Information & Writing Resources

BLDG 6571
Joshua Chalifour
joshua.chalifour@concordia.ca
Download from https://goo.gl/IUkZ2A

Over the next ~30 minutes

Web site resources
Finding articles, journals, etc.
Writing & citing, bibliography

to do the
literature
review in
support of
your project

Library

Your Project?
Brainstorm ideas and explore a few
Group the research into topics and determine your focus
Start searching specifically for your focus
Track

terms used to describe the research

search strategies
useful databases
references that you find (youll need these later)
Be selective (dates, sources, etc.)

Literature Review
Synthesis
Introduces the issues
Gives background
Gives justification for what youre doing
Evaluate what others have written
relationships between the literature
what has been learned
flaws
gaps

Finding articles, journals, and

more

Journals

Other ways of fi nding sources?

Discovery search
Review articles
Key authors
Citations in existing articles
Other citations

Databases

Database diff erences: free & licensed

Google Scholar

Compendex

Covers all subject areas

Focused on engineering

Do not know what is covered

Lists everything it covers

Update frequency is not necessarily

regular

Compendex updates on a weekly

schedule

Will find a broad variety of sources (e.g.

patents, government reports)

More narrowed regarding what formats it

covers

Does not group information by subject

area

Provides indexing and abstracting

Writing & citing, bibliography

Citing
What do you need to cite?
A copy of the text from another document, web site, or book
Paraphrasing someones words or idea
Images, graphs, etc.

What do you not need to cite?

Common knowledge facts, events, dates, concepts.

Engineers shall give proper credit for engineering work to those to whom credit is due, and
shall recognize the proprietary interests of others. Whenever possible, they shall name the
person or persons who may be responsible for designs, inventions, writings or other
accomplishments.
From Canon 5. Reputation By Merit, in the ASCE Code of Ethics http://www.asce.org/code-of-ethics/

In-text Author-Date References

A global study (Chalifour 2016) of public perception
identified engineers from Concordia as the worlds
best.
Chalifour (2016) discovered that global opinion
ASCE style.
Chicago adds a comma and page
numbers

What is RefWorks?

Guides to doing a literature review

Martha, Davis, Kaaron Joann Davis, and Marion Dunagan.
Scientific Papers and Presentations. 3rd ed. London:
Academic Press, 2012.
(http://clues.concordia.ca/record=b2855203~S0 )
See chapter 4, 12 (writing a lit. review & ethics) and
Appendix 4 gives an example of a literature review.

Copyright 2013 Elsevier

Inc.

Randolph, J. J. "A Guide to Writing the Dissertation

Literature Review." Practical Assessment, Research &
Evaluation 14.13 (2009): 2. (http://pareonline.net/pdf/v14n13.pdf)
Quick guide for writing a literature review
http://library.concordia.ca/help/writing/literature-review.php

Citation/Bibliography Style Guides

Style Guides
ASCE: Download a PDF on
Author-Date reference and
other style issues
Concordias links to access
the complete
Chicago Manual of Style
online or the quick reference
guide

Library Writing
Guides
Library guides to citing and
RefWorks
Engineering guide to writing
Library copyright guide

Questions?