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MAA725 assessment Help

Welcome to the assessment help page for MAA725. The aim of this page is to assist you with your research for your assessment. In assessments, you are required to support your arguments with evidence in the form of peer reviewed articles. This page will explain peer reviewed articles and suggest search techniques to find articles relevant to the assessment.


Scholarly journals and articles


Scholarly (peer review) journals and articles are the preferred resource to use in university assessments. They disseminate research and carry more credibility due to the peer review process where journal articles submitted by researchers are evaluated by experts in the field before being published. Unless indicated, it is important that you use scholarly (peer review) resources for your assessments. 

What is a scholarly journal?

A scholarly journal is a publication in which experts in a field submit articles.  This is one of the primary means through which many disciplines discuss new findings, ideas and research.

What is a scholarly article?

Scholarly articles can also be referred to as academic or peer reviewed articles. They have been through a formal review process prior to publication to ensure they are academic in nature and meet specific criteria. They are written to inform or report research to a scholarly audience, and therefore tend to use technical language.

Many of these articles have been through a peer review process. They contain an abstract along with a list of references or other readings.

What does peer review mean?

Evaluation of scientific, academic, or professional work by others working in the same field.

For help finding a particular journal or journal article, visit the Skills for Study help page

How do you decide if a journal is peer reviewed?

Here are some tips to help you identify a peer reviewed journal:

  • These journals will always include a statement to identify themselves
  • Most databases have a search option to limit the search results to peer reviewed /refereed / scholarly articles
  • Look for information about the journal when searching databases
  • Still in doubt? Find out more information on the journal by going to the journal's website

 

Video: What is Peer Review?

Click the play button below to watch the video on Peer Review.


Planning your search

Before you start researching for an assessment it is a good idea to plan out your search strategy. Have a think about the key words in your questions and use this downloadable search planner to get started.


Searching the library

For searching tips have a look at the detailed searching help pages on this Accounting guide. Have a look at:

Have a look at this video on searching the library:

Search for Digital Library Resources

For more help have a look at our Skills for Study page on the Library Website.


Advanced Search Techniques

Use your key words together to get more relevant results.

Phrase searching narrows a search to show results that contain an exact phrase e.g. "positive accounting theory"

To conduct a phrase search, add double quote marks around two or more words you want to search for.

For example: searching for "lending agreements" will only return records that contain this exact term. The search will not return results where the word 'lending' or 'agreements' appear alone.


Truncation searching broadens a search to show results that include words with variation.

To conduct a truncation search, use an asterix character * to signify where the variation should exist.

Use this when you want to show results that include words with different endings. For example, searching for Audit* will return records that contain any of these words:  'Audit', 'Auditing', 'Audits', 'Auditor', etc.

Truncation can also be useful when spelling variations exist. For example, searching for organi*ation will return records that contain either of these words:  'organisation', 'organization'.

Truncation searching is sometimes referred to as wildcard searching or stemming.


Boolean searching is a type of search that allows users to combine keywords with operators (such as AND, OR, NOT) to produce more relevant results

Using the word AND between two search terms narrows a search to show results containing both terms.

Conversely, using the word OR between two terms broadens a search to show results containing either term.

Using NOT will narrow your search by excluding certain results from your search, however as the video on the next tab shows it should be used with care as this technique can remove relevant results.


Video: What are boolean operators (1:36)


Additional databases to search

The library search / Advanced Search includes about 80% of the library databases. If you are looking for some additional databases to search, try:


Google Scholar

Google Scholar is great for locating academic articles!

Be aware and beware!

Here are some reasons to be cautious when using Google Scholar to search for relevant, credible, academic resources:

  • Google search results are not ranked according to your search criteria alone. This is because Google shapes search results based on what it knows about you from your previous searching activity.
  • Google's search results can be influenced by wider interests including business, marketing, political activity.
  • Google Scholar results include non-academic and non-peer reviewed material.

Referencing

It is important that you acknowledge all the sources you use in your writing so that you:

  • show your assessor how widely you have read
  • provide evidence to support and strengthen your arguments and statements
  • demonstrate academic integrity
  • enable the reader to locate the sources referred to in your paper
  • credit the original author(s) for their work.

Refer to The Deakin Guide to Referencing and select the correct style for your unit. If you are unsure, Please check with the unit chair.