research skills

Locating Sources

Google Scholar is a very useful tool to focus on academic sources. This video tutorial explains the basic use (replace kingston university library where it explains about search settings):

And you can learn how to utilise search engines (like scholar) more effectively to refine your search.

Evaluating Sources

• This guide (from UCBerkeley) provides good suggestions about evaluating websites as sources.

• Reading academic papers is a skill you can develop (and will also help you write better). Check here and here for useful ideas (or if you prefer to watch videos instead of reading...)

• About the difference between scholarly sources and general articles.

• Evaluating sources is part of a broader issue of coping with data. The title of this University of Washington course says it all: Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning for the Digital Age

Categories and lists

Breaking a topic down is often a useful way of discussing it. But not every list is a useful categorisation:

Effective writing

Steven Pinker explains good writing:

An extensive resource about academic writing from the university of Toronto

On the difference between analysis and description

And a PLOS editorial about structuring papers.