RM & IPR

Module 2
Literature Review and Technical Reading
Literature Review and Technical Reading
 The primary goal of literature review is to know the use of
content/ideas/approaches in the literature to correctly
identify the problem that is vaguely known beforehand,
to advocate a specific approach adopted to
understanding the problem, and to access the choice of
methods used.
 It also helps the researcher understand clearly that the
research to be undertaken would contribute something
new and innovative.
 The quality of such review can be determined by
evaluating if it includes appropriate breadth and depth
of the area under study, clarity, rigor, consistency,
effective analysis.
 New and Existing Knowledge
 New knowledge in research can only be interpreted within the
context of what is already known, and cannot exist without
the foundation of existing knowledge.
 The new knowledge can have vastly different interpretations
depending on what the researcher’s background, and one’s
perception of that new knowledge can change from
indifference to excitement (or vice versa), depending on what
else one knows.
 The existing knowledge is needed to make the case that there
is a problem and that it is important.
 A researcher can infer that the new knowledge does not yet
exist by describing what other knowledge already exists and
by pointing out that this part is missing so that what we have is
original.
 To do this, the researcher again needs the existing
knowledge: the context, the significance, the originality,
and the tools.
 Normally, one finds this knowledge by reading and
surveying the literature in the field that was established
long ago and also about the more recent knowledge
which is in fact always changing.
 With this foundation in place, the new knowledge that one
will make will be much more difficult to challenge than
without that strong foundation in place which is ensured
with lots of references to the literature.
 The textbooks contain the older established knowledge
and the research papers the newer work.
 Reading a textbook is not too difficult for it is written as a
teaching instrument, and the author of the textbook
normally starts from the basics and take the reader,
through everything that one needs to be able to
understand that topic.
 This is not at all the case with a research paper where the
goal is normally to present a small piece of new
knowledge.
 The research paper is written for other researchers out on
the edge of knowledge and it assumes that the reader
already knows a lot in that field.
 A researcher may find oneself continually going back to
other sources to try and interpret what is going on in a
particular research paper
 Good literature review
 It must explain how a research item builds on another
one.
 Useful research should elucidate how and why certain
technical development took place, so that it is easy for
the reader to comprehend why the present talk is being
undertaken, and a good literature survey would provide a
convincing under to that question.
 An effective review of literature ensures a firm foundation
for advancing knowledge, facilitates theoretical growth,
eliminates as areas that might be of interest, and opens
new avenues of possible work.
 An efficient literature review is centered around concepts
and not authors.
 A good literature survey is the first expectation of a
supervisor from the research student, and when done well
can create a good impression that the state of art in the
chosen field is well understood.
 A literature review should be able to summarize as to what
is already known from the state of the art, detail the key
concepts and the main factors or parameters and the
underlying relationships between those, describe any
complementary existing approaches, enumerate the
inconsistencies or shortcomings in the published work,
identify the reported results that are inconclusive or
contradictory, and provide a compulsive reason to do
further work in the field.
 A good literature survey : two-step
process
(i) Identify the major topics or subtopics or concepts relevant to the
subject under consideration.
(ii) Place the citation of the relevant source
(article/patent/website/data, etc.) in the correct category of the
concept/topic/subtopic.
 It could be that as one is reading and comes across something that
one considers to be very important for one’s work, a core principle or
a description of something that just sounds really good, and one is
excited to have found it. Naturally, one highlights that section or
underlines it.
 Then one should write about the highlighted part without copying it.
 To build the knowledge foundation, one needs to be reading and
learning continually. But that is not enough, one also needs to be
writing about what one has read.
 Analysis and Synthesis of Prior Art
 After collecting the sources, usually articles, intended to be used in
the literature review, the researcher is ready to break down each
article and identify the useful content in it, and then synthesize the
collection of articles (integrate them and identify the conclusions
that can be made from the articles as a group).
 A literature survey grid of N topics and M sources is shown below to
help crystallize the information in different categories.
