| While a little off topic I think my typical research process goes like this: - Hear or read about something that sounds neat - See if there's a wikipedia article (I always cringe when
I hear some colleagues of mine say never, ever use it) - Get a high level understanding of the topic from the wikipedia article...that usually leads to some other wikipedia articles + plain old Google searches...just fishing for whatever comes up
[I also search for TED talks, youtube videos and MOOCs related to the topic] - Scribble stuff down on a piece of paper and structure it in a way that makes sense to me (sometimes it's just a list, sometimes a full blown mindmap)
...at this point I have a decent high level understanding...which basically means I could describe the topic to someone without stumbling (which I usually try at this point) - From the high level understanding I usually also get: key terms for searches, intor level books/articles that are linked etc. - At this point working at a university comes in handy because it lets me be behind the annoying paywalls at will...search Google Scholar or similar databases for the mined key words. Everything that looks remotely interesting...oh wait BEST TOOL EVER - Zotero is sick good, comes as a FF plugin...great. If you search in scientific databases and the like a little icon pops up in the address bar of the browser indicating it identified the sources...click, mark everything -> it goes into your collection (with full text access)
[I order it by topic so for AI I might have Expert Systems and Rule Based, Fuzzy etc.] - So basically I just wade through the databases and get everything that sounds interesting from the title into Zotero. Alays a good idea to get some "history of XYZ" or "XCY since author Y" sources - Once done I read the abstracts and the conclusions and put a rough note what the articels are about. I also scan the sources to grow my collection of relevant articles (I mark what I don't think is relevant or move it into a special subcollection) - I usually try to establish a history of the field with the major stepping stones, this is usually easy (sometimes not, worth a paper to make it easier for future researchers :P) - If it's related to programming in any way I also search google or github directly for anything related. Code is good :) [often there are tomes that are the de facto standards in their fields that serve as a massive source collection as well. Perfect example would be AI - A Modern Approach] |