The Art of Organizing Your Literature

In the last post, we explored the use of bibliographic databases to locate papers and articles. In this final post we will look at ways in which to organize what you’ve found.

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Sorting your results

Most databases allow you to sort your results list in a variety of ways. This could be by relevance, author, date or some other criteria. Sorting your results can be particularly helpful if you’re trying to find particular authors or get a chronological perspective on the development of a subject.

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E-mailing results

Most bibliographic databases will allow you to select references that interest you from your results and then either download them as a text file, print them off or E-mail them to yourself.

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Setting Alerts

You may wish to run certain searches on a regular basis to check for new material being published on a topic of interest. Many databases allow you to save searches accompanied by an E-mail address and run these searches on a regular schedule (daily/weekly/monthly). You will be automatically E-mailed the results of your search. You may also be able to set up an RSS feed connected to a search so that you can keep up with new publications using a feed reading application such as GoogleReader.

As a first step, you will usually need to register with the database provider. The next step is to prepare your search and then find the search alert function on the database you are using. This will vary with each database so check the help file for the service you are using.

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Reference management software

Reference management software can save you a lot of time! The software allows you to keep a personal database of references which you have collected from the web, library catalogs, printed material or bibliographic databases. You can usually add your own annotations to records and attach an electronic copy of papers if they are available. Most of these applications can be accessed from anywhere over the web making them convenient to use. Many packages allow you to share your reference libraries with others making it easy to exchange literature research with colleagues.

Reference management software simplifies taking bibliographic data from databases and catalogs. Databases like SCOPUS and Web of Science support direct export to popular reference management packages. Most databases can produce a downloadable .RIS file from selected records which can then be uploaded and read by the majority of reference management programs.

When you come to word-process your reports and papers, you can add citations from your reference management software at the appropriate points in your document. The reference management software will automatically generate a correctly formatted and sorted bibliography at the end of your document. Most reference management software can output citations in a range of formats from Harvard standard through to house-styles for specific journals.

You may have access to commercial reference management software through the institution you work/study at. Common packages include RefWorks, ProCite and EndNote. Check with your library and/or IT service to find out about what software you can access. There are also several free reference management software applications available including Mendelay and Zotero. Before you choose a package it’s a good idea to consider the following –

• Does it support the citation styles you will need?
• Are there limitations on how many references you can store?
• Which operating system platforms (Windows/Mac/Linux) are supported and which Word processors (MS Word, OpenOffice etc.)?

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Summary

This concludes our series of posts on literature searching skills. Although most of the information is quite general, you’ll find the techniques widely applicable to a whole range of subjects and databases.

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I’m currently the Assistant Subject Librarian for Biochemistry at the Radcliffe Science Library, Oxford University. My job is to provide library support services to staff and students in the Biochemistry Department at Oxford University. Most of the information presented in these blog posts is based on materials I have used to help train students at the University in literature searching skills and upon my own personal experience as a researcher in microbial genetics. To find out more about me and my activities, please visit my blog and follow me on Twitter.

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In case you missed it, check out the rest of the series:

Choose the Right Literature Research Tools (or Else…)

Three Steps to Mastering Your Literature Searches

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