Critical use of the Internet

Foreword

The Internet is now a key research tool and learning how to use it effectively for academic purposes is a skill that will benefit you greatly in all areas of your work.

Content

01 Introduction
02 Surf with caution
03 Prioritise well-established, academic resource sites
04 Use the University website and departmental webpages
05 Search engines: what they are and improving your returns
06 Specialized search engines
07 Web links
08 Essay banks, blogging, chat rooms and personal webpages
09 Judging a website's usefulness and validity
10 Referencing online sources

01 Introduction

The Internet can contribute significantly to your studies in a number of ways, for example via:

Direct access to subject-specific material: full text materials, electronic books and journals, databases, etc.
Utilisation of new web-based learning tools and technologies: email and online discussion forums, WebCT, video-conferencing, etc.
Exploration of virtual spaces allowing us to 'visit' libraries, government research centres and organisational websites, and to browse or use their facilities.

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02 Surf with caution

The Internet is all things, so understanding how to distinguish reliable sources from unreliable ones is crucial, as is appreciating how to use and reference material that is effectively 'live' (i.e. capable of changing daily, unlike books).

In addition, the Internet has contributed to a significant rise in the incidence of plagiarism, due variously to:

The sheer volume and immediacy of material;
A related sense of anonymity and freedom from regulation;
A proliferation of essay-banks and websites offering tailor-made essays;
The ease of 'copy and paste';
A lack of clarity over how Internet-based sources should be referenced.

Advanced electronic detection systems also exist, however, and universities are making increasing use of these to tackle the problem of plagiarism. Essex subscribes to the JISC plagiarism detection service.

So, while the Internet may provide ample opportunity for careless and inappropriate practice in your research, if not deliberate cheating, it is also increasingly the technology that will catch you out.

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03 Prioritise well-established, academic resource sites

Make these your focus, at least in the first instance. The following sites will provide you with some useful starting points.

Sites that teach you HOW to use the Internet:

The Resource Discovery Network (RDN): links you to key subject-specific sites in all academic fields, and provides an excellent Virtual Training Suite which includes a free online tutorial for students and researchers, aimed at helping you improve your Internet information literacy and IT skills.

Subject-specific sites:

See departmental webpages for lists. Otherwise ask academic staff.

Subject-specific search engines:

See departmental webpages for lists. Otherwise ask academic staff.

Online journals:

See departmental webpages for lists. Otherwise ask academic staff.

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04 Use the University website and departmental webpages

For the most part, the University website and departmental webpages will be more useful to you as sources of information and links to support your learning, than for subject-specific information directly. Here are some good starting points:

Course Materials Repository (CMR): is, as its name suggests, an online 'depot' for course materials for all subjects, providing access to course outlines, reading lists, etc., and a range of course resources and teaching materials.
Library subscription to online databases: many of the most useful subject-based databases are only available to 'members'. Fortunately, the University subscribes to a range of them on your behalf. You can access these via the library website, using your usual logon and password.
Staff pages: it's always worth knowing your way around the academic research interests in the department. The teaching staff really are your biggest resource, because you can actually talk to them (and this does still count for something!). So, it is worth checking out staff pages.

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05 Search engines: what they are and improving your returns

A search engine is simply a machine that searches the Internet on your behalf and sends you back brief details ('returns') of webpages that bear some relevance to the information you requested.

It is, of course, easy - and in principle perfectly legitimate - to simply begin your research on a particular topic with a search engine (e.g. Google).

Today, the popularity of Google is such that many people use it almost exclusively. It is no doubt an extremely powerful search facility, but nonetheless has the same shortcomings and risks as any other. Some tips:

All search engines can be frustrating in that, unless your search is very specific, or an 'advanced' search is employed, they have a tendency to return vast amounts of material, of very mixed relevance and worth; at best this contributes quickly to despondency on the part of the overwhelmed researcher!
An easy way - where appropriate - to refine a search is to enclose within inverted commas any words which invariably fall together (the search engine will then only return results where these words occur precisely as detailed).
EXAMPLE: searching for information relating to the BSA, enter your search as "British Sociological Association" (thus reducing Google returns from 1,560,000 to 95,200). Ok, room for improvement! But you can still add additional words to the search, for example '"British Sociological Association" 2005 conference gender' (739 returns).
Try a meta-search engine: meta-search engines are search engines which search other search engines and give you the most relevant returns from each. The downside is they're not as powerful as a 'single' search engine (e.g. Google), but some people argue they give more precise - and therefore potentially - useful returns. Try Mamma, the 'Mother of all search engines'.

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06 Specialized search engines

Today, there are also an increasing number of search engines targeted at specific user-groups (academics being an obvious example), and/or subject areas:

Google Scholar covers all subject areas, but is aimed at academics. It enables you to "search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research [and] find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web' (http://scholar.google.com 18/9/05).