 Steps to analyse
 (i) Understanding the hypothesis,
 (ii) Understanding the models and the experimental
conditions used,
 (iii) Making connections,
 (iv) Comparing and contrasting the various information,
and
 (v) Finding out the strong points and the loopholes.
 The goal of literature survey is to bring out something new
to work on through the identification of unsolved issues,
determine the problems in the existing models or
experimental designs, and present a novel idea and
recommendations.
 No matter where one gets the available information, one
needs to critically evaluate each resource that the
researcher wishes to cite.
 Relying on refereed articles published in scholarly journals
or granted patents can save the researcher a lot of time.
Criteria that could help the researcher in
the evaluation of the information under
study:
 1. Authority: What are the author’s credentials and affiliation?
Who publishes the information?
 2. Accuracy: Based on what one already knows about the
topic or from reading other sources, does the information seem
credible? Does the author cite other sources in a reference list
or bibliography, to support the information presented?
 3. Scope: Is the source at an appropriate comprehension or
research level?
 There are other criteria to consider as well, such as currency,
objectivity, and purpose. It is important to ensure that the
search question is neither too narrow nor too broad.
 Bibliographic Databases
 “Bibliographic databases” refer to “abstracting and
indexing services” useful for collecting citation-related
information and possibly abstracts of research articles
from scholarly literature and making them available
through search.
 Performing simultaneous searches through such large
databases may allow researchers to overtly rely on any
one database and be limited by the intrinsic shortcoming
of any one of them for quality research.
 A researcher should be able to quickly identify the
databases that are of use in the idea or problem that one
wishes to explore.
 The popular bibliographic databases:
Web of Science and Google Scholar
Web of Science
 Web of Science (formerly known as ISI or Thomson
Reuters) includes multiple databases, as well as
specialized tools.
 It is a good search tool for scholarly materials requiring
institutional license and allows the researcher to search
in a particular topic of interest, which can be made by
selection in fields that are available in drop down menu
such as title, topic, author, address, etc.
 The tool also allows sorting by number of citations
(highest to lowest), publication date.
 Put quotes around phrases, add more keywords, or use the
“Refine Results” panel on the left to narrow down the
search by keyword, phrases in quotation marks, type of
material such as peer-reviewed journal articles, date,
language, and more.
Expanding the search results is possible by looking for
alternate word endings, breaking the search concepts
down, thinking of alternate search terms (including
scientific names if applicable)
“Cited reference search” option enables a researcher
to trace articles which have cited a formerly published
paper. Using this element, it is possible to find how a
familiar idea has been applied, improved, or extended
subsequently.
A structured search like this that enables narrowing
and refining what one is looking for is effective to
ensure that the results throw up relevant sources and
time spent in studying those is likely to be well utilized.
Based on the researcher’s need the search result
can be broadened or narrowed down using the built-
in fields provided in this website.
When clicked on any of the search results, this
website provides the title of the paper, authors, the
type of journal, volume, issue number and year of
publication, abstract, keywords, etc., so that the
researcher has enough information to decide if it is
worthwhile to acquire the full version of the paper.
 Google and Google Scholar
 Google is a great place to start one’s search when one
is starting out on a topic. It can be helpful in finding
freely available information, such as reports from
governments, organizations, companies, and so on.
Limitations of Google search:
(i) It’s a “black box” of information. It searches
everything on the Internet, with no quality control—
one does not know where results are coming from.
(ii) There are limited search functionality and
refinement options
 What about Google Scholar?
 Google Scholar is a search engine that helps users find
scholarly literature from many sources and disciplines.
 However, there are limitations:
1. Some of the results are not actually scholarly. An
article may look scholarly at first glance, but is not a
good source upon further inspection.
2. It is not comprehensive (incomplete). Some
publishers do not make their content available to
Google Scholar.
3. There is limited search functionality and refinement
options (narrowing search results to a category).
 Search operators:
 There are search operators that can be used to help
narrow down the results. These help one find more relevant
and useful sources of information.
