Advanced Library Skills for Physics Research

This tutorial covers all of the information you need to find, evaluate and organize research materials. This tutorial is designed for upper-level undergraduate students and graduate students conducting research in physics. 
 
By the end of this tutorial, you will be able to: 
 
Critically evaluate information 
Identify and avoid predatory publishers 
Know where to search for relevant resources 
Apply advanced literature searching techniques 
Use citation managers to effectively organize and cite materials


Conclusion
This article is not appropriate for a physics assignment • The author is a professor at a prestigious university, but they are a professor of Philosophy not Physics • The journal is a well-regarded journal, but it is for Scientific Philosophy not Physics • The article is not relevant to a physics course, thought it may be an otherwise great article

Tips
When evaluating material it is most important to evaluate its quality and relevance The Journal Impact Factor is useful to get an understanding of the importance and impact of a journal in it's field, but it is not a measure of quality and it is not the only factor you should consider when evaluating a journal. A journal with a higher Impact Factor is not necessarily "better" than a journal with a lower Impact Factor.

Journal Editorial Board
The editorial board of a journal is made up of researchers relevant to that journal. When evaluating a journal, take a look at the editorial board to see if it includes any researchers whose names or It is also useful to evaluate journals to avoid predatory publishers We'll cover predatory publishing in Section II

Science and Science News
Press releases and science news play an important role in the dissemination of research to the public. Press releases and the new articles based on them are the primary way that the public learns about advances in scientific research.
Press releases and science news stories can also be a great way for students and researchers to learn about new research, but they can over-simplify information for a non-scientific audience and can sometimes exaggerate or misinterpret findings.
When evaluating information, we need to be aware of how scientific information can be portrayed, and sometimes misconstrued, in press releases and in the news.

How does it work?
Step 1: Researchers share their their findings in an academic publication or at a conference.
Step 2: The researcher's university or research institute puts out a press release to promote that research and hopefully convince the press to write about it. Press releases translate research for a nonacademic audience and information can be generalized or lost in translation.
Step 3: News outlets take press releases as the basis of for science

An increasing problem
The number of predatory publishers has exploded in the last decade, so it is increasingly important to be able to identify and avoid predatory publishers.
• Researchers will not be able to find your work, as predatory publishers are not included in academic databases • People will not cite your work, as researchers avoid citing predatory publications • Your work will not be peer-reviewed, as predatory publications to not go through a peer-review process • You cannot republish your paper in a legitimate journal without significant changes, as journals will not publish work that has already been published • Your reputation as a researcher will suffer Citing predatory publications: • This work is not peer-reviewed, so it is not up to the same standard of quality as peer-reviewed publications • Many predatory publishers contain pseudo-science or incorrect information • It reflects poorly on your work when you cite predatory publishers • Citing predatory publishers lends them legitimacy

Open Access
In order to understand how predatory publishers work, it is important to look at Open Access publishing.

What is Open Access?
Open Access is the practice of providing free and unrestricted online access to research publications and data.
Open Access publishing allows researchers and the general public to access research publications freely, making it easier to disseminate and access research findings.

Why publish Open Access?
There are many benefits to Open Access Publishing: • You research can be disseminated faster when you share preprints (Green Open Access) • This leads to faster impact Sharing preprints is very common in physics and arXiv is the physics preprint server, but there are many other subject specific preprint servers that are relevant to interdisciplinary research.

Open Access and predatory publishing
Predatory publishers pretend to be legitimate Open Access publishers and take advantage of the "pay-to-publish" Gold Open Access model described above. They charge article processing fees, but do not have any of the editorial or peer-review processes that legitimate Gold Open Access publishers have.

Remember:
Open Access does not make a publisher predatory, their bad practices do!

Characteristics of Predatory Publishers
In order to avoid predatory publishers, you have to be able to identify them. If you are not familiar with a journal or it's publisher, evaluate it carefully. If you are unsure about the quality of a journal, it is best to err on the side of caution. If you find evidence a journal may be predatory, but you are still unsure, be safe and choose another journal.
Read more about evaluating journals in the chapter Evaluating a Journal.