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07 Web links

There are many sites offering lists of 'useful links', i.e. to other sites held to be of interest within a given subject area. These can be extremely useful (like using the bibliography of a book to snowball your reading), but again be discerning:

Prioritise lists from sources you know to be reliable;
REMEMBER, the further you 'browse' or 'surf' away from known and trusted sources/sites, the more skilled you will need to be in making judgements about the authenticity and reliability of the pages you visit.

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08 Essay banks, blogging, chat rooms and personal webpages

AVOID AT ALL COSTS, unless you are a very experienced online researcher and you are using the following types of sources for clearly defined purposes (for example 'content analysis', i.e. where such sources are the actual subject matter of your search). You are well-advised to avoid the following:

Essay banks and tailor-made writing services

Online collections of completed essays by past students, and services offering to write an essay for you (for a fee) to your own title specifications are inevitably tempting to those seeking the guidance or reassurance of 'real' samples.
Essay banks are easy to come by, unregulated, and basically a short-cut to plagiarism. DO NOT FOOL YOURSELF that using them will contribute in any useful way to your work. At best, you may be 'teaching yourself' from pretty second-rate material; at worst you are simply cheating and you stand a very high risk of being caught.

Discussion threads and bloggers

It's fine to take part in online discussion groups and to contribute to discussion threads. Many of these are serious in their intent and good places to test and hone your thinking.
However, don't quote from them just because you can (i.e. because there's a printed account of what was said). It's still 'discussion', and this is qualitatively different from carefully considered and argued published text.
Blogging is the act of publishing informally online by simply uploading thoughts and opinions. Today, there is an explosion of blogging sites, many of which are subject-specific and may fool the inexperienced researcher with the confidence of the opinions expressed, and their 'journalistic' appeal. Remember, you know nothing about who the authors are, or what authority they have for expressing a view on the subject.

Personal webpages

Treat as above.

Chat rooms

Again, unless you are entering them or observing them as subject material, do not use them as a source of information or expertise, even if they profess to be subject-specific (you don't know who they are, and you can't reference a chat!).

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09 Judging a website's usefulness and validity

This is the really important bit! The Internet will give you absolutely everything. How you go about deciding which material is sufficiently serious, trustworthy and reliable to use for academic research purposes is the on-going big question.

Some ideas have been given already. Here are some other good tips:

Judging search engine returns

If you are using a search engine to research a specific area, you can begin to form a judgement about the 'returns' before you even follow up a link, or reach the suggested page:

Search returns frequently take you to webpages (or even sections of pages) rather than website 'homes'. As a result, when opening up a link, you may often find its origins are not immediately apparent.
When deciding which returns to follow up, it is useful, therefore, to quickly scan the first part of the website address (otherwise known as the 'URL' - Uniform Resource Location) given at the bottom of the return. You can tell a lot about the 'seriousness' (usefulness and validity) of the address you're being directed to by looking at the bit that comes immediately BEFORE '.com' or '.co.uk'
Eg: a Google search on 'ethnicity women conference uk' brings up this return:

http://www.britsoc.co.uk/new_site/text_index.php?area=

Although the full address is longwinded, its opening section indicates that the webpage is a derivative of the BSA (British Sociological Association) site, and therefore to be trusted.

5 useful questions to ask yourself

Monash University's online library tutorial provides a very useful introduction here. Researchers are advised to ask themselves the following questions:

Who is responsible for the site - is there a name and contact address?
What is its rationale - is it endorsing a particular viewpoint to the exclusion of other views?
Is there a reference list or bibliography of corroborative evidence?
Is there a date when the site was last updated - how long ago did this happen?
Does the site seem to be permanent or part of a permanent organisation?

http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/vl/www/wwwcon.htm (20/9/05)

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10 Referencing online sources

Systems for referencing online sources are still being negotiated. Established referencing systems (e.g. Harvard), which have been developed over many years in relation to published hardcopy books and journal articles, are finding their own ways to incorporate the peculiarities of online material.

The main problems that arise are:	Possible solution:
1. Web-based material is 'live' i.e. it is capable of changing daily.	Always provide an 'access date' i.e. the date you viewed the source online
2. It's not always possible to tell who the author is	If the webpage doesn't specify, use the smallest unit of responsibility, this may for example need to be the website title itself.
3. Web-based articles aren't always page-numbered, so it can be hard to be precise about the specific location of the text cited/quoted.	Be as precise as the text allows you. If the webpage has its own heading, reference this.;
4. Web addresses and associated information can be lengthy, and referencing them therefore cumbersome, in-text at least.	As you would do referencing a book, include the name (author, or title if necessary) and year in-text. If this is not sufficient to direct the reader to your bibliography, use a footnote

The guiding principle, as with any form of referencing, should be to provide information that is as comprehensive as possible, in the briefest form possible. Good referencing enables the reader to follow up source material accurately, without unduly distracting from the content of the text itself.

For more information about referencing online sources, please go to Referencing section.

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Authored by: Rowena Macaulay, Department of Sociology