the full-text article – if you are properly logged in to AGORA. Note: AGORA covers many general topics such as management, economics, research, law, population, statistics, etc. not covered by CAB. With the implementation of Summon, you will be able to search probably 95% of what is in AGORA, if not more.
- 21. The same searchterms – maize production - will be completed in CAB Abstracts
- 22. Results matching this searchis 34,852 abstracts
- 23. Exercises This is theend of the AGORA Basic Course Module 2. Complete the exercises for Modules 1 and 2. Then, please continue with AGORA Basic Course Module 3: AGORA Portal Updated February 2015
Editor's Notes
- #2 This module is part of the AGORA Basic Course. The AGORA programme (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture), set up by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) together with major publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to an outstanding digital library collection in the fields of food, agriculture, environmental science and related social sciences. AGORA provides a collection of more than 5700 key journals and 4100 books to 2800 institutions in more than 100 countries. AGORA is designed to enhance the scholarship of the many thousands of students, faculty and researchers in agriculture and life sciences in the developing world. AGORA is one of the four programmes that make up Research4Life: AGORA, HINARI, OARE and ARDI.
- #3 This Section of the AGORA Basic Course is an overview of the basic search strategies (Boolean Operators and other techniques) that will be useful when you want to identify specific articles using keywords to search in bibliographic databases. Also covered are how to plan a search strategy, evaluating Internet-based information and comparing keyword search results using Google and Google Scholar. This and the subsequent slide summarize the steps for effective searching. The initial steps can be completed prior to accessing the Internet and a specific database or resource. This is advisable when there is low-bandwidth and high-cost for Internet access.
- #4 In this example, you will see numerous options for this search. Some of these options will enable you to broaden the search while others will limit it.
- #6 Note how this search uses both the OR and AND Boolean operators (to be discussed in subsequent slides). First, the OR is used to expand the search. Then, the AND is used to combine terms and make the search more precise.
- #9 We now will view a series of searches using the Boolean operators. Using the AND operator makes this search more precise or limited.
- #10 Note that the three combined AND terms make the search even more precise/limited.
- #11 In contrast to the AND search operator, the OR one expands the search. We have used two terms that are synonyms and have expanded the results.
- #12 Using the NOT operator, this search is for livestock pigs (swine) and eliminates any articles about guinea pigs (often used for research experiments). Note that a byproduct of this search also would eliminate any material from the countries ‘Guinea’ and ‘Papua New Guinea’.
- #13 A search for (bean cultivation) would include both bean AND cultivation. While many search engines and databases contain these options, the exact terminology may differ [e.g. for proximity searching “…” or (…) ]. For example, in Google, the AND Boolean Operator is automatically used. A search for (bean cultivation) would include both bean AND cultivation.
- #14 By combining AND plus proximity searching with the OR operator, we have expanded a search to include to two broad subjects and use a geographic limit.
- #15 Relevancy Ranking is the sorting of the results of the search so that the most relevant documents are listed first. With the huge numbers in the Google searches, this ranking is invaluable. The text in this section uses some material developed by INASP for the ‘Search Engines and Effective Searching on the Web’ presentation. All INASP training materials, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are copyright INASP (International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications) and are freely available for use in educational settings.
- #16 Since the Internet is a self-publishing medium, the information is not selected by professionals (or in the case of journals, a peer-review process). Information retrieved from the Internet must be evaluated and analyzed for appropriateness for clinical and research purposes. Per the criteria listed in this slide, the key is to remember to use these basic evaluation tools when you view a website for the first time. Also check the url (web address) of each site as this is a key for identifying the reliability of the website.
- #17 Google is the world’s most popular search engine with the goal being to ‘organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.’ Called ‘page rank’, Google introduced a unique concept of determining which pages rank the highest in the results list. When you complete a Google search, the pages with the most links pointing to them from other sites, known as ‘back-links’, are placed higher up in the list because they are considered more popular and thus more relevant.
- #19 Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research. From this search engine, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. This search tool aims to sort articles the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each article, the author, the publication in which the article appears, and how often the piece has been cited in other scholarly literature. The most relevant results will always appear on the first page. While you will receive links to specific journal articles, you will need to LOGIN to AGORA to access articles from AGORA Partner Publishers. Other material may be freely accessible via the WWW.
- #20 Note the links to the PDFs of many citations. If this is an open access journal article or grey literature document, you will get access to the full-text. If the journal article comes from a commercial publisher, you will be asked to pay a fee for the article or be required to use an individual password.
- #21 CAB generously provided a subset of the CAB Abstracts database designed specifically for use with AGORA. It covers about 50% of the journals found in AGORA, so you should be able to find most of the citations listed here in full-text. You must log in to search CAB, and must log in to AGORA to gain access to full-text articles. Note: sometimes people will do this in two sessions and must remember to be logged in. AGORA covers a lot of general topics such as management, economics, research, population, statistics, law, etc. that are not covered by CAB. With the implementation of Summon, you will be able to search probably 95% of what is in AGORA, if not more.
- #22 This is a simple search interface that enables you to retrieve results from a number of journals by different publisher. It is similar to the way you would search Google or other search engines using keywords.
- #23 Note that, once you enter the database, it notes that you can ‘Search AGORA records from the CAB Abstracts Database’.