Hijacked Journals Hijacked Journals
Hijacked journals are predatory publications that are fakes or duplicates of legitimate journals. They take the title and information of a legitimate journal to make a fake journal and website to fool researchers into submitting to their predatory journal.
If you are looking at the website of a journal title you know is legitimate, but the website has some of the hallmarks of a predatory publisher (rapid publication or fast peer review) and charges a publication fee, double check that you are on the correct website.

Example of a hijacked journal
The journal Arctic, is a journal produced by the University of

Building a Search
The first step to searching any database is to build your search.
In order to do the most effective literature search, you need to generate good search terms and combine them effectively.
Building a Search | 45 Steps to a Search

Identify the main concepts in your topic
What are the key concepts? Look for subjects like "nanowires", not action words like "effect" or "impact" or "development"

Build your search (using AND, OR)
Put your search together using AND and OR terms (also called boolean terms) OR combines related words in a concept OR gets you "more" AND combine AND is "dema • "global warming" → finds exact phrase rather than "global" AND "warming" • Parentheses () -keep OR terms together so that the search combines the OR terms before it adds the AND terms to the search • (cat OR kitten) AND (dog OR puppy) • Not all databases use parentheses (arXiv)

Run search, evaluate and update
Run your search in your database of choice. Take a look at your result lists, is it relevant? Look at individual search results for more potential keyword terms to add your search.

Searching in arXiv
We will demo searching in arXiv, as it covers physics and related fields. We can apply the search strategy from the previous chapter to arXiv.

Advanced search
The easiest way to search by research topic is through the advanced search function:

Click Advanced Search below the homepage search bar
Once you are in the advanced search, you can set your search up by adding new terms:

Each line represents a concept (the OR terms) and the lines are connected with AND
Note: • Make sure to change the search field to "All Fields" • The default is "Title" and "All Fields" will search both the title and abstract • Do not use parentheses in the arXiv search bar

View final article
When you find a preprint on arXiv that you want to use in your own work, always check whether there is a published version. The published version will be the most up-to-date version and it will be peer-reviewed.

Searching Academic Databases -Web of Science Searching Academic Databases
Academic databases have the most features, making it easier to find relevant articles. There are two major interdiciplinary databases (Web of Science and Scopus) and many subject specific databases (Inspec for physics and engineering or GeoRef for geosciences).
Almost all of these databases require a log in, as the library subscribes to them, thought some are Open Access.
Academic databases are the most comprehensive databases and many contain material going back over a hundred years. However, no one database has every article and some databases have better subject area coverage than others, so you should always search more than one database.

Searching in Web of Science
We will demo Web of Science as it is a large, interdisciplinary database with good coverage of sciences and medicine. Web of Science is actually a collection of databases, and it is best to search the full collection at once, using "All Databases." We can easily apply the search strategy developed in Chapter 9 to Web of Science:

Searching Google Scholar Google Scholar
Google Scholar is the largest database, so you will be able to find the most articles through Google Scholar.

General Physics
The databases listed here cover physics and the many subdisciplines of physics. These databases will be a good source for all physics research.
Top Recommendations: • arXiv: arXiv.org is an electronic archive and distribution server for open access preprint papers in physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology and statistics.
• Web of Science: A major multidisciplinary database for the sciences and the social sciences, as well as a great research metrics tool. Contains coverage from the year 1900 to the present.
Other Recommendations:

Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Astrophysics Data System (ADS): ADS is a digital library portal for researchers in astronomy and physics. ADS contains more than 13 million records covering publications in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Physics, and the arXiv preprints.
• CDS Portal: The Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center (CDS) hosts the SIMBAD astronomical database; the VizieR astronomical catalogue service. and the Aladin interactive sky atlas. The CDS Portal searches these databases simultaneously using either object name or coordinates. CDS is best when searching for information and literature about specific astronomical objects.
• SIMBAD: SIMBAD is the world reference database for the identification of astronomical objects. SIMBAD provides basic data, cross-identifications, bibliography and measurements for astronomical objects. SIMBAD can be queried by object name, coordinates and various criteria.
• VizieR: VizieR provides the most complete library of published astronomical catalogues -tables and associated data -with verified and enriched data, accessible via multiple interfaces.
• NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED): NED is a comprehensive database of multiwavelength data and references for extragalactic objects, providing a information integrated from hundreds of large sky surveys and tens of thousands of research publications.