 Operators can be combined within searches. Here are
some basic ones that one can use:
(i) OR—Broadens search by capturing synonyms or
variant spellings of a concept. Example: Synchronous OR
asynchronous will find results that have either term
present.
(ii) Brackets/Parentheses ( )—Gather OR’d synonyms of
a concept together, while combining them with another
concept. Example: RAM (synchronous OR
asynchronous).
 (iii) Quotation marks “ ”—Narrow the search by finding
words together as a phrase, instead of separately.
Example: RAM (synchronous OR asynchronous) “Texas
Instruments”.
 (iv) Site—limits the search to results from a specific domain
or website. This operator is helpful when searching specific
websites such as the BC government, which is Example:
RAM (synchronous OR asynchronous) “Texas Instruments”
site: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
 (v) Filetype—limits the search to results with a specific file
extension one could look for pdf’s, PowerPoint
presentations, Excel spreadsheets, and so on. Example:
RAM (synchronous OR asynchronous) “Texas Instruments”
site: http:// ieeexplore.ieee.org, filetype: pdf.
 The Search Tools button at the top of the Google results
gives us a variety of other options, such as limiting the
results by date. There are other operators and tools that
one can use in Google and Google Scholar. Google is
but one search tool a researcher can use—it is not the
only one!
 To find the best resources on a topic, one should search
in academic databases, in addition to Google.
 Databases provide access to journal articles and
conference proceedings, as well as other scholarly
resources. One gets more relevant and focused results,
because they have better quality control and search
functionality.
 One should choose a database based on subject area,
date coverage, and publication type.
 Effective Search: The Way Forward
 A scholarly publication is one wherein the published
outcome is authored by researchers in a specific field of
skill.
 Such work cites all source contents used and is generally
peer reviewed for accuracy and validity before
publication.
 Essentially, the audience for such works is fellow experts
and students in the field.
 The content is typically more complex and advanced
than those found in general magazines.
 While most of the engineering researchers need to refer
articles that appear in scholarly journals, books or other
peer-reviewed sources, there is also a substantially
useful content in more popular publications.
 A researcher should use all search tools for
comprehensive search. No one place or one source
exists that will provide all the information one needs.
 A researcher must consider what type of information is
needed, and where it could be found. Not all
information is available online. Some information is only
available in print.
In such a case, the researcher should look for similar
studies that would be applicable to the specific
topic; look for broad information to be published.
Searching is an iterative process:
• Experiment with different keywords and operators;
• Evaluate and assess results, use filters;
• Modify the search as needed; and
• When relevant articles are found, look at their citations
and references.
After the search is complete, the researcher needs to
engage in critical and thorough reading, making
observation of the salient points in those sources, and
summarize the findings.
A detailed comparison and contrast of the findings is
also required to be done. This entire process may be
needed to be done multiple times.
 The conclusion of the entire process of literature survey
includes a summary of the relevant and important work
done, and also the identification of the missing links and
the challenges in the open problems in the area under
study.
 One must note that the literature survey is a continuous
and cyclical process that may involve the researcher
going back and forth till the end of the research project.
 It is mandatory for a Ph.D. scholar to write a synopsis of
the topic and submit it to the doctoral committee for
approval. During this stage, the scholar needs to
undertake an extensive literature survey connected with
the problem.
 For this purpose, the archived journals and published or
unpublished bibliographies are the first place to check
out.
 Introduction to Technical Reading
 It is now imperative for any active researcher to keep oneself
abreast with research outcomes in their field of interest.
 Finding the right work to read can be difficult.
 The literature where knowledge is archived is very
fragmented and there are bits and pieces all over the place.
Very rarely will one find everything that one wants close
together in one place.
 However, it is obvious that the number of papers relevant to
a particular researcher is very few.
 It is also important to know where to read from; relying on
refereed journals and books published by reputed publishers
is always better than relying on easily available random
articles off the web.
 Given the abundance of journal articles, it is useful to
adopt a quick, purposeful, and useful way of reading
these manuscripts.
 It is not the same as reading a newspaper. It may require
rereading the paper multiple times and one might
expect to spend many hours reading the paper.
