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Finding research articles
- Why create a bibliography?
- How to find a mentor?
- How to contact a prospective mentor
- Building a bibliography
- Format of bibliography
Why create a bibliography?
Creating a bibliography is the first step in what will be a semester-long process of developing a research proposal. It is the logical first step, because to create the bibliography, you'll need to resolve two issues and in doing so, you'll lay the foundation for what follows. The two issues are:
- Who will be your faculty mentor?
- What kinds of research questions does your mentor ask?
In addition, creating a nearly exhaustive bibliography on a narrow subject will immediately vault you into a position of scientific expertise in your chosen field. It's ridiculously easy to become an expert, if you set limits, and everyone should experience the feeling of knowing more than almost anyone in the world on a topic. If you do this right, you should have that feeling.
How to find a candidate mentor?
You are looking for a faculty member at VCU who has research interests (related to molecular biology) so insanely fascinating that you would like nothing better than to throw a good chunk of your life at them. Fortunately, there are many dozen faculty members from which to choose. You'll probably be able to find something that excites you.
Here are some possible strategies:
- Scan departmental and program web sites
Probably every department and program at VCU maintains a web site that contains somewhere a list of its faculty members. Their lab web pages are generally no more than a click or two away, and once there, you'll probably be greeted with a description of the research questions of interest to the lab plus a list of people and publications. Here are some departments and programs whose faculty (at least some) have molecular interests:
- Literature search
Search Pubmed or Web of Science for someone at VCU (remember Problem Set 1?) who has published on a topic you're particularly interested in.
- Search VCU's web site
Try searching VCU's web site for your favorite topics.
How to contact a prospective mentor
First, how not to do it:
Dear Dr. Frostbite,
Hello. My name is Snively Hornswoggle. I'm a student in a class where I'm required to find a mentor for a research project. I was wondering if you had time to mentor me.
That may be the e-mail you send. This is the e-mail the faculty member reads:
Dear Innocent Victim,
Hello. My name is Deadly Timetrap. I'm required to find a sucker willing to spend hours, days, weeks, trying vainly to push insights through my vacant eyes. Doesn't matter what the insights are. So long as I get my grade. Wanna do it?
Would any sane person say yes to this? Would any but the most polite even respond?
Try the following instead:
- Do your homework
Don't attempt contact until you have digested the candidate's web site and read an article that has come from the candidate's lab. Don't feel obliged to understand all you've read, but do keep at it until you have comprehended the nature of the scientific question addressed.
- Talk science
The candidate entered into a life of science not as an excuse to pontificate to sniveling students but because s/he loves doing science and talking science. Make your e-mail message a possibly rare moment of joy in a day of bureaucratic chores.
- Talk candidate-specific science
What could you possibly contribute in a conversation with this titan of science? You'd be surprised. It's possible that there is no one outside the candidate's lab within a thousand miles who shares his/her specific scientific interests. It is possible that your e-mail gives the candidate an opportunity to think about issues that are not likely to arise in the normal course of a day. Your e-mail may help the candidate return to the favorite place... if your message is scientifically specific enough to conjure up the image.
- Provide context
Briefly relate the course of events that brought you to the e-mailbox of the candidate. Set forth the nature of the course and the nature of the research proposal. Feel free to include the URL for the course and/or the page that describes the research proposal.
- Describe where you are in your journey (Talk Science, part III)
Tell the candidate what you've done to learn about his/her work. Describe some ideas that have occurred to you concerning your research proposal. These can (and probably will be) crazy ideas. That's OK, so long as the ideas arise naturally from what you read and are not merely plucked from thin air. Don't write vacuously "I have familiarized myself with your research". If you have, it should be apparent from the content of your message.
- Don't be an undergraduate
Faculty members are bombarded with messages from undergraduates: "Do you have a position in your renowned lab?", "I need a one-credit upper division class...", "I need research to go on my transcript...", "May I suck your blood?". How can you distance yourself from this class? Talk science (of course), but also avoid emphasizing separation. "Dear Esteemed Dr. X"... you may think this shows respect. Actually it shows leach-hood. There is no requirement for a salutation. Similarly, there's no need for "My name is...". This opening formula marks you as a child. Your name is not important. Get right to the science.
By the end of your message, the candidate should recall (fondly) this:
Dear scientific colleague,
I am fascinated by the same things that fascinate you. I am naive and near the beginning of my journey, but I have my own thoughts and I'm fun to talk with. It would be a joy to spend time now and then discussing my project with me.
Building a bibliography
You're goal is to find every article written since the beginning of time to last Friday concerning your chosen topic. Obviously, if your chosen topic is "The Molecular Basis of Cancer" you will exceed the days of your life and the capacity on your hard drive finding all pertinent articles. It is essential that you define your topic narrowly, progressively restricting it as you learn more on the topic, enough so that you emerge with a respectable number of articles, perhaps a few dozen, but a number that exhausts what is available.
You will probably be the first person on earth to go through this excercise with your particular topic. You will therefore become the world's leading expert on what articles have been written in the area you have defined. Note that I'm not suggesting that you read all those articles. But absorbing the message of their titles will help you see what has been done in the area and what has not. That's a big step in itself.
Here are some strategies that might be helpful:
Start with something specific
If you begin with a huge fuzzy idea (Parkinson's Disease,... ecology,... marmosets), you are likely to lose your way in the literature. Instead, try starting with a specific article -- why not one from your mentor's lab? Identify a topic within it and treat it as your focus.
Go backwards in time through references
Identify references in your focus article that speak to the matter at hand. Don't be led astray by references that connect primarily through methodology.
Go forwards in time through citation analysis
Use Web of Science (or similar) to lead you to articles that cite key references you have found.
Find and exploit a pertinent review article
Let the reviewer do your work for you. The main use of a review article is to organize a field and point you to useful references.
Organize your references
You're going to quickly run out of air unless you have a system to keep track of what you've found. There's software designed specifically for this purpose. Mendeley is an example of free software that works well, allowing you to organize references, search through their full text, and provide tags that put the articles in categories you devise. You can also store your own notes on the article. Even Excel is better than nothing.
Name your references
Give them personalities. The time honored way to do this is by naming references, generally the first author followed by the year. You'll find that you can have whole conversations with your mentor where half of the content are references: "Beezer et al (2001) said that..." and "Carpluss et al (2005) did pretty much the same thing in a different organism...".
Consult with your mentor
When your list has reached a minimal stage of maturity, run it by your mentor, asking whether s/he can find any major hole. Don't be surprised if you've found articles your mentor doesn't know about.
Gradually flesh out the articles
Write notes to yourself (see Organize your references, above), as you find something interesting concerning an article. The notes can remind you what the article is about.
Format of bibliography
The details of the format of your submitted bibliography is unimportant. APA format, Chicago citation style,... Sheesh! Who cares? There are almost as many reference formats as there are journals. What's important is that you are helpful to your reader. You can be helpful by:
- Being consistent. Use the same format -- whatever it may be -- throughout.
- Being complete. Provide the authors names, the title of the article, and the citation, including journal name, volume and page numbers.
- Taking the extra step. Include a URL if available, making it easy for the reader to look up the article if interested.
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