PHYS 2331 Guide Ask Us

Welcome to the PHYS 2331 library research guide!

This guide provides an essential roadmap to effectively utilizing the library’s vast resources and services, which are pivotal for your academic success.

Before beginning your research or assignment, be sure to read the "Getting Started Guide" and explore the content on "Library Help Videos". It introduces you to all the relevant resources available in the library and is essential for all your courses.

Key Resources

Knowledge creation in physics follows a standard cycle. This cycle comes in three stages: the knowledge cycle, publication cycle, and access cycle: 

1. The Knowledge Cycle

• Develop ideas, discuss ideas, present preliminary research, submit manuscript for peer review, report research, generalize, popularize, and formalize

2. The Publication Cycle

• Research notes, lab notebooks, and data files, letters, memos, emails, grant proposals, conference papers, proceedings, and preprints, scholarly articles in journals, technical reports, dissertations, theses, research reports, and patents, books, encyclopedias, textbooks, annual reviews, popular magazines, books, newspapers, websites, blogs, wikipedia, teaching materials

3. Access Cycle

• Limited or no access, limited public access: personal webpages and awards information, article databases and open access repositories, library catalogues, popular article and news databases 

Interested in publishing your research? 

There are several journals that publish undergraduate research and lab reports. Find journals that publish undergraduate research here: 

• Canadian Journal of Undergraduate Research 
• Undergraduate Journals: a list of undergraduate journals provided by the Council on Undergraduate Research (United States)

Scholarly and Non-Scholarly Publications:

• Scholarly publications, often referred to as academic or peer-reviewed articles, are written by experts in a particular field. The intended audience is often researchers in the same field, academics, and students. These publications undergo a rigorous peer-review process, during which other experts evaluate the content for its accuracy, validity, and contribution to the field before publication.
  • Author(s): Credentials given, usually a scholar with subject expertise
  • Purpose: Disseminate original research and/or analysis within a specific academic field. 
  • Audience: Scholars, researchers, students
  • Format: Scholarly publications typically follow a structured format including abstract, introduction, methodology, results, discussion, conclusion, and references. 
  • Examples: Peer-reviewed journal articles, scholarly books
• Non-scholarly publications are generally aimed at a general audience and are not necessarily written by experts in the field they discuss. They do not undergo a peer-review process and are often used to inform, entertain, or persuade a wide readership.
  • Author(s): Journalists, freelance writers, general public
  • Purpose: Inform, entertain, or persuade the general population.
  • Audience: General public
  • Format: Varies greatly depending on the source
  • Examples: News articles, blogs, websites, and social media content. 

Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Literature

• Primary Literature sources are original studies based on direct evidence. It is where new findings and data are first reported. These original materials often authored by researchers and published in peer-reviewed journals.
  • Examples of primary literature include research articles, theses and dissertations, and conference proceedings. 
• Secondary Literature sources review articles and synthesize and summarize existing research rather than present new findings. 
  • Examples of secondary literature include systematic reviews and textbooks.  
• Tertiary Literature sources aim to provide the distilled essence of knowledge. These sources typically lack a specific author because their primary mission is to compile and present existing ideas and information. 
  • Examples of tertiary literature include textbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, and manuals.

Grey Literature

Grey literature refers to materials that are not published through traditional channels, such as academic journals or commercial publishers. This category includes a wide range of documents, such as government reports, policy statements, early versions of research articles (pre-prints), finalized research papers that haven't been published yet (post-prints), geological and geophysical surveys, conference materials, maps, newsletters, bulletins, and fact sheets.

To learn more about grey literature, view our What is Grey Literature video tutorial. 

When researching, it is important to remember that searching is non-linear and iterative. If you don't find what you're looking for on your first attempt, try to play around with your keywords and where you are searching. 

Boolean searching

If you are searching for multiple keywords or concepts, try combining them using boolean operators. This will expand or narrow your results and give you more control over your search. 

• Adding AND between keywords will narrow your results and only retrieve items including both concepts.
• Adding NOT between your keywords will narrow your results and eliminate results using the word following not.
• Adding OR between your keywords will expand your results and retrieve results using either keyword.

Truncation and Wildcards

Truncation and wildcards can be applied to a keyword search in a database or search engine to broaden your results and allow you to look for variations of words.

For example, if you search for spectrum you will only retrieve items using the keyword spectrum. However, if you search for spectr* you will retrieve results using the keywords: spectrum and spectra.

Phrase searching

When searching a keyword or concept that is multiple words, combine them using quotation marks. This will search for these words as a phrase, rather than individual concepts. 

For example, search for "magnetic resonance imaging" rather than magnetic resonance imaging. 

Researching with Scopus

Scopus is a multi-disciplinary scientific database which includes journal articles. Scopus also tracks cited references, allowing users to search for subsequently published papers that cite an original research paper.

Key Resources

Conducting a Search in Scopus

1. To conduct a search in Scopus, start by selecting the field you wish to search within. 
2. Next, enter in your search terms and click search 
3. From your results page, use the filters along the left of the page to narrow your results down
4. To open an article, click on the article title

Finding a journal's CiteScore in Scopus

1. Search for a journal title (in the field Source Type)
2. From the results click on the journal title
3. View CiteScore from this page

Finding an author's h-index in Scopus

Within Scopus, an h-index is a score that measures a researcher's productivity and citation impact of their publications. 

1. Search for author’s name in the author’s tab of Scopus
2. Click on corresponding author from results
3. View h-index from here

What is a citation style?

A citation style is a set of rules on how to cite sources of information in your academic writing. There are many different citation styles out there, this page will cover APA style. 

Journal article format in APA citation style:

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy

Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185

Elements of a Citation

Here are the key elements of a citation: 

• Author(s): Who wrote the source? In some cases you may have editors instead or in addition to authors. 
• Publisher: What company published the source? This is most common with books and websites. 
• Date of Publication: When was the source published? 
• Title: When was this source published? If citing a scientific article you will use both journal and article titles:
  • Journal Title: The name of the publication that your article was published within. 
  • Article Title: The name of the specific article you are citing. 
• Volume: Common with scientific articles and typically references how many years that journal has been publishing. 
• Issue: Common with scientific articles and typically references how many times within a specific year that journal has published. 
• Page range: Page range of source, if applicable. 
• URL/DOI: When citing scientific articles include a DOI, not URL. 

When to Cite

There are three ways to refer to information:

1. Quoting: using the exact same words as the original author

• not used much at all in scientific writing

2. Summarizing: uses fewer words than the original author, leaves out unnecessary details

• generally, less than 50% of what you are summarizing

3. Paraphrasing: using the ideas of the author, but not using their exact words

• the meaning should be the same
• likely the most common way to refer to external information in scientific writing

Immediately following any information that is not your own, you must provide a citation for that reference. Whenever you write a scientific paper, it is important to adhere to a citation style you have decided on.

Why Citation Matters

There are many reasons why citing sources is essential. You must cite your sources to avoid plagiarism, build credibility to your argument, and allow your reader to verify your claims (among others). 

Citation Help

If you have any questions about formatting your citations, please reach out to your subject Librarian (Emily Connor Dafoe). 

There are also free software available to help you with citation. At UNB, librarians can help you with Zotero.