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Online citation tools

Page history last edited by Anita Hamilton 13 years, 9 months ago

Page developed by Will Wade, Claire Hayward & Anita Hamilton

 

What are citation tools?

Citation tools are a way to describe a broad range of software packages, largely online, that can help in you to find and store literature relevant to your area of practice.  Now before you stop reading and say to yourself "But I'm an OT - not a researcher - this isn't for me!" - remember that we are all researchers no matter which are we are in; practice, research or teaching. 

 

The "Evidence-Based Practice" era of the 1990's is hopefully now part of the fabric of every day OT life and new graduates to the profession have been educated to be able to find and critique evidence for daily practice.  In our work we need to collect information, some of us more often than others, for our practice in new interventions, reviewing old interventions, creating outcome measures, or to share with clients. 

 

Whatever information you're searching for we would like you to consider how you can collect, store, critique and apply this information or share it with others in face to face practice, networks of interest or through your own research and writing.  In this forum we won't consider questions such as "How do you know it's rigorous - good evidence?" as this needs to be answered in other ways.  Being able to critique literature (not just access it) is a very important skill to develop. More information about this can be found through OTSeeker and OTCATS.  This forum is designed to help you learn about how to find, store and share information.

 

Ways to search, store and share information online:

Using desktop citation managers such as Endnote, Refworks, Bibdesk, iPapers, Papers, Bookends, Mellel, Biblioscape, Reference Manager, ProCite, WriteNote

  • Problem: These tools do not interface with each other, some cannot be shared easily from one computer to another.  Some do not store PDF's (some do), most integrate into Word/OpenOffice etc but are they social and what about when you don't have your own desktop with you? Aren't you a bit fed up with searching through authors references? Isn't there a better way?
  • Solution: Social networking + citation managers = greater access to knowledge through collection of like minded folk
    • CiteULike, bibsonomy, connotea, 2collab, Mendeley

 

In the video below Will Wade has outlined a helpful tool called CiteULike as an example of one of the many tools available. 

Video: http://vimeo.com/10620241

 

Introduction to Online Citation tools from will wade on Vimeo.

 

Other ways to search, store and share information online include:

  • Using web browser "bookmarks" 
    • Problem: The problem with just bookmarking citations is that you store your web bookmarks on one computer only, no one else can share your knowledge and you can lose this information if the computer "crashes"
    • Solution: Use an online bookmark manager such as delicious.com (see our page on Social Bookmarking)
  • Using online (free) databases such as PubMed, BMJ to access information (see our page on Online Scholarly Databases)

 

In Summary whatever you do share your references and reading lists. Its easy, fun and can seriously aid your own knowledge and research circle. 

 

Practice Example

 

Claire Hayward is a member of the OT4OT team and is a practicing clinician, and also a student on the online MSc in Advanced Occupational Therapy at the University of Salford.  Claire uses an free online citation tool called Mendeley.

 

" Mendeley was recommended to me by a Twitter friend.  With so many papers available online my laptop was getting clogged with downloaded articles and my filing system was pretty non existent!  Using Mendeley I was able to transfer whole files containing lots of articles, Mendeley then pulls out the key details like journal title and year of publication and allows me create collections of papers to group them by topic.  It has a tool which means you can pull in a citation into word when you cite a paper, and then Mendeley creates you reference list when you have finished.  The search function is probably the most use part - I can search by author, journal title or type in a key word or phrase and it will search every paper in a flash.  When I read the papers through Mendeley I can highlight text, add a note or copy and paste the text into a word document.  It has a really nice clean feel and is very easy to use.  As well as the desktop software you can look at your Mendeley library online, so you don't have to be at your home computer.  You can create collections with you colleagues, or search for someone who has the same interests as you and make new connections.  My Mendeley profile is here so you can take a look."

 

 

Mendeley Teaching Presentation

 

Creative Commons License
Online citation tools by OT4OT is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

 

 

 

 

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