Slides, handouts and links covering relevant topics including how to create an annotated bibliography, exemplar bibliography, reference managers etc. The coursework specification with assessment criteria is available as a single item from http://www.edshare.soton.ac.uk/6044

Damper, Robert

white, su

English

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Professional and Legal Issues(INFO2009)Annotated BibliographyProf. Bob DamperBuilding 1, Room 2031rid@ecs.soton.ac.ukOctober 8, 2012INFO2009 – p.1/16What is it?“An annotated bibliography gives an account of theresearch that has been done on a given topic.”“In addition to bibliographic data, [it] provides a concisesummary of each source and some assessment of its valueor relevance.” Debora Knott, University of Torontohttp://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/“An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books,articles, and documents. Each citation is followed by a brief(usually about 150 words) descriptive and evaluativeparagraph, the annotation. The purpose of the annotation isto inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality ofthe sources cited.”http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/ref/research/skill28.htmINFO2009 – p.2/16Why do it?Preparing an annotated bibliography is an excellentway to familiarise yourself with a new topic.It helps you organise and record what you learn fromreading the literature.It develops your critical appraisal faculties . . . literaturesources are not ‘gospel’ or even necessarily very good!An annotated bibliography can be used by others tofamiliarise themselves with the literature.It can be easily updated over time by the addition ofnew sources (although these may demand revisions toexisting annotations).Critical appraisal of other people’s technical writingimproves your own.A valuable first step in any research project!INFO2009 – p.3/16Examplehttp://bit.ly/9B32dxAn annotated bibliography on ubiquitous computingfrom SRI International (a leading independent US R&Dcompany).It’s a bit more verbose than most . . . no doubt becauseit was prepared for external clients.Other than that, is it a good annotated bibliography?I don’t like it too muchBibliographic source details are sketchy andincomplete.Over-reliance on web references (which should notbe primary but an additional convenience).INFO2009 – p.4/16Two Classic Annotation Styles1. Descriptive : only lists contents, i.e., a factual summaryof the selected source.D. E. Knuth and M. E. Plass “Breaking paragraphs into lines”,Software – Practice and Experience, vol. 11:11 (1981) 1119–1184.Describes algorithm to break text into lines of approx. equal length.Based on ‘boxes’, ‘glue’ and ‘penalties’.Gives a history of line-breaking methods . . .2. Evaluative or critical : as well as an overview of thecontent, also identifies and appraises the mainargument(s).. . . Processing paragraphs as a whole allows optimal line-breakingusing dynamic programming.Authoritative paper by a world-leading computer scientist and hisstudent . . .INFO2009 – p.5/16Identifying the Main ArgumentFor a good (i.e., well-written) paper, this should beeasy.If it isn’t, it tells you something about the source article!It could be in the form of a thesis (i.e., a central claim),formulation of a research question, development of aformal framework, . . . not just “we have done somework”. (ASK yourself the question: so what?)Don’t just look at the abstract . . . the introduction andconclusions are valuable too.Look for repeated phrases, ideas, etc.Look at the structure (headings), first sentence of eachparagraph, introductory phrases like “In summary, . . . ”INFO2009 – p.6/16Critical EvaluationProvenance – Who wrote the paper? Is it in arespected source? How many times has it been citedby others?Relevance – Is it fully relevant? Bear in mind thatproblems can be common to different disciplines, sorelevance has to be interpreted carefully.Objectivity – Is the article balanced and reasoned, ordoes it have an ‘agenda’?Method – appropriate? properly applied?Presentation – Poor, lazy presentation suggests lowstandards, which are just as likely to havecompromised the underlying research.Timeliness – Is the source included as part of thehistorical development, or is it up to the minute?INFO2009 – p.7/16Developing Your JudgementOrientationSources– Wikipedia– Google search on keywords– Google Scholar . . . etc.Approaches– Skim reading– Cross referencing – look for convergence and commonalities (but not ‘dumbrepetition’!)ResearchSources– Trusted sources: TDNet, ACM Digital Library, SSRN, etc.Approaches– Focus on abstracts– Skim reading– Who is citing whom?INFO2009 – p.8/16Evaluation MatrixMatrix