 A simple, efficient, and logical approach is described in
this section for identifying articles and reading them
suitably for effective research.
 Amount of time to be spent will get ascertained after an
initial skimming through the paper to decide whether it is
worth careful reading. There will also be papers where it
is not worth reading all the details in the first instance.
 Start out the skimming process by reading the title and
keywords.
 If on reading these, it does not sufficiently seem to be
interesting; it is better to stop reading and look for
something else to read.
 One should then read the abstract to get an overview of
the paper in minimum time.
 Again, if it does not seem sufficiently important to the field
of study, one should stop reading further.
 If the abstract is of interest, one should skip most of the
paper and go straight to the conclusions to find if the
paper is relevant to the intended purpose, and if so, then
one should read the figures, tables, and the captions
therein, because these would not take much time but
would provide a broad enough idea as to what was
done in the paper.
 If the paper has continued to be of interest so far, then
one is now ready to delve into the Introduction section to
know the background information about the work and
also to ascertain why the authors did that particular study
and in what ways the paper furthers the state of the art.
 The next sections to read are the Results and Discussion
sections which is really the heart of the paper.
 One should really read further sections like the
Experimental Setup/Modeling, etc., only if one is really
interested and wishes to understand exactly what was
done to better understand the meaning of the data and
its interpretation.
 As one works through the literature in this way, one should
consider not only the knowledge that is written down but
also the reputation of the people who made that
 Conceptualizing Research
 The characteristics of a research objective are that it must
have new knowledge at the center, and that it must be
accepted by the community of other researchers and
recognized as significant.
 But how do we actually conceptualize the research?
Besides being original and significant, a good research
problem should also be solvable or achievable.
 The significance and the originality and all the theory that
we read and tools and methods that we need to take on
a problem, all of these normally come from the existing
recorded literature and knowledge in the field.
 Coming up with a good research objective,
conceptualizing the research that meets all of these
requirements is a tough thing to do.
If one is doing research at the Ph.D. level or higher,
then conceptualizing the research is probably
something that one needs to do oneself. This is a very
tough step because one needs to know all that
literature in the field.
So, when working at the Ph.D. level, one needs to be
prepared to become that expert, one needs to be
continually reading the literature so as to bring
together the three parts:
(i) significant problem,
(ii) the knowledge that will address it, and
(iii) a possible way to make that new knowledge.
 How these three aspects would come together will be different
for every person doing research and it will be different in every
field, but the only way to be that expert is by immersing oneself
in the literature and knowing about what already exists in the
field.
 However, if one is working on a research project that is of a
smaller scope than a Ph.D., let us say a master’s thesis, then
conceptualizing the research is possibly too tough to do,
and one does not have the time that it takes to become
that expert at the edge of knowledge.
 In this case, the researcher needs the help of someone
else, typically the supervisor who may already be an
expert and an active researcher in that field, and may
advise on what a good research objective might be.
 An established researcher in any field should be able to
immediately point to the landmark literature that one
should read first. Otherwise one would need to spend a lot
of time reading the literature to discover.
 As engineers, we like to build things, and that’s good, but
the objective of research is to make knowledge.
 Even if what one is building is new and has never been
built before, if it is something that any experienced and
competent engineer could have come up with, one runs
the risk of one’s work being labeled obvious and rejected
as research.
 Critical and Creative Reading
 Reading a research paper is a critical process.
 The reader should not be under the assumption that reported
results or arguments are correct. Rather, being suspicious and
asking appropriate questions is in fact a good thing.
 Have the authors attempted to solve the right problem?
 Are there simpler solutions that have not been considered?
 What are the limitations (both stated and ignored) of the solution
and are there any missing links?
 Are the assumptions that were made reasonable?
 Is there a logical flow to the paper or is there a flaw in the
reasoning?
 These need to be ascertained apart from the relevance and
the importance of the work, by careful reading.
 Use of judgemental approach and boldness to make
judgments is needed while reading.
 Flexibility to discard previous erroneous judgments is also
critical.
