Women's & Gender Studies: POLS 364 (Bell)

Evaluating Research Resources

SIFT + Proactive Evaluation

Modified from Mike Caulfield's SIFT (Four Moves), which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Developing a research topic

Video: Mapping your research ideas
Consider essay topics for this assignment and then watch this video. Have a blank sheet of paper handy or open a Word document to brainstorm your ideas as you watch it. See an example at https://libguides.sccsc.edu/chooseatopic/mapping

Worksheet: Mapping your research
Use this worksheet to map your research after thinking about the topic you've picked and watching the video. The second page provides examples of two ways to organize your ideas in Box 4.

Developing a search strategy

Guide: Look at an example of how to fill in a concept worksheet
Look at all 4 steps and the final search phrases to use in database search boxes.

Worksheet: Turn your ideas into a search strategy
Fill in this worksheet to prepare some potential database searches.

Finding Empirical Research (statements made by terrorists, governments, or security personnel)

Canadian Newsstream: Major Dailies
Major Canadian dailies, news sources, and newspapers from across Canada. Formerly Canadian Newsstand.
Access is restricted to current students, faculty, and staff of the University of Saskatchewan, and walk-in users, for educational, research, and non-commercial personal use. Systematic copying or downloading of electronic resource content is not permitted by Canadian and international copyright law.
Alternative Press Index & Alternative Press Index Archive
Provides access to bibliographic information about emerging theories of radical social change. Coverage is international, and focuses on socialism and revolution.
Access is restricted to current students, faculty, and staff of the University of Saskatchewan, and walk-in users, for educational, research, and non-commercial personal use. Systematic copying or downloading of electronic resource content is not permitted by Canadian and international copyright law.

Reuters A large and respected international news agency.

Associated Press An American, not-for-profit news agency.

United Press International An American international news agency

Finding Scholarly Research (academic books, peer-reviewed journal articles)

Library USearch - interdisciplinary search that finds books, videos, journal articles....

Databases - primarily locates articles, of which many are behind paywalls

International Security & Counter Terrorism Reference Center (ISCTRC)
Full text resource covering security and counter-terrorism issues, combining news sources and scholarly writings with expert commentary from across the international political, military, economic, social and technical spectrum.
Access is restricted to current students, faculty, and staff of the University of Saskatchewan, and walk-in users, for educational, research, and non-commercial personal use. Systematic copying or downloading of electronic resource content is not permitted by Canadian and international copyright law.
PAIS Index
Abstract and Index bibliographic database covering public affairs, public and social policies, international relations. It has an archive going back to 1915.

Formerly PAIS International & PAIS Archive.
Access is restricted to current students, faculty, and staff of the University of Saskatchewan, and walk-in users, for educational, research, and non-commercial personal use. Systematic copying or downloading of electronic resource content is not permitted by Canadian and international copyright law.
Political Science Complete (PSC)
Political Science Complete contains scholarly journals, full-text of reference books, monographs and conference papers covering political topics with a global focus. Subjects include: comparative politics, humanitarian issues, international relations, law and legislation, non-governmental organizations and political theory.
Access is restricted to current students, faculty, and staff of the University of Saskatchewan, and walk-in users, for educational, research, and non-commercial personal use. Systematic copying or downloading of electronic resource content is not permitted by Canadian and international copyright law.
Scopus
A very large abstract and index database of research literature and quality web sources covering the science, technology, and medicine (STM), and social sciences.
Access is restricted to current students, faculty, and staff of the University of Saskatchewan, and walk-in users, for educational, research, and non-commercial personal use. Systematic copying or downloading of electronic resource content is not permitted by Canadian and international copyright law.
Academic Search Complete (ASC)
A comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database indexing journals, including thousands of peer-reviewed journals. Abstracts and indexes are also included for monographs, conference proceedings, and reports.
Access is restricted to current students, faculty, and staff of the University of Saskatchewan, and walk-in users, for educational, research, and non-commercial personal use. Systematic copying or downloading of electronic resource content is not permitted by Canadian and international copyright law.
APA PsycInfo
Bibliographic database "providing abstracts and citations to the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences."
Access is restricted to current students, faculty, and staff of the University of Saskatchewan, and walk-in users, for educational, research, and non-commercial personal use. Systematic copying or downloading of electronic resource content is not permitted by Canadian and international copyright law. .
Sociological Abstracts
An abstracting and indexing bibliographic database for international literature in sociology, with content from journals, conference papers, and books. Major areas of coverage include radical sociology, substance abuse and addiction, economic development, and mass phenomena and political interactions.
Access is restricted to current students, faculty, and staff of the University of Saskatchewan, and walk-in users, for educational, research, and non-commercial personal use. Systematic copying or downloading of electronic resource content is not permitted by Canadian and international copyright law.

