Sigh! [via PhD Comics]

Their aim is to promote web publication and not rank institutions thus supporting open access initiatives and electronic access to scientific publications for research. Such a ‘web presence’ might have a correlation with academic quality and prestige as is evident through the ranking of top 4000 institutions (I’m glad to see Texas A&M ranked 16).

On a related note, there is a call for JSTOR to release academic research material into public domain as the content was created by academics funded by not-for-profit institutions. JSTOR in fact also is a self-sustaining not-for-profit institution.

Questia Online Library is an example of one such online library that gives you access to a large collection of books and journal articles in the fields of humanities and social sciences. The database also includes magazines and newspaper articles and is searchable by title, author, subject, and keyword.

One of the impressive options in Questia is the availability of online tools that enable users to create footnotes, bibliographical references, and hyperlinking across titles. I cannot overemphasize the importance of such tools that not only recreate the way you would use physical resources but also enhance your experience in using online tools in order to help you maintain a list of resources you accessed. One more additional feature that impressed me was the availability of more than 5000 books in online format. These books are public domain books whose copyright has expired hence are available to read for free in their entirety. No more buying expensive books or looking them up in libraries. You can use all the above mentioned reference tools in these books as well.

However, the flip side of availing of such resources is the paid subscription options. But, Questia makes it easy to subscribe and gives you options depending on your use. If you plan on using it regularly for your term papers and research projects, the best option is the annual subscription for nearly $100. If you want to use it for just 1-2 projects, you can choose the relatively less expensive options for a quarterly ($45) or monthly period ($20). Before you buy a subscription, I would advice you to check with your school or university if it has Questia included in its list of available online databases. If not, you can request your institution to add Questia to its list of databases. Finally, I have found references to online resources within Questia in other databases like ERIC (EBSCO) and Science Direct. I would like Questia to state which journals or books are exclusive to their service which gives me a better idea of deciding if I should subscribe. You can choose to avail of their free trial offer to look around and decide if it is a good match for your research needs.

Personally, I use Google Scholar after logging in through my university’s proxy server. This allows me to search for articles and books aided by Google’s superior search technology and the meta-description below every result shows me if the reference is available in my university library in full-text format or otherwise. It also allows me to import bibliographic information into Endnotes (BibTex or Refworks options are also available).

Note: This is a paid review for Questia Online Library. I request you to check it out and I heartily recommend their service but beware of redundancy if you have access to other similar resources.

There is increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims. However, this should not be surprising. It can be proven that most claimed research findings are false.

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution presents the basic idea in a simple-to-understand diagram. But does this conclusion apply to social research or urban planning research as well? There also has been talk of bringing out the ‘dark research’ out of the closet i.e. research studies that have yielded results contradictory to the researchers’ expectations and hence aren’t published. One of their suggestions regarding journal policy that I agree with is – As an editor or referee, don’t reject papers that fail to reject the null.