Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-30/Dispatches

Diberri[edit]

Tim, it would be fabulous to work in a mention of Diberri; at FAC, I've noticed several Projects that aren't tapped in to the tool, resulting in inconsistent citation formatting. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:34, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Abstract vs. full text[edit]

Tim, maybe add some wording about not relying on abstracts only; that is, only cite a journal article if you're accessed and read the full-text? I've seen some editors who mistakenly rely on abstracts only. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:14, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I did that with a new section WP:FCDW/June 30, 2008 #Abstracts versus full text. Eubulides (talk) 19:33, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sheesh, this is awesome. I'm leaning towards a solitary dispatch, with Laser's and Awadewit's topic done separately. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:09, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is a full article; we can't add the other stuff. How about if we re-org (move the first section to the end), and title it "Sources in biology and medicine"? I think go ahead and make it stand-alone. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:17, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I didn't know the size limits. In rereading this I see that there's some stuff here that perhaps belongs in WP:MEDRS or maybe a new, more general WP: article on searching for sources? It does seem to me that a lot of the material here is "obvious stuff that never gets written down but should be". Anyway, I suppose that can wait until after this version gets published. Eubulides (talk) 21:09, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dispatches are generally bite-sized; anything here that is more general than bio/med could go to the other Dispatch that Laser and Awadewit are going to write (maybe excerpt it here to the talk page, and drop a note to Laser brain to use it in the other version?). And, printing something here is easier than all the gyrations you have to go through to get something added to MEDRS; this is just general info rather than guideline or policy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:46, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks, I trimmed away the non-biomed stuff as part of a reorganization and enclose it below, in #Material that could be used in a non-biomed section. Some of the remaining text is fairly generic (e.g., on quality of sources, or freely readable text) and could be used in Laser and Awadewit's discussion Eubulides (talk) 23:12, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Material that could be used in a non-biomed section[edit]

Here is an example of how a query might work with Google Scholar. Suppose you are interested in the history of daylight saving time. As of this writing, the Google Scholar query history of daylight saving time returns about 31,100 sources; in the first page listing ten sources, only two are relevant. The better query history daylight-saving returns only 2,400 sources, but again, only two of the first ten sources are relevant. Clicking on "Recent articles" narrows the search's results to 491 total articles published since 2003, where four of the first ten sources are relevant. Of these four sources, two are books and are not freely readable; one is freely readable and on the net; the other is also freely readable but you'll need a further web search to find it.

You should not rely solely on search engines to find sources, because they often miss sources. For example, the last-mentioned Google Scholar query missed many of the sources used in the Wikipedia section on the history of daylight saving time, ranging from Berthold Ullman's article "Daylight saving in ancient Rome" published in the Classical Journal in 1918, to Joseph Myers's "History of legal time in Britain", self-published at Cambridge University in 2007. A good strategy is to find a few recent high-quality sources, and then follow their citations to see what your search engine missed. It can also be helpful to do a plain web search rather than one of scholarly articles

Eubulides (talk) 23:12, 18 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Moved from June 23[edit]

< Moved from WP:FCDW/June 23, 2008>

Tony added this to June 23, perhaps it can find a home here: SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:37, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As a rule of thumb, the greater the level of scrutiny evident in a source in checking the facts, analyzing the issues, and scrutinizing the evidence and arguments of others, the more reliable it is. Generally, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, and books published by university presses and other respected publishing houses. However, their status and quality vary considerably. Each field has what are known as "leading" journals, based on a quantification called impact factors, published yearly in Journal Citation Reports; these impact factors are not the definitive word on reliability and vary significantly from field to field (e.g., 2.5 would be high in engineering but low in physics); however, occasionally they may assist editors in knowing how seriously a source will be regarded by expert readers. Wikipedia also accepts sourcing from non-peer-reviewed academic sources, including conference abstracts, and from reliable non-academic publications, particularly if they are respected mainstream publications; these include professional and trade magazines, journals, and newsletters, and mainstream newspapers. The appropriateness of a source always depends on the context.

For further information, see WP:Verifiability.

I added it, with some changes, a discussion of lay summaries, and an example. I thought this episode was a bit long? But it's hard for me to resist discussing sources.... Eubulides (talk) 23:00, 26 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

good article, only minor crit is the comment about "biology" and medecine[edit]

Most of the discussion seems oriented to human physiolgy and medecine (even an assumption on many wiki articles, go read about a process and it is all in human context, almost unthinking of rest of biology). I think the issues for medecine (drug trials) and the source Pubmed are pretty different from non-human biology. Which is a lot more like chemistry or physics or just general science.TCO (talk) 23:48, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Creating research paper lists, collections, at PUBMED[edit]

The first step is to create a PubMed account, and when you carry out a search you can save the results to either a new or exisitng research paper collection. For a single research paper example you select the "Send to" menu option top right, and choose "collections" and from there you can add the paper to one of your existing research paper collections or start a new collection. For the results of a search you select the articles you want (tick box on left side) and again select the "Send to" option as before, and that will add all the selected articles to your chosen collection. Next choose "My NCBI" select "Manage Collections" at trhe bottom of the collections box, which then brinks up all of yoyr PubMed Research paper collections, and from the "Settings/Sharing" column slect the "private" option which takes you to your collections admin page, select "Public" (Middle of page) and save, you select "Edit settings" from top menu, which takes you back top collection admin page which will now include a URLyou can post anywhere to you research paper collection. dolfrog (talk) 16:26, 22 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]