Hot tips for social sciences literature searching
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Dr. Lauren Smith
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Hot tips for social sciences literature searching
- 1. Hot tips for social sciences literature searching Dr Lauren Smith Digital Support Librarian, University of Edinburgh @walkyouhome
- 2. Overview ● Introduction ● Context ● Implications ● Recommended resources ● Bring your own problem
- 3. Context ● Beyond discovery systems and subject databases ● Beyond traditional modes of evidence searching ● Acknowledging structural inequalities in scholarly publishing ● Acknowledging structural inequalities in everything...
- 4. Classic challenges ● Different keywords for same/similar concepts within and across disciplines ● Hierarchies of evidence ● Access to paywalled content ● Link rot
- 5. Epistemic injustice Unfairness due to aspects of knowledge (the domain of epistemology), how it is communicated, and how it is understood (Kidd et al. 2017) ● Whose knowledge has authority ● Whose voices are heard ● Who gets published where ● Who gets cited
- 6. Juan Pablo Alperin Unequal distribution
- 7. Investigation site issues ● Even where high impact journals publish scholars from global south, investigation sites often located in global north (Czerniewicz 2015) ● Broad claims about human behaviour based on samples from western, industrialised, rich and democratic societies (Henrich et al. 2010)
- 8. Invisible researchers ● Racially biased citation patterns in disciplines including law, history of anthropology, philosophy and sociology (Ray 2018) ● “Non-White scholars continue to be underrepresented in publication rates, citation rates, and editorial positions in communication studies” (Chakravartty et al. 2018)
- 9. Invisible research ● Grey literature under-represented in research methodologies like systematic reviews ● Grey literature is prevalent output in research focused on development issues ● Government-commissioned reports conducted by academics in global south often not attributed to authors (Czerniewicz 2015)
- 10. Implications ● Universal practices drawing on non- universal evidence base ● Risk of incorrect conclusions being drawn ● “An academy in which large groups are absent is one in which fewer research questions are asked and less diverse research tools used.” (Medie and Kang 2018)
- 12. Grey literature Theses and dissertations, research and committee reports, government reports, conference papers, ongoing research ● Reduce publication bias ● Increase comprehensiveness and timeliness ● Foster a balanced picture of available evidence (Paez 2017)
- 13. Multi-disciplinary ● Political literacy of young people ● Widening access to higher education ● Palliative and end of life care ● Adverse Childhood Experiences ● Social isolation and loneliness ● Voluntary social care recruitment ● Capturing social work impact
- 14. Theses The British Library: EThOS This resource aims to provide a national record of all doctoral theses awarded by UK Higher Education institutions & free access to the full text of as many theses as possible. Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) This database includes information about electronic theses and dissertations from universities around the world. Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD) This database includes information about theses and dissertations from colleges, universities, and research institutions around the world. PQDT Open (owned by ProQuest) This database provides links to full text of open access dissertations and theses from around the world. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global This database provides full text links to dissertations (including those that are not open access) from around the world.
- 15. Evidence briefings, reviews and summaries ● The Campbell Library of Systematic Reviews from the Campbell Collaboration ● Publications from Alliance for Useful Evidence ● Resources from Social Care Institute for Excellence ● IRISS Insights from Iriss ● Briefings from Centre for Research on Families and Relationships ● Briefings from Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research ● Skills for Care (English focus. Free registration required) ● Research Knowledge Base from Skills for Care ● Resources from Research in Practice (some paywalled content) ● Health and Social Care Publications from the Scottish Government ● Health Management Library: literature searches on health management topics produced by the NHS Scotland Health Management Library ● Resource Library from Alliance Scotland ● National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Themed Reviews ● Scottish Government Health and Community Care Social Research Publications
- 16. Google Custom Search ● Significantly reduces time required to search multiple sites ● Does not compromise quality of retrieval ● No cost (Nkansah et al. 2012) Creating a custom search engine
- 17. Twitter ● Advanced Search ● Hashtags ● Key organisations ● Specific individuals
- 18. Search tools CORE is the world’s largest open access aggregator - it is a service that pulls together a collection of over 125 million research outputs. Open Access Button a browser extension that registers when people hit a paywall to an academic article and can’t access it. If Open Access Button can’t get you access, you are automatically invited to request it from the author to make their work publicly available. You can install Open Access Button as a browser extension or use their website. Unpaywall is a browser extension that adds an icon to the right-hand side of any page where it detects an academic article. The icon indicates whether there is an open access version available and clicking it will take you to the appropriate document. Kopernio is a browser extension that tells you if you have access to a version of a journal article that you are looking at. It detects when you are looking at an article’s page and if you have access, it will provide a link to the document.
