18 March: Literature searching and article summary

*** No class on 11 March! ***

For 18 March:
 

Searching the scientific literature:

Try using some literature searching tools to locate scientific papers in a field of interest to you.
Bring questions to class!

1) Choose a few keywords in your field of interest, and try searching for articles in at least two different databases - e.g. Pubmed, Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar (links below). Try different combinations of keywords, and maybe author names, and see what you find.

2) Choose one article from the lists of results.
Is an abstract available?
Is the full text available online?
Can you find the journal's website easily from the information and links in the database you are using?
How many times has this article been cited by other articles in this database?


Some links:
http://scholar.google.at/
http://www.scopus.com/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?db=pubmed
http://apps.webofknowledge.com/UA_GeneralSearch_input.do?product=UA&search_mode=GeneralSearch
These and others are at the UniVie library site - click on "Datenbanken"
http://bibliothek.univie.ac.at/eressourcen.html

Also check out some reference management programs, such as Mendeley, Zotero, EndNote, JabRef, and any others you might know about.

Summarizing a research article:

3) Read this short article on how to read a scientific paper:

https://medium.com/elysium-health/how-to-read-a-scientific-paper-695188037080

Note that this was written for non-scientists, but the ideas (mostly) apply to us as well. We will discuss this article in class. 
(Here is a pdf of the article: https://homepage.univie.ac.at/brian.metscher/Guide_to_Reading_and_Understanding_a_Scientific_Paper.pdf )


4) Read a primary research article in your field or a field of interest to you, and be prepared to give the class a very short oral summary of its main points.

Points to cover (1-2 sentences for each):

What question, problem, or hypothesis does the research address?
What was the approach or method used?
What did the authors find out: what is the most important result reported in this paper?
What is the overall importance or interest of this work?

Please write or print your summary in a form that you can hand in.