 Additionally, it is important to ascertain whether the data
presented in the paper is right data to substantiate the
argument that was made in the paper and whether the
data was gathered and interpreted in a correct manner.
 It is also important to decipher whether some other
dataset would have been more compelling.
Critical reading is relatively easy. It is relatively easier
to critically read to find the mistakes than to read it
so as to find the good ideas in the paper.
 Reading creatively is harder, and requires a positive
approach in search.
 In creative reading, the idea is to actively look for other
applications, interesting generalizations, or extended work
which the authors might have missed?
 Are there plausible modifications that may throw up
important practical challenges? One might be able to
decipher properly if one would like to start researching an
extended part of this work, and what should be the
immediate next aspect to focus upon.
 Taking Notes While Reading
 A researcher reads to write and writes well only if the
reading skills are good.
 The bridge between reading and actually writing a paper is
the act of taking notes during and shortly after the process
of reading.
 There is a well-known saying that the faintest writing is better
than the best memory, and it applies to researchers who
need to read and build on that knowledge to write building
on the notes taken.
 Many researchers take notes on the margins of their copies
of papers or even digitally on an article aggregator tool.
 In each research paper, there are a lot of things that one might
like to highlight for later use such as definitions, explanations,
and concepts.
 On completing a thorough reading, a good technical
reading should end with a summary of the paper in a few
sentences describing the contributions.
 But to elucidate the technical merit, the paper needs to be
looked at from comparative perspective with respect to
existing works in that specific area.
 A thorough reading should bring out whether there are
new ideas in the paper, or if existing ideas were
implemented through experiments or in a new application,
or if different existing ideas were brought together under a
novel framework.
 Obviously, the type of contribution a paper is actually
making can be determined better by having read other
papers in the area.
 Attributions and Citations: Giving
Credit Wherever Due
 There is an importance of expanding attributions and
acknowledgments to roles and responsibilities beyond
primary authors of journal articles. This would be applicable
especially to scientific research projects that involved
diverse skill sets and expertise.
 Academic writing, by definition, must follow certain rules
and conventions. Among the most important of these are
the rules and conventions about citing, referencing,
attributing, and acknowledging the works of others. That
means giving proper credit wherever due.
 The ways of giving credit to authors
 1. Citing is the practice of quoting from, referring to other
authors’ works and ideas in the text of our work in such a
way that the context is clear to the reader.
 2. Referencing is the listing of the full publication details of a
published work that is cited so as to give background
information to the readers.
 3. Acknowledgment in research publications indicates
contributions to scientific work.
 However, acknowledgment, attributions, and citations
differ in the manner of their application. Acknowledgment
is arguably more personal, singular, and simply an
expression of appreciations and contribution.
 Citations: Functions and Attributes
 Citations (references) credit others for their work, while allowing
the readers to trace the source publication if needed. Any
portion of someone else’s work or ideas in papers, patents, or
presentations must be used in any new document only by
clearly citing the source. This applies to all forms of written
sources in the form of texts, images, sounds, etc. and failure to
do may be considered plagiarism.
 Citations help the readers to verify the quality and importance of
the new work and justification of the findings. It is a way to tell
readers that certain material in the researcher’s present work
has come from another source and as an ethical responsibility,
appropriate credit has been given to the original author or
writer.
 Materials that can be cited include journal papers,
conference proceeding, books, theses, newspaper articles,
websites, or other online resources and personal
communication.
 Preferably, citations should be given at the end of a
sentence or the end of a paragraph as can be seen even in
this particular paragraph [1].
 A researcher needs to cite each source twice:
(i) in-text citation, in the text of the article exactly where the
source is quoted or paraphrased, and
(ii) a second time in the references, typically at the end of the
chapter or a book or at the end of a research article.
 LaTeX, a document preparation system often used by
engineering researchers to automatically format documents
that comply with standard formatting needs, is very
 Three main functions of citation
 (i) Verification function: Authors have a scope for finding
intentional or unintentional distortion of research or misleading
statements. Citation offers the readers a chance to ascertain if
the original source is justified or not, and if that assertion is
properly described in the present work.
