ECOM13003 - Electronic Commerce Assessment item 1
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This guide has been prepared to assist you with finding current information for your weekly assessment presentation.
An element of this piece of assessment is that your sources must be current. Students should be aware that due to the timelines required by publishers, text books do not usually contain the most up to date information.
Your assessment details state that information from general websites will not be accepted.
This guide is intended to introduce you to some starting points for completing this objective. It covers:
- Starting your research
- Journals
- Newspapers & Magazines
- Internet Sources
- Evaluating Information
- Referencing and Plagiarism
Starting your research
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To effectively search for information for your assignment you first need to understand what it is you are looking for.
While you may have some success by searching using the set topic as keywords, you will have more success if you can identify the major keywords, key concepts and synonyms that deal with your topic. For example, if your topic is security and internet commerce, instead of searching only on "security", you will get more well rounded results if you search using keywords such as encryption, firewall, "secure site" etc.
Dictionaries and encyclopedias can help you gain an understanding of a topic area by locating background information, definitions or explanations of the keywords and concepts. The Library has a number of useful online reference resources which can be located in the More help? box.
Journals
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Your lecturer has specified that your sources must be current.
Excellent sources of current information are journals.
Journals usually focus on a very specific area of interest or research. They can often provide more in-depth information than books. They also offer the latest published research in a particular field.
Another advantage of using journals is that in the case of peer reviewed journals, the information can usually be trusted as being credible.
CQU Library offers a large number of journals online through journal databases. The journal databases can be accessed through SearchSmart.
For a list of databases relevant to E-Commerce, refer to:
Databases & Resources by Subject:
E-Commerce
Some databases which you may find useful are:
Newspapers & Magazines
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Newspapers and trade magazines are another good place to find current information.
The Library offers several ways to find newspapers and magazines. A number of the databases mentioned previously also carry newspapers and magazines. Proquest for example holds a number of international publications.
To access these publications, search Proquest as you you normally would. From the results screen you can click on the tabs to filter by the different sources. Proquest also gives you the option to view trade publications.
Another database the Library offers is Factiva. This database is dedicated to newspapers and magazines, with a large number being Australian.
For more information on how to search for newspaper articles, please consult the guide mentioned in the More help? box
Internet Sources
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While this assessment item does allow for the use of websites, your lecturer has specified that general websites are not allowed. This means that it is even more important that you have an efficient search strategy in place.
When people think of searching the web, one of the first search engines that comes to mind is Google. Due to way in which Google sorts its results it can have a very high degree of relevancy.
Unfortunately Google also promotes 'sloppy’ search strategies. Many
users simply type in a few keywords, get back thousands of results and only look
at the first few pages.
Many of the strategies that are used on Library databases can also be used on
Google to achieve better results.
Below are some tips for Google searching.
- ( ) : Keywords can be grouped together using brackets. This can be particularly useful when using the OR operand.
- " " : Phrases can be used by enclosing words in quotation marks.
- Boolean. Google supports the same types of Boolean as other
online databases
- AND : By default Google automatically assumes there is an AND between keywords. You can however put a + at the front of the keywords that you wish to appear higher in the list of results.
- OR : Keywords can be seperated with an OR. eg (internet OR "world wide web") commerce
- - : The minus sign is Google's equivalent of the NOT operand. You can use this to remove any results that contain a specified keyword. eg, "electronic payment" -paypal will return pages with the phrase "electronic payment", but only if they do not contain paypal.
- ~ : This will search on the keyword and its synonyms. eg, ~security will seach on security as well as encryption, firewall.
- site: : This is a very useful tool as it tells google to restrict its searches to a particular site. eg, ~secure site:.ibm.com seaches for secure and its synonyms but only returns sites that end in .ibm.com.
Evaluating Information
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At university level it is important to rely on information that meets the standards expected by your lecturers.
Many of the databases mentioned above contain peer reviewed articles. You need to be aware that while some databases only contain peer reviewed articles, eg Emerald, others contain articles which fall into other categories, such as Proquest. This can be used to your advantage providing you are aware of what results you are looking at.
Your lecturer has specified that general websites are not allowed. You need to ensure that any website that you are planning on using is suitable. Discuss the suitability of your resources with your lecturer.
Remember that whatever the information source you are using you need to evaluate its relevance and suitability.
Referencing and Plagiarism
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When undertaking academic research, you will draw on the ideas and works of other people. At CQU you must acknowledge the contributions of those people by referencing the work you have used.
Failing to acknowledge your sources is a form of plagiarism.
For more information on CQU's policy on plagiarism and referencing, refer to the links under More help?