Searching and Organising Literature

Overview

The course prepares you well for writing a PhD thesis and for other research projects in your future professional life. You will learn to develop comprehensive strategies to find useful and relevant information without getting lost and losing too much time. You will also learn how to evaluate the found information, how to cite sources correctly and avoid plagiarism, and how to manage references with EndNote.

The course runs for 1.5 days and consists of lectures and practical assignments. You will also receive individual instruction and help to develop a balanced search plan. The plan will be useful throughout your PhD.

The course is open to all PhD candidates and postdocs, but the primary target group is beginning PhD candidates who have not previously followed an information literacy course during their studies.

After this Searching and Organising Literature is offered at Wageningen University and Research you will be able to:

• identify your information needs and information sources for your PhD research or another scientific project;

• formulate a focused research question for a literature search and a strategy to prepare a systematic search;

• construct a systematic search for various databases and platforms and use relevant articles to find additional information;

• evaluate the search results, revise the search if necessary, and determine when to stop searching;

• store and organise information systematically and transparently, keep track of the search process and stay up to date with new information on your topic;

• cite and reference literature and data correctly to avoid plagiarism.