Learning Outcomes
On completion of 06-06991 Research Skills, the student should be able to:

1. Understand modes of communication in the computing sciences;
2. Appreciate the structure of the literature of the computing sciences in general and a chosen research field in particular;
3. Methodically search the literature to investigate a research topic;
4. Make effective presentations both orally and in writing.

This course is assessed solely by continuous assessment: there is no written examination. The assessment is the same for MSc students (and occasional students) and research students. To view your assessed work, follow this link:

Part I	TeX and LaTeX: Document preparation tools LaTeX is widely used in the computing sciences to prepare technical documents. Indeed many journals and conferences prefer to receive final submissions in LaTeX and provide their own styles for authors to use. 1 - Introduction This lecture will introduce software necessary to produce documents using LaTeX in the School of Computer Science. It will also show the basics of producing first LaTeX documents. After this lecture, students should be able to: briefly explain the relationship between TeX and LaTeX; prepare an elementary LaTeX document, producing .dvi, .ps and .pdf output; prepare a simple article in LaTeX, including some formatting; prepare a table in LaTeX; prepare a figure in LaTeX; include Encapsulated PostScript in a LaTeX document; know where to get further information about LaTeX. Slides Local Guide to Using LaTeX The Not So Short Guide to LaTeX2e example1.tex example2.tex 2 - Slightly more advanced LaTeX This lecture adds to the previous introduction to LaTeX and introduces BibTeX. After this lecture, students should: know more about formatting in LaTeX; prepare a list of references using BibTeX; know what data items are important when describing common types of Computer Science literature make references in one of the inbuilt LaTeX styles or use a package to import a style. Slides The JabRef reference manager
Part II	Bibliographic data collecting You will need to read books, journal articles, conference papers, theses, technical reports, WWW pages and other material from the first day of your work on your theses, mini-project or project. It is important to record accurately sufficient information for you to be able to identify the items you have read so you can find them again or so you can give details (for instance when you write your own reports) to enable other people to find them. This part introduces the essential data elements needed to record bibliographic information but does not deal with formatting this data in reports. After this part, you should: know the basic data elements to be collected for common forms of technical literature (eg books, journal articles, conferences, theses and technical reports); explain why it is important to record such information fully and consistently; appreciate that a high standard of data is taken fore granted in the School's theses and reports; understand that a very few items will present difficulties and know how to cope with difficult cases; know the proportions of the forms of material that typically occur in the literature of computing. 1 - The consequences of incorrect referencing This is a practical session that demonstrates how difficult it is to find journal papers, conference papers and technical reports without accurate references and a knowledge of the literature of Computing. The moral of the session is that competent researchers know how to create accurate references. Worksheet Worksheet solutions 2 - Basic data collection The talk introduces the need to collect bibliographic information, the forms of material and the common data items to be collected. A practical session looking at more problematic bibliographic items, designed to give you some quick experience of looking for less obvious data and to know when to stop and ask for help. You will contribute data toward a survey of the correctness of referencing in computing literature and the proportions of the forms of literature. Slides Worksheet Example title pages   local access only Referencing survey worksheet Survey results
Part III	Searching Researchers need to be able to find relevant literature on their topics. To be an effective searcher, you must understand: the structure and distribution of the literature in your field; how to evaluate information retrieval databases; how to carry out a search; how to evaluate your results. 1 - Reading, peer review and systematic literature searching Reading is not a start-to-end process but should be iterative. Peer-review should give you some quality assurance. Individual indexing and abstracting services can be evaluated according to a range of criteria. Researchers know the appropriate services and are able to select a range to obtain a good coverage of their target literature. After this lecture, students should: be able to decide when to perform retrospective and current awareness searches; understand the effect of scatter on their search; define recall and relevance or precision and explain their effects on search results; appreciate the differing qualities of the forms of literature and their effect on getting timely information; be able to form a search strategy, choosing appropriate databases to obtain a good profile of the literature; form a search, carry it out and evaluate the results. Slides Peer review form for a conference paper   local access only 2 - Machine-based searching - 1 Catalogues of copyright deposit libraries are introduced as sources of information about books. Two machine-based services - Inspec and Medline - are reviewed. These are both