methods are popular for evaluating literature.R. Klopper, S. Lubbe and H. Rugbeer “The matrixmethod of literature review”, Alternation, vol. 14:1(2007) 262–276.http://alternation.ukzn.ac.za/docs/14.1/12Klopper.pdfOne possibility is to have just one matrix – a row foreach source, a column for each criterion, and a tick ineach cell for which that source meets that criterion.Could also use a numeric score, e.g., 1–5, in place of atick (and sum across rows).Another possibility is to have one matrix per source,rows for who? what? where? when? why? andcolumns for 1–5 scores:http://www.library.dmu.ac.uk/Images/Selfstudy/ISEMLeaflet.pdfINFO2009 – p.9/16Frequently Cited PapersGo to Google Scholar and enter “Chomsky SyntacticStructures”. It reported 12857 citations (on 7 October2012).Noam Chomsky is a highly cited author!Can you find any more highly cited sources? (I knowone with >25000.)“Turing Computing Machinery Intelligence” gave 5527citations; “Knuth Plass paragraphs” gave 190 citations.My best-cited paper has 115Citation rate is primarily an indicator of influence, andonly indirectly indicates quality.Have a look at the ACM Digital Library.INFO2009 – p.10/16Peer ReviewReputable scientific journals operate a system of peerreview .Articles are only accepted for publication afterrecommendation by anonymous experts in the field,who often require extensive revisions and re-reviewbefore acceptance.Standards of review can vary quite widely betweenjournals.How do you know what are “good” journals?ISI impact factor is useful (but beware!).Web of Knowledge at http://wok.mimas.ac.uk/publishes Journal Citation Reports (accessible fromLibrary website via “Resources” then “A-Z List . . . ”buttons).INFO2009 – p.11/16Grey LiteratureThis is written material that can be difficult to findbecause it was not peer-reviewed, or commerciallypublished, hence not archived in libraries.Examples are technical manuals, preprints ofunpublished papers, reports from working groups,patents, newspaper articles, low print-run andself-published books, etc.It can be an important source of information, but lack ofbibliographic control means that basic information suchas author, publication date or publishing body may notbe easily discerned.These days, there is a vast amount of (largely) greyliterature on the web.Remember: a URL or URI is NOT a bibliographicsource! Things change quickly on the Web.INFO2009 – p.12/16Handling Grey LiteratureA URL/URI is no substitute for full and completebibliographic details.Often, the web article will be a pre- or post-print of apaper that was properly published.Search out the original source and give full details.If you cannot find them, you should seriously considerabandoning this source.If you consider the information is too valuable orinteresting to abandon, DO NOT simply pretend that thesource is a good and legitimate one.Make it very clear that the source has weakprovenance.Because web sources are ephemeral, you MUST give a“last accessed” date.INFO2009 – p.13/16AssignmentSadly, this is still under constructionYou are asked to prepare a short annotatedbibliography, just two sources.One will be selected from a list, the other will be freechoice.You will be given a specification for the bibliographystyle (see last slide).You will use Mendeley, a free reference manager(although I vastly prefer BIBTEX).http://www.mendeley.comIt’s also an academic social network, so you will form agroup with other members of your tutor group.INFO2009 – p.14/16Things to be Aware ofResources (including marking scheme) in edshare –currently inaccessibleThe listed articles are drawn from various sources:journal articles, book chapters, conferenceproceedings, professional magazine articles etc.Skim read them and compare the different styles andcontent.Develop your knowledge of useful and/or trustedsources:– ePrints Southampton– University Library– Google Scholar . . .WARNING Mendeley has bugs! Always checkits outputs!INFO2009 – p.15/16An Endnote on Bibliography StylesThe outstandingly important thing is that all referencesare complete and consistent.Currently, there are two broad standards: (i) numericaland (ii) name-and-date sometimes called ‘Harvard’.(The latter is VASTLY superior.)Many publishing houses have their own variants:ACM http://www.acm.org/publications/latex_style/IEEE http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecitationref.pdfOne of the main inconsistency traps for Harvard styleis full first name versus initials only. (Again, the latter isVASTLY superior.)NEVER refer to a multi-author paper by the first authoralone. This is inexcusable! Knuth and Plass (1981)NOT Knuth (1981).INFO2009 – p.16/16

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