Finding Grey Literature

Grey literature refers to any literature that has not been published through traditional means:

Not controlled by commercial publishers
May be the only source of information for specific research questions
May never be formally published
May not be peer reviewed, so this type of literature must be closely scrutinized
Usually not widely disseminated

Examples:

Government reports (local national, international)
Blogs
NGO (non-government organization) publication
Toolkits
Conference proceedings
Consumer organizations
Datasets
PowerPoint presentations
Theses
Pamphlets/fact sheets
Think tank publications
Guidelines/position papers from professional organizations (national/international)

Finding Grey Literature is a challenge, but here are questions you need to ask yourself to help you locate it more effectively.

WHAT 

What are you looking for?

What issues need addressing?

WHO

Who would create this information?

Who are the stakeholders?

Whose voices are missing?

WHERE

Where might you find this information?

Where: location/geographic limitations?

WHEN

What time period?

Tools for finding Grey Literature

Google - advanced search
To get the best results, check out these Advanced searching techniques.
IGO Search - custom google search
International governmental organizations (IGOs) are organizations made up of more than one national government—examples include NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the WHO (World Heath Organization). The governments are the members. IGO Search is a Google Custom Search that searches across IGO websites. It is a project of the International Documents Taskforce (IDTF) and the Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) of the American Library Association (ALA). Here is the growing spreadsheet of IGO urls included in the search.
NGO search - custom google search
NGO Search is a Google Custom Search that searches across hundreds non-governmental organization (NGO) websites. NGO Search is a project of the International Documents Taskforce (IDTF) and the Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) of the American Library Association (ALA). This is a spreadsheet of NGOs included in the project.

Theses and dissertations

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses: Global is the official dissertations archive for the Library of Congress, and includes millions of citations to dissertations and theses from 1861 to present. Over a million of these are available in full text, including the majority of theses added since 1997. Content is from North America and Europe, and also now includes full coverage of the UK and Ireland.
Access is restricted to current students, faculty, and staff of the University of Saskatchewan, and walk-in users, for educational, research, and non-commercial personal use. Systematic copying or downloading of electronic resource content is not permitted by Canadian and international copyright law.

Think Tanks

Policy Commons
Collection of research from the world’s leading policy experts, think tanks, IGOs and NGOs. At last count it contains over 3 million publications from more than 24,000 organizations.

Canada Commons : Canadian Books & Think Tanks
Formerly called Canadian Electronic Library: Canadian Public Documents Collection, Canada Commons is made up of Canadian monographs offering a rich selection of over 16,000 e-books (fiction and non-fiction) and 50,000 public policy documents.
Access is restricted to current students, faculty, and staff of the University of Saskatchewan, and walk-in users, for educational, research, and non-commercial personal use. Systematic copying or downloading of electronic resource content is not permitted by Canadian and international copyright law.

Thank Tank Search - custom google search
Think Tank Search searches the websites of institutions that generate public policy research, analysis, and activity. These sites are affiliated with universities, governments, advocacy groups, foundations, and non-governmental organizations. Inclusion is based upon the relevancy of subject area to HKS coursework and scholarship, the availability of the think tank’s research in full-text on the website, and the think tank’s reputation and influence upon policy making. The list represents a mixture of partisan and non-partisan think tanks.

Information on terrorist organizations

Profiles in Terror by Aaron Mannes
This is a ready-reference trade book profiling twenty terrorist organizations operating in the Middle East and the regional groups that are affiliated with these organizations.
Encyclopedia of Terrorism by Harvey W. Kushner
The Encyclopedia of Terrorism presents authoritative coverage of what is currently one of the world′s most important topics. With more than 300 articles, the Encyclopedia provides detailed discussions of the who, what, where, when, and why of terrorism. Up-to-date and timely, the articles cover such topics as Al-Qaeda, biological terrorism, extremism, Saddam Hussein, jihad, Zacarias Moussaoui, and suicide bombers. Its concise, readable format and detailed chronology, photographs, maps, and charts make this an essential reference.

Searching is iterative

An important thing to note is that searching for information is rarely a linear process. Instead, searching is an iterative process. You will start the search, look at some results, find some new terms, search again, look at some reference lists, find more new terms, and search again. Don't despair.. finding information takes time and requires a curious mindset and persistence.

Citation Searching

Sometimes called cited reference, citation trailing, citation analysis, etc. This is a strategy where you use a "seed article" (an article that you evaluated to be excellent) and use it to find other related sources of information.

Source: Hirt, J., Nordhausen, T., Fuerst, T., Ewald, H., Group, Tarc. study, & Appenzeller-Herzog, C. (2023). TheTARCiSstatement: Guidance on terminology, application, and reporting of citation searching (p. 2023.10.25.23297543). medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.10.25.23297543

Citing

Components of a Citation

Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS):

Chicago Manual of Style (2017, 17th edition: online or in print)

Chapter 14: Documentation I: Notes and Bibliography (online)
Chapter 15: Documentation II: Author-Date References (online)

Chicago Manual of Style Online: Quick Guide