RESEARCH METHODOLOGY &

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
RIGHTS
(18RMI56)

Dr. A. Chrispin Jiji

Associate Professor
Department of ECE
Cambridge Institute of Technology
Bangalore
Textbook
1. Dipankar Deb, Rajeeb Dey, Valentina E. Balas “Engineering
Research Methodology”, ISSN 1868-4394 ISSN 1868-4408
(electronic), Intelligent Systems Reference Library, ISBN 978-981-
13-2946-3 ISBN 978-981-13-2947-0 (eBook),
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2947-0

2. Intellectual Property A Primer for Academia by Prof. Rupinder

Tewari Ms. Mamta Bhardwa

Reference Book:
1. David V. Thiel “Research Methods for Engineers” Cambridge
University Press, 978-1-107-03488- 4

2. Intellectual Property Rights by N.K.Acharya Asia Law House 6th

Edition. ISBN: 978-93-81849-30-9
 MODULE 2
Literature Review and Technical Reading:
New and Existing Knowledge, Analysis and Synthesis of Prior Art
Bibliographic Databases, Web of Science, Google and Google Scholar,
Effective Search: The Way Forward Introduction to Technical Reading
Conceptualizing Research, Critical and Creative Reading, Taking Notes
While Reading, Reading Mathematics and Algorithms, Reading a
Datasheet.

Attributions and Citations: Giving Credit Wherever Due, Citations:

Functions and Attributes, Impact of Title and Keywords on Citations,
Knowledge Flow through Citation, Citing Datasets, Styles for Citations,
Acknowledgments and Attributions, What Should Be Acknowledged,
Acknowledgments in, Books Dissertations, Dedication or
Acknowledgments.
Literature Review and Technical Reading:
1. New and Existing Knowledge
2. Analysis and Synthesis of Prior Art
3. Bibliographic Databases -Web of Science Google - Google
Scholar
4. Effective Search: The Way Forward
5. Introduction to Technical Reading
6. Conceptualizing Research
7. Critical and Creative Reading
8. Taking Notes While Reading
9. Reading Mathematics and Algorithms
10. Reading a Datasheet.
Literature Review and Technical Reading
Describe the importance of performing a thorough literature review in
engineering research, while also illustrating how a proficiently
executed literature reviews aids in showcasing originality in research

Key Points
• Definition
• Objectives
• Purpose of literature review and its research role
Definition
• It is a critical recap of what has already been researched on a topic
under study
• Research literature is taken from books, journals, research papers,
scholarly articles etc

Objectives of literature Review

A literature review has four main objectives:
• It surveys the literature in your chosen area of study
• It synthesizes the information in that literature into a summary
• It critically analyzes the information gathered by identifying gaps
in current knowledge
• It presents the literature in an organized way
Purpose of Literature Review
• The primary goal (purpose)of literature review: To know the use of
content/ideas/approaches in the literature
• Problem Identification: It helps in correctly identifying research
problems that might be unclear initially
• Advocating approaches: Researches use literature to advocate
specific approaches to understand the problem, and
• Choice of methods: It assists in comprehending the choice of
research methods.
1. New and Existing Knowledge
Key Points
• Navigating sources of existing knowledge
• Effective strategies for conducting a comprehensive literature
review
Navigating sources of Existing Knowledge
• New knowledge in research can only be interpreted within the
context of what is already known, and cannot exist without the
foundation of existing knowledge.
• Focus on how the foundation of knowledge needs to be constructed
so that our new knowledge is supported by it.
• The new knowledge can have vastly different interpretations
depending on what the researcher’s background, and one’s
perception of that new knowledge can change from indifference to
excitement (or vice versa), depending on what else one knows.
• The significance can normally be argued from the point of view
that there is indeed an existing problem and that it is known by
looking at what already exists in the field.
• The existing knowledge is needed to make the case that there is a
problem and that it is important.
• Where does existing knowledge come from? Normally, one finds
this knowledge by reading and surveying the literature in the field
that was established long ago and also about the more recent
knowledge which is in fact always changing.