 (ii) Acknowledgment function: Researchers primarily receive
credit for their work through citations. Citations play crucial role
in promotion of individual researchers and their continued
employment. Many reputed organizations and institutes
provide research funding based on the reputations of the
researchers.
 (iii) Documentation function: Citations are also used to
document scientific concepts and historical progress of any
particular technology over the years.
 Benefits of citations
 Citations are the currency that authors would wish to
accumulate and the technical community gives them
credit for these contributions. When other authors make
citations, they honor those who initiated the ideas.
 Authors demonstrate their comprehension skills by
identifying, estimating, and incorporating other’s research
work and then create and express their own ideas
precisely while acknowledging ownership of ideas through
citation.
 Authors should cite sources to indicate significance of the
work to the reader. Relevant citations help authors
develop an easily understandable argument and prevent
the need to navigate through work irrelevant.
 The certain cases when references do not fulfill the
actual goal of citations and acknowledgments, and
thus do not benefit the reader
 1. Spurious citations: In certain cases, when citation is not required or an
appropriate one is not found, if the author nevertheless goes ahead with
including one anyways, it would be considered as a spurious citation.
 2. Biased citations: When authors cite the work of their friends or colleagues
despite there being no significant connection between the two works, or
when they do not cite work of genuine significance because they do not
wish to give credit in the form of citation to certain individuals, then such
actions can be classified as biased citations.
 3. Self-citations: There is nothing wrong in citing one’s prior work if the citation
is really relevant. Self-citation of prior papers is natural because the latest
paper is often a part of a larger research project which is ongoing.
Sometimes, it is also advantageous for the reader because citations of all the
related works of the same author are given in one paper and this may
reduce the effort of the reader in trying to find the full versions of those
papers. However, it is helpful and ethical only if all the papers are really
relevant to the present work/
 However, there can also be negative impact on the
journal as well as individual researchers due to
inappropriate and irrelevant self-citations.
 4. Coercive citations: Coercive citation is an unethical
practice in which an editor forces researchers to add
unnecessary citations to other papers (that belong to the
same journal). One side effect is that it creates an
incentive for editors to indulge in coercion to add citations
to the editor’s journal. Even if not explicitly stated, the
implied message is that the author could either add
citations or risk rejection. Such demands consequently
diminish the reputation of the journal.
 From the above discussions, it is clear that the author(s)
must maintain a balance between too few and too many
citations. At the same time, author(s) must give credit
whenever due even if it is their own work.
 Impact of Title and Keywords on
Citations
 The citation rate of any research paper depends on various
factors including significance and availability of the journal,
publication types, research area, and importance of the
published research work.
 Other factors like length of the title, type of the title, and
selected keywords also impact the citation count.
 Title is the most important attribute of any research paper. It
is the main indication of the research area or subject and is
used by researcher as a source of information during
literature survey.
 Title plays important role in marketing and makes research
papers traceable.
 A good title is informative, represents a paper effectively to
readers, and gains their attention.
 Some titles are informative but do not capture attention of
readers, some titles are attractive but not informative or
related to the readers’ research area.
 The download count and citation of a research paper might
be influenced by title.
 There are three different aspects which provide a particular
behavior to the title: (i) type of the title, (ii) length of the title,
and (iii) presence of specific markers.
 Studies about citation rate
1. Stremersch et al. analyzed title characteristics of the papers
published during 1990–2002 in the area of research and studied
relationship between title characteristics and citation, which
concluded that title length positively affects the number of
citations.
 2. Sagi and Yechiam found that highly amusing titles have
fewer citations and pleasant titles have no significant relation
with citations.
 3. Jacques and Sebire analyzed different papers’ titles and
their citations hit for 25 most-cited and 25 least-cited
research and review papers of a particular genre of journals,
and found a strong association between title lengths and
citation rates, with highly cited articles having more than
twice as many words in the title compared with lower cited
papers.
