Author: Amor Pérez-Rodríguez – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion
The elaboration of a scientific article, paper, is anchored in three fundamental pillars: to read, to investigate and to spread. The success of scientific writing is to determine what to read, when, how much and where, to objectively determine the research problem, its resolution and the originality of our contribution, and finally, to spread the relevance and originality of our paper.
Access to information is essential for all this. However, today it can be very complicated because of the large amount that we can have instantly and because the principles of search for the collection have varied. As for hyper information, which may become information or misinformation, a compass is a key. That is, a clear idea of what we want to collect and where to do it. Regarding the principles of search, the ease of access to the Internet is not a white card and it is not valid information everything that is on the Net.
We propose a series of clues to avoid getting lost looking for information.
- Access to information is made, in most cases, through databases, magazine portals, library catalogs, via Internet.
- Considering our topic of work, it is advisable to structure it in a series of concepts, keywords in Spanish and English, and combine them in different ways.
- Since we are trying to write a scientific article, it is better to go to the journals that are the source of the thematic area in which we work: academic publications, refereed, scholarly, peer reviewed, etc.
- We must first select the most powerful, those with the most impact in our field, looking for lines, currents, experiences, states of the art, related or opposites that allow us to place our research.
- The first line of access must be the Web of Science that provides us access to journals indexed in JCR. An emptying of what we find here can generate us enough information, which then we have to sift, logically. As second line we can use another important base, SCOPUS. Both provide us with rigorous texts as they have been reviewed and submitted for evaluation before publication.
- Ultimately, and as a complement, you can use Google Scholar or Dialnet. These accesses place us before information of different draft and not always arbitrated.
- Access to information should be on the primary source, whenever possible, because sometimes it is cited or referenced texts that have been poorly copied or poorly cited.
