Category: 02 – Literature Review
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Sources of Academic Papers
Many places to get papers on the Internet. Some run as businesses so charge registration fee or fee/paper. ITALICS, as referenced in the Research Activity, make no charge. IEEE and ACM make published material available for members.
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Research Activity
The Innovation in Teaching and Learning in Information and Computer Sciences journal has plenty of papers available for reading.
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References
In style required by publication. Comprehensive list including every source cited in paper.
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Acknowledgements
May be at the beginning or end of paper. Sponsor – may be a company or funding body. Colleagues or co-workers. If they made major contribution, they should be mentioned as author.
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Evaluation and future work
Usually weakest part of Bachelor dissertation. Covers what went well and what has caused problems. Critical evaluation of own work in order to do it better next time. Required for final year project. Provides next set of research questions.
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Conclusions
How evidence supports, or not, the tested hypothesis. In mathematics we can formally prove things, in other areas we can state the body of evidence supports the theory.
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Contribution to knowledge
Presentation of research work and detailed discussion of what has been done. Includes ideas, concepts, tested hypothesis and evidence that conclusion is based on.
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Introduction
Brief overview of subject area & context for research. Takes reader from current level of knowledge to be able to follow rest of paper. More comprehensive introduction required if target audience is more general reader.
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Keywords
Some publishers require the selection of keywords from a specified list so they can catalogue the paper appropriately, this is less common now due to the availability of full text search engines.