Biophysics
In biophysics it is important to search medical and biological literature in addition to physics literature.
• PubMed: PubMed comprises more than 30 million records for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
• medRxiv: medRxiv is a free online archive and distribution server for preprints in the medical, clinical, and related health sciences.
• bioRxiv: bioRxiv is a free online archive and distribution server for preprints in the biological and life sciences.
Note: both Web of Science (All Databases) and Scopus also include MEDLINE in their search, and Web of Science (All Databases) searches BIOSIS, a large biological sciences database.

Condensed Matter Physics
There is no database specifically targeted to condensed matter physics, but useful material can still be found in other physics databases.
• INSPIRE: INSPIRE primarily covers high energy physics, but also has some coverage of condensed matter physics.

Geophysics
• GeoRef: GeoRef (1785 to the present) includes international coverage of the earth sciences and all aspects of geology and geophysics.

Browse journals
Make sure to examine the journals most relevant to your work.
Browse new issues of relevant journals and search within these journals to relevant articles.
• Set up

Set up alerts
Always set up alerts so that you receive updates on new publications. This is an easy way to both find new research on your topic and to keep up to date in your field of study.
• Search alerts: set up a search alert in Web of Science or Scopus using your best search • Preprint alert: set up an alert in the preprint servers for your subject area. Look for a link that says "alerts" or "subscribe" •

Forwards and Backwards Searching
Forwards and backwards searching uses citations to look at who has cited a paper and what sources a paper cites • Backwards searching: look at the reference list of an article to see the resources they used (look at resources "backwards" in time from the original article).
• Forwards searching: also called citation searching. Look at who has cited an article in Web of Science, Scopus or Google Scholar (look at resources "forwards" in time from the original article).

Tip
When you start your literature search, you can contact your librarian for more tips and strategies. This will ensure you have a comprehensive and efficient literature search.
Web address with no proxy

Accessing Library Materials Remotely
Off Campus Access Access to many of the resources on the University of Alberta Library website is restricted to students, faculty and staff.
To access these materials at home, navigate to the e-journal or database you wish to use via the Library Home Page and log in using your Campus Computing ID and Password.

EZProxy Access
The library provides off-campus access using out EZProxy server.
When you access databases and materials through the library website, you will automatically be directed to the EZProxy log-in screen if you are off campus.
If you are unable to access an article or ebook and are hitting a paywall, follow these steps to check your access:

Citation Management with Zotero
Using Zotero There are many citation managers to chose from, but Zotero is recommended for the following reasons: • Zotero is free (you can pay for more storage space) • Zotero is open-source and run by a non-profit

Citing in LaTeX
In LaTeX you cite using BibTeX. Bibliography entries are kept in a separate .bib file and then imported into the main LaTeX document.
You can either create your .bib file manually or use a citation manager to create one.

Using Zotero With LaTeX
Once you have all of the citation you need in Zotero, you can export them as a .bib file to use in LaTeX.

Simple method
In the simple method you export your chosen resources to a BibTeX file. With this method you .bib will not automatically update. If you make any changes to items in Zotero or add new resources, you will need to re-export your BibTeX file Export whole library • Under the File menu, select "Export library…" • On the next screen, choose format BibTex and click OK There are two types of plagiarism: 1. Intentional plagiarism -Intentional plagiarism occurs when one claims to be the author of work that they know was originally written completely or in part by someone else.
2. Unintentional plagiarism -Unintentional plagiarism occurs when a writer fails to follow to properly cite their sources without an explicit intent to cheat.

Avoiding Plagiarism
To avoid plagiarism you must always give proper credit when you