Organizational, management and technological skills are critical aspects of research and are often overlooked and undervalued by supervisors and institutions, yet they are exactly the sort of skills that can make the difference between research completed on time and research that lags behind planned timeframes or perhaps is never completed
This book is a must for any research student at honours, masters or PhD level in all disciplines (sciences, social sciences and humanities).
- Chapter 1: Introduction
- How do you become both an efficient and an effective researcher?
- Why become an efficient and effective researcher?
- Who should use this book?
- What does the book do (and not do)?
- How is this book organized?
- Distinctive features used in this book
- Using the book´s website
- Chapter 2: Establishing Technical Fundamentals
- Learning about technology
- Strategies for exploratory learning
- Hardware fundamentals
- Types of computers
- Software fundamentals
- Operating system software
- Application and utility software
- Spreadsheets
- Databases
- Graphics and photographic applications
- PDF documents
- Networking fundamentals
- Accessing information on the Web
- Increasing your technical efficiency
- Developing your typing skills
- Using voice recognition software
- Text to speech software
- Customizing keyboard shortcuts, toolbars and menus
- Using macros
- Pasting links and special formatting options
- Chapter 3: Managing Yourself, Your Ideas and Your Support Structures
- Know thyself
- Managing your time
- Prioritising your activities
- Day-to-day time management
- To-do lists
- Managing your ideas
- Diaries, logbooks and journals
- Mapping your ideas
- Managing your supervisor
- Negotiating expectations
- Managing your relationship with your supervisor
- Setting up a peer support structure
- Why form a peer support group?
- Setting up an effective process
- Guidelines for group members
- Chapter 4: Organising Your Work Environment
- Organising your physical environment
- Organizing your desk
- Taking care of your health and safety
- Managing multiple offices
- Ensuring physical security
- Working in a shared workspace
- Constructing a universal filing schema
- Electronic or hardcopy?
- Practical, technical and ethical considerations
- Reducing paper use
- Photocopying features
- Scanning and Optical Character Recognition
- Managing your paper resources
- Filing cabinets
- Other paper storage options
- Managing your electronic resources
- Managing your desktop
- Filing your electronic documents
- Managing file sizes
- Managing risk
- Data management utilities
- Chapter 5: Planning and Overseeing Progress of Your Project
- Developing a research plan
- Planning your research using expert system software
- Timelines and milestones
- The relationship between timelines and milestones
- Documenting timelines and milestones
- Project management software
- How can project management software support your research?
- Types of project management software
- Points to consider when selecting project management software
- Budgets, grants and resource management
- Beg, borrow, but don´t steal
- Locating funding sources
- Applying for grants
- Writing budgets
- Monitoring expenditure
- Record keeping
- Chapter 6: Communicating and Networking Electronically
- Using the Web for professional networking
- Asynchronous communication
- Mailing lists and discussion boards
- Blogs and wikis
- Podcasts
- Synchronous communication
- Text and voice-based chat
- Internet telephony
- Videoconferencing
- Translation resources
- Establishing your own presence on the Web
- Creating your own Website
- Chapter 7: Effective Literature Searching
- The changing nature of information literacy
- Fundamental searching strategies and skills
- Planning your search
- Tools for Locating Literature
- Electronic literature databases
- Library catalogues
- Books in and out-of-print
- Electronic books (e-books)
- Periodical directories
- Tools for locating specific resources
- Inter-library loan and document delivery services
- Your most valuable resource - the reference librarian
- Monitoring literature
- Table of contents services
- Journal monitoring lists
- Research-in-progress databases
- Chapter 8: Strategic Web Searching
- Web searching tools
- Search engines and meta-search engines
- Search directories
- Search vizualisation tools
- Beyond text searches
- Other search tools
- Improving your search results
- Reading and navigating URLs
- Managing important websites
- Managing bookmarks/ & favorites
- Update notification using RSS feeds
- Ready references on the Web
- Evaluating Web-based information
- Chapter 9: Managing and Organizing Your Literature
- Bibliographic software
- How does it work?
- Selecting bibliographic software
- Making the most of your bibliographic software
- Strategic handling of your literature
- Filing print and electronic copies of literature
- Reading and note taking
- Chapter 10 Designing Data Collection Systems
- Planning and managing data collection
- Multimedia data collection
- Audio data collection
- Video data collection
- Images as a data source
- Computer-based data collection
- Behavioral observation software
- Repertory Grid software
- Simulation software
- Collecting data online
- Online surveys
- Online interviews
- Online focus groups
- Data from the Internet: some examples
- Chapter 11: Managing Data Analysis
- Qualitative data analysis
- Approaches to qualitative research and analysis
- Qualitative data analysis software
- Quantitative data analysis
- Fundamentals of statistics
- Planning your quantitative study
- Software for analysis of statistical data
- Choosing statistical Analysis software
- Chapter 12: Improving Your Writing Efficiency
- Word processing skills for research writing
- Working with long documents
- Other useful formatting features
- Self-editing and writing collaboratively
- Distributing letters and other documents
- Customizing your word processor for enhanced efficiency
- Typographical considerations
- Improving writing efficiency
- Writing for screen
- Non-linear writing
- Chapter 13: Presenting and Publishing Your Research
- Oral presentations
- Strategies to improve public speaking
- Using presentation software
- Presentation software features
- Self-running presentations
- Non-linear presentations
- Design and delivery of your presentation
- Producing posters
- Presenting to the media
- Other presentation approaches
- Publishing your research
- Developing a publishing strategy
- Publishing your thesis
- Peer review and manuscript management systems