SOE3180/3181 with A. Marmier

Individual Projects

Module Information, official School Documention

Portal for modules, full of information, fdownloads, deadlines, etc

Assesment criteria

Assesment forms for markers, very informative

You may like to look at the full module description of SoE3180 , and at the full module description of SoE3181

Research Skill

Writing Skill

A link to the 1st year guide/booklet, outlining general principles.

There are many good books to help you craft an excellent report, for instance:

M. Alley, The craft of scientific writing, New York : Springer, 1996.
J.W. Davies, Communication skills : a guide for engineering and applied science students, Harlow :Prentice Hall, 2001.

both are in the Harison Library.

References, finding information

You will be hard pressed to find academic publications by limiting yourself to google, even if google scholar is improving. This being said, many PhD Thesis are published online these days, and their introduction very often provide an accessible description of a field.

Nevertheless, the tool of choice is Web of Science.

If you cannot acces it from home, you need to first sort out your VPN to the University.

Bibliography and references

You will find that a reference management software makes the task of reorgnanising your list of references and producing a bibliography almost easy.

The ideal tool is Endnote, but it is not free, and the cost of the license is higher than the allowance for this project.

There are free alternatives. A good one is Bibus (Download).

A brief tutorial (assuming that you have downloaded and installed Bibus):

In WOS, tick the boxes to the left of the article you want to include in your database, and add them to the marked list (do not forget to add to marked list at each page, otherwise you lose the ticks)
Go to Marked List, tick "abstract" (optional), and click "Export to Reference software", "save to disc".
Give the file a good name, dates/keywords are useful, i.e. PotentialMetals280108.cgi, and "OK"

Open Bibus
File/Import/ISI browse for your file, Latin-1 codec, and OK
Move from the Import buffer to your datastructure in References

Open Bibus, and your word document
In Word, leave pointer where you want to insert. Switch to Bibus, MSWord/Insert, and voila
To update the Bibliography, in Bibus MSWord/UPdade Biblio ..., once in a while.
You can modify the style of the bibliography to your oen taste

Please make some test on amodest document before relying on it for your final report !!!

Once you have found the reference to a paper you want to read, your first port of call should be the Electronic Library.

If you cannot find the journal you want, you can try a google search, or look for a paper copy in the library, or ask me.

Finances

To check what can be claimed for your project, and claim it, please contact Karen Pope, room H235

Various Links

Project Management template Exeter Electronic Library

The Nuffield Foundation proposes Summer Bursaries to try research. Not badly payed (175GBP/w). Deadline 12th February

Web of Science

Arnaud Marmier
School of Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics
February 2008