Guides

Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Medical Writing – An Editor’s Advice (CC BY-NC-SA)

This work is a useful companion text to comprehensive style guides for the biomedical sciences. This book walks authors through best practices for writing scientific papers and grant proposals in a concise and accessible format. Authors and teachers worldwide will benefit from these shared insights of an experienced scientific editor.

Textbooks

Advanced Library Skills for Physics Research (CC BY)

Literature searching and information evaluation for upper level undergraduates and Master’s students, from the University of Alberta Library.

Confident Supervisors: Creating Independent Researchers (CC BY-NC-SA)

Confident Supervisors is intended to be both a textbook and a professional development resource for Higher Degree Research supervisors and researcher developers involved in providing workshops and resources to support research supervisors in their practice. Throughout this book, authors introduce different theoretical frameworks and concepts to provide supervisors with tools and strategies for responding to the challenges and opportunities associated with research supervision. It contains chapters written by current supervisors and research support partners who are engaged in the scholarship of supervision and can share the practical and theoretical constructs they employ in their practice. The authors have been drawn from a broad range of higher education and research contexts and contribute understandings of local and global relevance.

Critical Thinking in Academic Research (CC BY-SA)

This book will introduce students to the techniques and principles of critical thinking, and provides guidance on developing research questions and finding resources to answer the questions.

Data Feminism (CC BY)

A new way of thinking about data science and data ethics that is informed by the ideas of intersectional feminism.

Doing Research: A Student’s Guide to Finding and Using the Best Sources (CC BY)

A modules-based approach to learning research skills that emphasizes the reflective nature of information discovery, the contextual basis for evaluating that information, and a recognition that information has value.

Engaging Researchers with Data Management: The Cookbook (CC BY)

Engaging Researchers with Data Management is an invaluable collection of 24 case studies, drawn from institutions across the globe, that demonstrate clearly and practically how to engage the research community with RDM. These case studies together illustrate the variety of innovative strategies research institutions have developed to engage with their researchers about managing research data.

Graduate Research Project Guide (CC BY-NC-SA)

This book presents a step-by-step guide to help graduate students complete a Master’s thesis or graduate research project paper for those who conduct research using a secondary dataset.

Informed Arguments: A Guide to Writing and Research (CC BY-NC-SA)

This book is appropriate for a first-year composition course focusing on academic writing, reading, researching, and speaking. Major concepts in argument theory are covered.

Introduction to College Research (CC BY)

This book acknowledges the changing information landscape, covering key concepts in information literacy to support a research process with intention. It critically examines the everyday online environment such as algorithms, the attention economy, information disorder and cynicism, information hygiene, and fact-checking. This is followed by an exploration of information source types, meaningful research topics, keyword choices, effective search strategies, library resources, Web search considerations, the ethical use of information, and citation.

Library 160: Introduction to College-Level Research (CC BY-SA)

You will learn how scholarly information is produced, organized, and accessed; how to construct and use effective search strategies in a variety of web tools and scholarly databases; how to choose finding tools appropriate to the type of information you need; critical thinking skills in the evaluation of resources; and best practices in the ethical use of information.

Niagara College Libraries + Learning Commons Information Skills Online Handbook (CC BY)

This handbook introduces and reinforces essential information literacy skills for students beginning their post-secondary careers.

Research Methods Handbook (CC BY)

In this guide we explore some of these issues with a focus on open research, drawing on insights from researchers within the Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN). Open practices in research can challenge assumptions about how to create and share new knowledge. In the handbook, we draw on insights from experienced open researchers to build understanding of research in the open. The advice given applies to all research, but is of particular relevance to those interested in open approaches.