 4. Jamali and Nikzad analyzed several open access papers
and found that articles with question-type titles are
downloaded more but poorly cited compared to the
descriptive or declarative titles. Declarative titles are
downloaded and cited less than descriptive titles but
difference is not much.
 5. As per analysis of Habibzadeh and Yadollahie, longer
titles are strongly associated with higher citation rates.
 Longer titles mainly include the study methodology and/or
results in more detail, and so attracts more attention and
citations.
 In general, titles containing a question mark, colon, and
reference to a specific geographical region are
associated with lower citation rates.
 Result-describing titles usually get citations than method-
describing titles.
 Review articles and original articles usually receive more
citations than short communication articles.
 At least two keywords in the title can increase the chance
of finding and reading the article as well as get more
citations.
 Keywords represent essential information as well as main
content of the article, which are relevant to the area of
research.
 Search engines, journal, digital libraries, and indexing
services use keywords for categorization of the research
topic and to direct the work to the relevant audience.
 Keywords are important to ensure that readers are aware
about research articles and their content.
 If maximum number of allowable keywords are used, then
the chance of the article being found increases and so
does the probability of citation count of the article.
 Usage of new keywords should be minimal as such
keywords may not be well known to the research
community and so may lead to low visibility of the article.
 Knowledge Flow Through Citation
 Knowledge flows through verbal communications, books,
documents, video, audio, and images, which plays a powerful
role in research community in promoting the formulation of new
knowledge.
 In engineering research, knowledge flow is primarily in the form
of books, thesis, articles, patents, and reports.
 Citing a source is important for transmission of knowledge from
previous work to an innovation.
 Knowledge flow happens between co-authors during research
collaboration, among other researchers through their paper
citation network, and also between institutions, departments,
research fields or topics, and elements of research.
 Example: If paper A is cited by paper B, then knowledge flows
through citation networks across institutions as shown here.
 Citation-based knowledge flow
Sooryamoorthy examined the citation impact of the South
African publications among different collaboration types,
discipline and sectors, and observed that co-authored
publications had more citations than single author paper.
Relationship between co-authorship and different types of
citations
 Three articles (X, Y, and Z) and five references (X1, X2,
X3, Y1, and Y2) of article X and Y, respectively, are
considered.
 A, B, and C are authors of article X, and D, E, F, G, and
also A are authors of article Y. Article Z has two authors
H and E. References X1, X2, X3, Y1, and Y2 have authors
(A, P), (H, R), (D), (Q, B, F), and (R), respectively.
 Based on co-authorship citation network, references X1
and Y1 are considered self-citation, reference X3 is a
level-1 co-author citation because author of article Y is
direct collaborator of author A, reference X2 is a level-1
co-author network because author A is collaborator of
E who collaborated with H. We conclude that papers
with collaborations certainly impact citation counts.
 Citing Datasets
 The nature of engineering research has evolved rapidly and
now relies heavily on data to justify claims and provide
experimental evidences.
 Data citations must fetch proper credit to the creator of the
dataset as citations of other objects like research articles.
 A researcher should obtain necessary permission for using
data from a particular source.
 Citations related to datasets should include enough
information so that a reader could find the same dataset
again in the future.
 Styles for Citations
 Citation styles differ primarily in the order, and syntax of
information about references, dates, authors, and
publications.
 Some of the most common styles for citation used by
engineers are as follows:
1. ASCE style (American Society of Civil Engineers)
2. IEEE style (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
3. ASME style (The Association of Mechanical Engineers)
ASCE style (American Society of Civil
Engineers)
 (a) Reference list: This part is to be placed in the bibliography or
references at the end of the article or report. A template with
example for the same is given below:
 (b) In-text citation for journals or books: The following part is to be
placed right after the reference to the source of the citation
assignment:
IEEE style (Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers)
 IEEE style is standard for all IEEE journals and magazines, and is
frequently used for papers and articles in the fields of electrical
engineering and computer science.
 The IEEE style requires endnotes and that references be cited
numerically in the text.