- 20. BYOP (Bring Your Own Problem)
- 22. Image credits ● Bottled Joy CC BY-NC 2.0 Jo on Flickr ● Composition grey CC BY-NC 2.0 Julie on Flickr ● Dispatchwork / Jan Vormann CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Ars Electronica on Flickr ● Dog jumps over hay hurdle CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Rayonick on Flickr ● Ear CC BY 2.0 Paul J Everett on Fickr ● Empty CC BY 2.0 Ian Sane on Flickr ● Global south public domain Kingj123 on Wikipedia ● Invisible man CC BY 2.0 Marian Beck on Flickr ● Invisible tower CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Libor Malý on Flickr ● Thank you CC BY-NC 2.0 Kevin Spencer on Flickr ● Week 9 - Patterns CC BY 2.0 Morgan on Flickr
Editor's Notes
- I’m largely focusing on searching beyond discovery systems and subject databases for a few reasons: Discovery systems don’t show you everything I’m aware there’s a wide range of people here from different sectors so focusing on specific subject resources probably isn’t useful Budgets are being slashed - and we might need to get better at signposting to open resources You’re library and information workers - teaching you the instrumentals of searching isn’t necessary There’s a vast world of valuable knowledge outwith the systems we often rely on as sources of authority, that have much messier structures and heuristics for determining quality
- Laura Czerniewicz (2015) “If the world were mapped according to how many scientific research papers each country produced, it would take on a rather bizarre, uneven appearance. The Northern hemisphere would balloon beyond recognition. The global south, including Africa, would effectively melt off the map.” The data behind this picture doesn’t include social sciences outputs, [xxx]
- In many contexts valid research is undertaken and published with the unfortunate name of “grey literature”. This includes working papers, technical and policy reports. These genres of output are often prevalent in research areas focused on pressing development issues. Another category of “invisible research” from the South is the considerable output commissioned by government and undertaken by consultants, many of whom are practising academics. Even when it is published, this kind of research is often not attributed to its actual authors. https://theconversation.com/its-time-to-redraw-the-worlds-very-unequal-knowledge-map-44206
- Grey literature is an important source of knowledge and is often overlooked in systematic reviews and other forms of knowledge synthesis, like literature reviews. Despite the potential challenges involved in searching for evidence in gray literature, it is important for gray literature to be included in a systematic review, given its potential to provide a balanced view of the evidence.2, 11, 18 Including gray literature in a researcher's search strategy may increase the comprehensiveness of the search.52 Including evidence from a wide range of sources in a systematic review may enrich the review's findings and reduce the possibility of publication bias. Gray literature may also help provide a sense of context for the question being examined, especially when a lack of consensus about the research question, or the setting or context of the intervention (or subject examined) may affect its outcome, or there is a paucity of available evidence in commercial publications.19As there is sometimes a long lag time between the submission and publication of evidence, gray literature may also help ensure the most current picture of what is happening within a body of evidence or area of practice at the time of the review.15 The benefits of including gray literature may far outweigh the cost in time and resource needed to search for it. Given these benefits, a carefully thought out gray‐literature search strategy, incorporating some of the search strategies described in this paper, may be an invaluable component of a systematic review. (Paez 2017)
- These are some examples of where research has crossed disciplinary boundaries and I’ve found it useful to look at grey literature In these instances searching grey literature was helpful because it’s often by people working on the intersections for a practical purpose But also these are highly political and politicised, often sensitive and contested areas - and academic research published in traditional outlets doesn’t always paint the full picture about the discourse on a specific topic. Going outside of traditional venues, onto social media, blogs, charity websites, finding out what the arguments are, and looking at how there are sources of authority who have been excluded from the dominant discourse can be very useful
- Evidence briefings, reviews and summaries are documents that have pulled together evidence on a specific topic, appraised the evidence and brought it together to provide an overview of an issue, recommendations or ideas for future work. These may be produced by experts in the area, general researchers or information specialists.