CS 4784 Research Resources: Using Web Resources

As you decide which resources to include in your research, here are some things to think about:

Authority:  Who wrote it?  What sort of expertise do they have in this area?

Coverage:  Is it relevant to your topic?  

Objectivity:  Is there any bias?  If so, how much?

Accuracy:  Is the information correct?  Is it in alignment with other research findings or articles?  

Currency:  When was your resource produced?  Does this matter for your topic?  

Not all information relevant to your review will be found in journal articles or conference proceedings.  In fact, there's a name for all the information and "publications" that fall outside of the strict walls of scholarship or academia.  These resources are called grey literature, and you may want to be aware of some of the grey literature that exists within computer science.

Grey literature can be found in:

• Government research
• Nonprofit reports
• Think tank reports
• Pre-prints
• Blogs
• Project or lab websites
• Institutional repositories
• Data archives

Some examples of places where you can look for thsee types of resources include:

• Computing Research Repository (CoRR):  http://arxiv.org/corr/home
• arXiv.org:  http://arxiv.org/
• CiteSeerX:  http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/

There are definitely other options, as well, but keep these types of resources in mind as you search for relevant literature.