 Those submitting to an IEEE publication should see guidelines for
the specific journal or magazine and may also refer to the
complete IEEE editorial style manual. Examples of IEEE styles of
citations:
ASME style (The Association of Mechanical
Engineers)
 ASME style is used for submissions to ASME journals, conferences, and
other mechanical engineering publications.
Acknowledgments and Attributions

 Acknowledgment section is a place to provide a brief

appreciation of the contribution of someone or an
organization or funding body to the present work.
 Acknowledgment is a common practice to recognize
persons or agencies for being responsible in some form or
other for completion of a publishable research outcome.
 In some case, certain individuals may help in the research
work but may not deserve to be included as authors. As a
sign of gratitude, such contributions should be
acknowledged.
 Classification of acknowledgment into six different
categories like moral, financial, editorial, institutional or
technical, and conceptual support.
 Giving proper credit wherever it is due is very important
and even if the contribution is minor, it should not be
neglected.
 Whenever possible, author shall give name of persons
who may be responsible, even if nominally, for designs,
inventions, writings, or other accomplishments.
 In engineering research, acknowledgments are meant
for participating technicians, students, funding agency,
grant number, institution, or anyone who provide
scientific inputs, shared unpublished results, provided
equipment, or participated in discussions.
 What Should Be Acknowledged?

 Author should acknowledge quotation, ideas, facts,

paraphrasing, funding organization, oral discussion or
support, laboratory, and computer work.
 (i) Quotation: In technical writing such as in the field of
engineering, quotes are used very rarely. Quotations are of
two types:
(a) Direct quotations are used when author use actual
words or sentences in the same order as the original one.
Author should use quotation marks for the words or
sentences with proper acknowledgment.
(b) Indirect quotation summarizes or paraphrases the
actual quote. In such cases, it is important to
acknowledge with proper name and date.
 (ii) Authors should acknowledge assistants, students, or
technicians, who helped experimentally and theoretically
during the research work.
 (iii) If the researcher received grant from a funding agency,
then such support should always be acknowledged by
providing full details of the funding program and grant number
in the acknowledgment section. Failure to acknowledge
funding may result in the discontinuation.
 The authors should also gratefully acknowledge use of the
services and facilities of any center or organization with which
they are not formally affiliated to. An example of
acknowledgment of grant received is as follows:
 Many technical journals explicitly discourage authors to
thank the reviewers in their article submissions. This could be
construed as favoritism or an attempt to encourage reviewers
to accept their manuscript for reasons other than scientific
merit.
 (iv) Acknowledging that results have been presented
elsewhere:
If the results were presented as an abstract in a journal,
then there should be a suitable citation.
If the results were presented as part of scientific meeting,
symposium, or other gathering, then some relevant
information should be provided.
At the very least, the name of the gathering and year
should be cited. Other helpful items include the location of
the gathering (city and state or country) and the full date of
Acknowledgments in Books/Dissertations
 A page of acknowledgments is usually included at the
beginning of a thesis/ dissertation immediately following the
table of contents.
 These acknowledgments are longer than the one or two
sentence statements in journal papers or articles in
conference proceedings.
 These detailed acknowledgments enable the researcher to
thank all those who have contributed in completion of the
research work.
 The following are often acknowledged in these types of
acknowledgments: main supervisor, second supervisor, peers
in the lab, other academic staff in the department, technical
or support staff in the department, colleagues from other
departments, other institutions, or organizations, former
students, family, and friends.
Dedication or Acknowledgments?
 Dedication is almost never used in a journal paper, an article
in a conference proceedings, or a patent, and it is used
exclusively in larger documents like books, thesis, or
dissertations.
 While acknowledgments are reserved for those who helped
out with the book in some way or another (editing, moral
support, etc), a dedication is to whomever the author would
like it to be dedicated to, whether it is the author’s mother,
the best friend, the pet dog, or Almighty God.
 It is possible to dedicate something to someone while also
mentioning them in the acknowledgments. For example,
one may dedicate a book to one’s spouse, but
acknowledge them for being the moral support and putting
up with when one got very stressed.