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Research Skills: Home

A guide to help you improve your research skills: make the most of your time to find and retrieve the information you need.

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Meet the Team

Simon Speight

Simon Speight

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Richard Holmes

Richard Pears 224

Dr Richard Pears

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Ben Taylorson

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Colin Theakston

James Bisset

James Bisset

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Welcome to Research Skills

Research Skills Banner

Welcome to our Research Skills guide; this provides guidance on finding information, managing the information you find, and how to keep up to date after an initial search. It aims to provide you with an overview of the core skills you will need to search for literature and other materials for your learning and research purposes.


Banner: Research Skills - Basics

You can find some core information on our 'The Basics' pages, which are designed to provide an overview of our services and some of the core tools available to you:

  • How to use the Library Catalogue to search for books and journals you have access to
  • How to search Library Discover for journal articles and further sources, including our museum and archives collections.
  • How to make the most from Google Scholar.
  • Free tools you can use to help simplify the process of finding and accessing full text content online
  • Some advanced tools for PGRs and academic staff.

Research Skills Finding Information Banner

The Finding Information pages provide help with researching a topic. Starting with an overview of how to approach your research question and how to break it down to form the basis of a manageable and efficient search, it will also cover:

  • How to construct an effective search strategy
  • Advice on how to critically evaluate the sources which you find
  • Citation searching and tools for identifying related content outside of traditional scholarly publications
  • Support for those undertaking a Systematic Review (and how these may be useful to see authors real search strategies in the wild).

Research Skills Managing Information Banner

The Managing Information pages provide you with the guidance and tools to:

  • Understand the importance of referencing, and what is meant by plagiarism (and how to avoid it)
  • Tools for collecting the sources you read, and how to create a bibliography or reference list from your collected references in the appropriate referencing style

Research Skills Current Awareness Banner

The Keeping-up-to-date pages provide you with the tools to automate some of your research activity, inlcuding:

  • Database & TOC alerts - to keep you up to date with the latest published research in your field
  • Citation alerts - to keep you up to date with any new publications citing your work, or citing key reading for your research.

Research Skills Subject Support Banner

Remember to also visit our Subject Guides for guidance from your Faculty Librarian on subject specific databases and tools available to you through University Library and Collections.

For PGRs and Research Staff, we also have our Research Support Guide.


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