Mine the Net for the Latest Research and Knowledge

Hone your search skills to uncover troves of serious, primary-source material on the Web.

Send your questions and tips to nettips@spanbauer.com. We pay $50 for published items. Scott Spanbauer is a contributing editor for PC World.

Scott Spanbauer

Many's the college professor or high school teacher who, reaching the end of a seemingly well-researched paper, must stifle a scream upon reading the sole listed source: Wikipedia. It's not just that the community-generated encyclopedia lacks authority as an information source. Though Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and other general-purpose reference works supply good overview information, serious research rarely relies on this kind of secondary source.

The hunt for knowledge requires up-to-date research, breadth, thoroughness, and depth beyond what the summary articles in an online (or print) encyclopedia can provide. Usually you have to visit your local library to find the best primary source material--but you may also be able to access those sources from your PC at the office, at home, or on the road.

Journals Online

For any article in the newspaper about the latest discovery in atmospheric research, computing, economics, physics, psychology, or the like, the reporter is probably relying on newly published research in one of thousands of peer-reviewed scientific journals. Peer review means that the articles are assessed for accuracy and methodological soundness by committees of other scholars who work in the same field. Google Scholar is a good place to start a quest; entering a search phrase there yields links to thousands of articles, books, and Web sites (see Figure 1

Figure 1: Google Scholar helps you find the latest research in peer-reviewed journals, books, and Web sites.

).

In addition, you can browse and search the sites of journal publishers by subject or by journal title. Elsevier's ScienceDirect, for example, offers articles from more than 2000 journals, and search and personalization tools are available if you register as a guest user. Blackwell Publishing's Blackwell Synergy is a site that offers over 850 journals, and Springer Science and Business Media has more than 1500. Unfortunately, these publishers provide the full text of most of their journals only to subscribers, locking out researchers who are easily daunted.

You may not need to crack open your wallet, however. Many of the subscribers to these services are corporations, hospitals, and libraries, so you may have access to the knowledge trove at your office, or through your local library, where you can print articles or download them as PDF files (bring a USB thumb drive). If a subscribing institution allows you to connect to its resources via a virtual private network, you can access research from just about anywhere. My local public library even allows me to access its massive Infotrac and EBSCOhost databases (each of which offers the full text of thousands of journals and reference works) over the Internet when I use my library card.

Tech Info Safari

Tech book publisher O'Reilly and Associates offers the full text of more than 5000 titles (its own, and those of two dozen other publishers) through its Safari Books Online service. Many of Safari's books relate to business and desktop software, but the service focuses on information technology for high-tech professionals. If you regularly need to access the latest primers or references for Unix, programming and scripting languages, or system administration, a Safari subscription could be worth the monthly fee, which starts at $15 and allows you to read up to 120 books per year. If that's too expensive, you'll find thousands of free electronic books at the Open Source Books section of the Internet Archive's Text Archive.

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