5 top tips for Kaplan students

manwithbooks_218552cWelcome to Royal Holloway!  To succeed on your course you will need to be able to search and find information quickly and effectively.  To get you off to a good start here are 5 top tips:

1.  Finding ebooks

We have a growing number of ebooks which you can access at any time.

To access ebooks you first need to search LibrarySearch.  Search by author or keyword in the search box and then narrow your search by selecting RHUL Library Catalogue Only and Limit to Items with Online Full Text Available on the left hand side of the screen.  Have a look at the short video below for a demonstration.

2. Searching for scholarly journals

Business Source Complete is a good place to start as it contains thousands of scholarly articles covering all aspects of business and management theory. You can search by keyword, subject, or for a specific article if you already have the details. Both databases also allow you to set-up alerts on topics that interest you.

You may prefer to use Google Scholar to find articles for your assignemts.  You can configure Google Scholar to show an access link where full text access through a Royal Holloway subscription is available.  To do this follow the steps below:

  • Go to http://scholar.google.co.uk/
  • Sign in to your Google account if you have one. This will allow you to set the preferences so that you can access articles through the Royal Holloway access link on any computer
  • Click on the ‘Settings’ link in the top right corner
  • Under Library Links search for Royal Holloway and check the box next to ‘Royal Holloway, University of London – Find it @RHUL’
  • Finally click the ‘Save’ button
  • When using these links you will be prompted for your Royal Holloway logon

3. Finding newspaper articles in Nexis

Nexis is a great resource for finding full text newspaper articles and it includes hundreds of UK and international newspapers.  You can browse Nexis to see which newspapers are covered or you can search for specific newspapers or groups of newspapers.

Browsing Nexis

To see a list of all UK newspapers covered by Nexis:

  • Select the Sources tab (at the top left of the screen)
  • From the tabs beneath this select Browse Sources
  • Change Filter by country to the country you are interested in (e.g. United Kingdom).
  • Select the News folder under publication type
  • Select the Newspapers folder.
  • A list of titles will now appear, and you can search these individually or in groups.

Searching Nexis

To search for articles, first check that you have the Search and News tabs selected from the options in the top left of the screen.

Enter your keywords into the search box and select a time period. Using In the Headline or Major Mentions options from the drop-down menu ensures that your hits will be more relevant. This is useful for when your search is likely to retrieve a great number of articles.

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The list of results displayed gives only brief details. To view the full article, click on the highlighted title of the article.

As well as newspaper articles you can use Nexis to gather information about a company, industry, country and people.

4. Developing effective research skills

Knowing how to effectively search online resources will enhance your academic work.  Take a look at one of our library skills courses IS223 How To Research Your Assignment for a step by step guide.  This course will help you to identify the key concepts from a given assignment, select the best keywords and show you how to put them together to form an effective search strategy.

For a bit of fun take a look at this video!

 

5.. Avoiding plagiarism

You will hear the word ‘plagiarism’ referred to alot so what is it and how can I avoid it? Plagiarism involves the process of using or copying someone else’s work and pretending that you thought of it or created it.  Plagiarism is viewed as a form of cheating and is a serious academic misconduct.

The most common forms of plagiarism are:

  • cut / copy and pasted material from the Web
  • copying the work of another student (past or present) including essay material, laboratory data or computer source code
  • copying course material or lecture notes
  • copying material out of a textbook or journal

You can help avoid accidental plagiarism through the proper attribution of source material (i.e. correct referencing). Always make sure you take time to reference accurately and don’t be afraid to ask for help!

There are a number of college resources available to help you understand plagiarism and how to avoid it. The Academic Support Team provide useful and interactive guides on how to understand and avoid plagiarism. See the section ‘Study Resources’ on their web pages.  The Library also has a self study course IS226 Introduction to Referencing, Citing and Biliographies course which will get you started.

Correct referencing to avoid plagiarism

Through the use of correct referencing you can avoid ‘accidental plagiarism’.  Referencing, also referred to a ‘citing’, is the process of adding ‘references’ (or ‘citations’) an a ‘bibliography’ within your course work. A reference is a clearly identified ‘note’ that states that you are referring to someone else’s work and what the work is that you are referring to.

Referencing must be carried out in a specific ‘style’ as required by the School.  The School of Management uses a style of referencing called Harvard.  The Harvard Referencing Summary Sheet from Judge Business School is a useful guide which will help you with both your in text citations and bibliography.