Relevance to the topic
The structure
Structural criteria for relevance
In the case of comprehensive publications, it may not be clear in advance whether they contain information relevant to the own research question. Academic publications are mostly structured in a similar way so that they are quite easily assessable and comparable. Regardless of the kind of publication the following components, according to the checklist, should always being included.
- Title
- Abstract
- Keywords: standardised keywords assigned by the author at the beginningkeywords at the beginning of the essay or a book chapter
- Introduction and conclusion of the text
- Full text
- References: All literature cited and referred to in footnotes and/or in the full text
Formal correctness
When a source of information was found, it may be assessed on errors and defects regarding formal correctness. In the case that the source complies with formal criteria, this may serve as indicator for the respectability of the information. Possible formal criteria may be:
- orthograph/ grammar
- metadata of the source
- proper indication of citations (consistent citation manner)
- structural and formal design of a source
- linguistic quality in the case of translations
The Content
In order to assess whether there is a relation regarding content between the publication found by searching and the own topic, you should try to answer the following questions:
Does the publication contain the topically relevant terms (see mindmap) or closely related terms to the ones used for searching?
Publications which you found for example by using the search by keywords in the Library catalog do not necessarily need to contain the term searched for in their title or subtitle. Some academic publications do have titles not enabling to make assumptions on the content. In addition, not every publication appropriate with regard to the topic does also correspond to the own research question. It might be helpful to browse through the table of contents or the introduction/ the abstract.
Does the publication deal with the topic in context with the own subject?
In the case that you are searching for literature dealing with the topic of emergence, your search will provide literature from different subjects dealing with term in different meanings, e.g. in physics but also in sociology. In this case as well it is useful to browse through the table of contents or the introduction/ the abstract for finding out the context with regard to the subject.
Does the publication take important authors on the field of the topic into account?
In many topical fields there are authors who have already done comprehensive research on that field whose publications should mandatorily take into account. The ways how to find that kind of authors is explained in the item Classify sources (citation chains). To find out whether the present publication refers to prior knowledge regarding the topic, it is recommendable to browse through the references or the reference list of the publication.
Does the publication deal with topic in a context relevant to the own research question? It should be differentiated between publications discussing an academic method and those applying this method.
Not every publication provides new insights on an issue. It may happen that contradictory results are discussed or ways how to achieve those results. In this case, you should check how detailed you have to deal with those problems for answering your own research question.
In order to assess the factual accuracy of the information provided by the source, you do not have to be “more intelligent” than the author of this publication. It is sufficient to assess this information with tools easy to learn in order to reveal possible inconsistencies and false information yourself and to compare them with other sources.
In this context, different criteria apply to theoretical and empirical elaborations even though the refer to each other. Whether you are dealing with a (rather) theoretical or with a (rather) empirical elaboration depends on its relation to the issue of examination. The former make, based on secondary literature, presumptions on the issue and the opportunities to examine and understand it. The latter test those presumptions practically and apply particular methods in this respect which serve at assessing the insights gained by examining an issue. In this context, Chemnitz University of Technology offers lectures for academic work in the respective subjects. In addition, the Method Competence Center offers individual consultations as well as workshops and presentations regarding the particular methods.
Within the assessment of theoretically-oriented papers it is recommendable to answer i.a. the following questions in order to find out whether the source contains factually accurate information:
Does the content correspond with the research question?
The messages and information in the text should be convincing enough for answering/ resolving the research question or issue supposed to be answered/ resolved by the text.
The content, is it consistent?
The statements and information in the text should provide consistent answers to the overall research question. In case that inconsistencies occur, the author should deal with those inconsistencies and include them in her/ his argumentation.
Are terms defined clearly and correctly and are they applied in a consistent way?
The technical terms the text contains should be applied in the sense of their academic meaning. In the case the text defines new technical terms, they should be applied in an appropriate way with regard to this definition.
Was the current state of research taken into account appropriately?
The text should contain information regarding the state of research. In addition, the reference list should be assessed in a way to find out which sources it includes and whether they are state-of-the-art.
Was the research question being answered?
At the end, the text should refer to the research question or problem posed in the introduction and answer it or offer an approach to resolve it.
Sometimes, the time is lacking for reading all publications found during the relevance assessment and to examine them whether they are significant for the own research question.
In this content, you may make use of different reading techniques in order to shape this process more effectively. Three of them are presented briefly here.
- SQ3R-Method
- Survey: Get an overview of the abstract, table of contents and outline, examine the text structure (chapters, headings, figures), skim the introduction and summary
- Question: Formulate assumptions about the text and ask questions about for which you are looking for an answer while reading, i.e. develop a
filter
to find relevant information more quickly - Read and Recite: Reading noteworthy or important passages and making notes that outline an answer to the question(s) posed to the text
- Review: Recapitulate the most important information in your own words, check for consistency and coherence, establish a connection to your own question
- Scan/cross-read
- Skimming the text with the aim of finding important expressions (keywords, technical terms, foreign words) that have been previously defined; no recording of details yet
- Selective reading
- Reading only certain sections or chapters of a text/book, for example those that caught the eye during
scanning
/cross-reading
- Reading only certain sections or chapters of a text/book, for example those that caught the eye during
Comprehensiveness – is that all?
The search with regard to a topic should have for objective to determine the literature required for a task as comprehensively as possible. In this context, the opportunities for searching presented in module 1 are provided.
However, the term of comprehensiveness is always relative and depends on formal and content-related criteria.
Formal criteria could be:
| regional coverage | e.g. comprehensive German, European or American sources |
|---|---|
| kind of sources | comprehensiveness regarding the articles in journals, newspapers, books, norms, surveys, podcasts considered |
| language of sources | comprehensive sources in German, English etc. |
| period of search | comprehensive sources published within the recent three years |
Content-related criteria could be:
| purpose of search | different scope according to type of academic work (presentation, course paper, thesis etc.) |
|---|---|
| kind and scope of search | searching for literature regarding a topic or Systematic Literature Review |
| quality of search | quality of media for searching (search engine) and professionalism in handling the options for searching offered by the medium (usage of tools for searching) |
Within the selection of media for searching, you should pay attention to comprehensiveness as well. In this respect, the following order is recommendable: Library catalog, subject-specific databases, specialized search engines. Regardless of the research medium used, it is always important to assess reliability and academic professionalism of the sources found. In the case of results from searching in the catalog or a database, the probability for having found reliable sources is frequently higher.
It will always happen that the usage of different media for searching will bring overlapping of results (duplications), anyhow, you should, particularly when searching for a database, have a look at the description of the database. This may assist you in estimating the formal and content-related coverage obtained by your own search.
In the case you transfer the results into a reference management program, you may filter and delete duplications by duplicate detection. In addition, the references may be allocated to the tasks, full-texts may be attached and much more.