keyword-based services. After this lecture, students should be able to: explain why the catalogues of copyright deposit libraries are significant sources of information; retrieve information about books from an appropriate copyright deposit library; perform searches in a keyword-based retrieval system such as Inspec, Medline or similar; use some more advanced features (such as truncation) to obtain more accurate results, to limit searches by date and time and to have bibliographic records sent to them by email. Slides Information searching in computing and AI Step-by-step guide to searching Inspec 3 - Machine-based searching - 2 This lecture introduces searching for specific forms: for theses and dissertations from the UK and North America and for computing science reports. Citation searching is introduced as a method of searching for relevant papers that cite a relevant paper. Finally, there is a warning about the unsystematic nature of many WWW- based services. After this lecture, students should be able to: plan and execute a search for UK and North American theses and dissertations; find information about and usually retrieve copies of computing science technical reports; given a relevant paper, use Science Citation Index or Science Citation Index to search for other papers; explain why the use of many WWW-based resources is not likely to give a systematic search. Slides Information searching in computing and AI Step-by-step guide to searching Citation Indexes
Part IV	Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) IPR is concerned with ownership and control of ideas - "intellectual output". It is an important issue in research both because you must avoid infringing others' IPRs and know your own rights. 1 - Intellectual Property Rights IPR legislation is reviewed and its component parts of copyright, moral rights and patents are reviewed. The difficulties of IPR set against developments in technology are discussed. Separately, plagiarism as a form of breach of copyright is discussed and an example given. Slides UK patent search engine US patent search engine UK Intellectual Property Office Play the IP Armour game: how much do you know about intellectual property?
Part V	Time management This part about time management. It looks at several important themes, including: why people seem to have so little time; commercial products for time management and how to manage your time. A simple message about time management is presented. 1 - How to Beat Time Every day should have a plan of what you are going to do for that day - and the time you have budgeted for those activities. Commentary Managing Time - personal timesheets Managing Time - follow-up on personal timesheets Managing Time - techniques for improvement Summary/press annoucement about the Stanford multitasking study The full Stanford multitasking study paper "Time Management" by Randy Pausch, November 2007 [video of a talk]
Part VI	Presentations All researchers should be able to present their work to an audience. There are some basic skills which should not be neglected. These can be summed up as: preparation; structure and evaluation and improvement. 1 To give a good talk, you should: consider your audience and purpose of your talk; prepare your talk; structure your talk; design your slides or presentation well; evaluate your performance. Slides
Part VII	Writing Writing is a key skill in science and is no less important in a discipline heavily reliant on electronic communication. A very few people are lucky enough to write well: most have to learn the habits and techniques of good writing. 1 - Writing The practice of writing is presented as being simply a expanding an idea into research and a paper. Writing is shown to be a way of showing off intellectual abilities and in particular, powers of analysis and interpretation. After this lecture, students should: appreciate the importance of structure in writing; appreciate the need to plan before writing; know the range of resources to aid writing; be able to plan their writing time; appreciate the need to review their own writing; understand the importance of analysis and interpretation in technical writing; realize that good writing is a habit formed from practise and critical observation of others' work. Slides 2 - Writing abstracts There are three types of abstract: descriptive, informative and critical. The qualities of a good abstract are reviewed and some of the common errors are given. Practical experience is based around some examples of abstracts which are reviewed to see if they follow the guidelines and avoid the common errors. After this lecture, students should be able to: distinguish between indicative, information and critical abstracts; write an informative abstract ; avoid the common errors of abstract writing. Slides Example abstracts   local access only Comparing abstracts   local access only 3 - Referencing and references Researchers are expected to refer to the work of others in their own written work. This is done to acknowledge intellectual debt; to support facts or claims; to enable readers to explore related material. Whatever the reason, it is important to present references in a way that will communicate the information necessary for the reader to identify the item referenced effectively and easily. After this lecture, students should know how to: avoid plagiarism; attribute the work of others properly; make references from a text to a list of references; the use of the Vancouver and Harvard system of references; use LaTeX and BibTeX to form references from a text and present a list of references. Slides How good are you at avoiding plagiarism? - a worksheet   local access only