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GEOS 1701 Environmental Systems, Processes and Issues

GUIDE TO RESEARCHING AND REFERENCING

One component of the Water Use Assignment involves conducting some external research
Here is a brief guide on how to conduct research and how to reference the information you
find and use to support your presentation.

1. Researching: How to Find Useful Information
Researching refers to going out and finding information related to a topic from a variety of
sources. It’s fun and one of the most important learning skills you will acquire at university.
It’s also easy as you can do it from home as opposed to the ‘old days’ when we had to devote
a lot of time to walking from library to library and doing lots of photocopying.

Generally you should be looking for information relating to your topic in scholarly books,
chapters in scholarly books, scientific journal articles and (reliable) internet sources. However,
the seminar topics vary in nature and this may be reflected in the type and amount of
information source available. There may be lots of scientific journal articles on some topics,
while there may be none on others. That’s ok. Don’t feel you have to find a book or book
chapter on your topic, because there might not be one. So here are some tips to get started
with your research:

1.1 Where do I find information?
The best approach to conducting research for your topic involves searching for material
related to your topic using:

i) The UNSW Library
The university library is a fantastic source of information and databases. While some
reference material (e.g. ebooks) are available online, older resources are still in hardcopy
form. You are still able to sign out books and collect them with certain restrictions related to
COVID19. For more information on the latest procedures, visit:

https://www.library.unsw.edu.au/study/news/covid19-updates-to-services-and-spaces

ii) Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a free online search engine for scholarly literature across an array of
publishing formats and disciplines and can be found simply by searching for ‘Google Scholar’
or going to https://scholar.google.com/

It is fast and very easy to use and if you type keywords related to your topic into the search
engine, you will quickly generate a large number of references. If you have never used Google
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Scholar before, the very first thing you should do is click on the three horizontal lines at the
top left, scroll down and select ‘Settings’ and then click ‘Library Links’ from the left side. You
then need to enter ‘University of New South Wales’ in the search bar and tick the box when it
comes up. Then save this setting. Your Google Scholar searches are now linked to the
University library system and if a reference is available online at the Library, it will come up
as ‘Find it@UNSW’. An example of a search for ‘Rip Currents and Beach Safety’ (which is what
I study) is shown in Figure 1.



Figure 1. First page of a search on Google Scholar for ‘Rip Currents and Beach Safety’.

Generally, the most applicable references come up first, but it’s worth scrolling through the
first few pages of results as this is not always the case. A few things to note from Figure 1 is
that if it’s an old reference, clicking on ‘Cited by…’, which is below the description, will take
you to a list of all the sources of published information that have cited (or used) that study in
their study. It’s a very good way of finding more recent sources of information. You will also
note that while some of the sources are found at the UNSW library, not all are. If you lucky,
you may get a link to an online pdf, but sometimes you can’t.

iii) The Internet
The internet is great and easy to use. There’s also a ton of stuff out there, but the quality and
reliability of information can vary considerably. So you need to be careful that you are using
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reliable sources. Generally, any official websites provided by governments (national, state, or
local) or government-funded organisations are very reliable when it comes to scientific
information. Similarly, anything related to ongoing university research should be reliable.

You may also find ‘grey literature’ on the internet, which are things like consulting reports
that are not necessarily done for academic and scholarly purposes, but are useful as they are
typically based on existing scientific knowledge and data and often provide good background
reviews of topics.

What you should avoid on the internet are ‘amateur’ websites or blogs that express personal
opinion and are not affiliated with a known and reputable organisation. Often these sites can
provide biased, and often incorrect, information.

1.2 What should I be looking for?
You should be looking for sources of information that provide recent information that is
relevant. By recent, this should be within the last 5 years if not the last few years. You should
also focus on information related to Sydney or the Greater Sydney region and also NSW or
Australia.

There won’t be many (any?) dedicated books or book chapters on domestic water use in
Sydney so you will probably have to rely on scientific journals or material on the internet. In
terms of scientific journal articles, they all have Introduction sections that will hopefully
provide a good summary of the topic as well as an overview of the most recent research.

2. Referencing
Referencing is a way of acknowledging the sources of information that you use to research
your assignments. You need to provide a reference whenever you draw on, or replicate,
someone else’s words, ideas or research. Not referencing other people’s work can constitute
plagiarism. Generally references are provided in a list form under the heading ‘References’.
Other disciplines refer to this as a ‘Bibliography’.

There are lots of different systems with rules about how you reference books, book chapters,
journal articles, internet sources, etc. Generally as long as you follow one particular
referencing system and are consistent with this, that’s fine, but a common system (and one
recommended by UNSW) is the Harvard Referencing style.

UNSW provides information about everything you need to know about referencing at:

https://student.unsw.edu.au/referencing

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An example of a reference list using the Harvard style is shown in Figure 2. It contains a range
of different sources of information (although my heading for it would be: Reference List).
Note that it is presented in alphabetical order.


Figure 2. Example of Harvard Referencing style. Source: https://libguides.mjc.edu/


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