- Text Book vs Research paper

Text Book Research Paper
Contains older established Knowledge Contains new work
Provide established Knowledge and Offer recent development (new work)
background
written as a teaching instrument, and the normally to present a small piece of new
author of the textbook normally starts knowledge, and that new knowledge will
from the basics and take the reader, not have stood the test of time in the same
through everything that one needs to be way as the knowledge in a textbook
able to understand that topic would have
Understands the basic knowledge Written for other researchers out on the
edge of knowledge and it assumes that the
reader already knows a lot in that field.
- Complexity of Research Papers
Research papers are more specialized and assume prior knowledge
in the field
- Building a strong foundation
Reading and learning from various sources help in constructing a
solid foundation of research
Effective strategies for conducting comprehensive literature
review
Conceptual focus: Literature review focus on concepts rather
than listing authors
Expectations of Supervisors: A well executed Literature review
impresses supervisor by showcasing a strong grasp of the fields
current state
Rules for Effective review: There are guidelines for writing an
effective Literature review including avoiding hasty conclusions
and synthesizing information effectively
• Comprehensive approach: A good Literature review involves
systematically analyzing and synthesizing archived work, provide a
firm foundation to a topic of interest and the choice of suitable
research methodologies, and demonstrate that the proposed work
would make a novel contribution to the overall field of research.

• A literature review should be able to summarize as

- what is already known from the state of the art
- detail the key concepts and the main factors or parameters and
the underlying relationships between those
- describe any complementary existing approaches
- enumerate the inconsistencies or shortcomings in the published
work
- identify the reported results that are inconclusive or
contradictory, and
- provide a compulsive reason to do further work in the field.
2. Analysis and Synthesis of Prior Art:
Researchers Process:
• After collecting articles for the literature review, the researcher is
ready to break down each article and identify the useful content in
it
• Then integrate them to see what conclusions they can draw from
the articles as a group.

Steps (Researchers need to):

(i) Understanding the hypothesis (main idea),
(ii) Understanding the models and the experimental conditions used,
(iii) Making connections,
(iv) Comparing and contrasting the various information, and
(v) Finding out the strong points and the loopholes.
• It is always good to be suspicious of the claims made in the sources
that have been thoroughly reviewed, especially in the case of tall
claims.
• If you believe everything you read it can limit your own research
and critical thinking.
• The goal of literature survey is
- to bring out something new
- to work on through the identification of unsolved issues
- determine the problems in the existing models or
experimental designs, and
- present a novel idea and recommendations.
Evaluation information sources for Research validity:
• No matter where one gets the available information, one needs to
critically evaluate each resource that the researcher wishes to cite.
• Relying on refereed articles published in scholarly journals or
granted patents can save the researcher a lot of time.
Criteria that could help the researcher in the evaluation of the
information under study:
- Authority: What are the author’s credentials and affiliation?
Who publishes the information?
- Accuracy: Based on what one already knows about the topic or
from reading other sources, does the information seem credible?
Does the author cite other sources in a reference list or
bibliography, to support the information presented?
- Scope: Is the source at an appropriate comprehension or
research level?
There are other criteria to consider as well, such as currency,
objectivity, and purpose. It is important to ensure that the search
question is neither too narrow nor too broad.
3. Bibliographic Databases
Describe the significance of bibliographic databases like web of
science and their role in aiding researchers to access scholarly articles
efficiently while highlighting the limitations of search engines like
Google scholar in the academic context

Key Points:
• Bibliographic databases
• Web of Science
• Google and Google scholar
• Navigating scholarly publications
• Effective information Retrieval: Tools, Strategies and ongoing
learnings
• “Bibliographic databases” refer to
- “abstracting and indexing services” useful for collecting
citation-related information and
- possibly abstracts of research articles from scholarly literature
and making them available through search.
• Performing simultaneous searches through such large databases
may allow researchers to overtly rely on any one database and be
limited by the intrinsic shortcoming of any one of them for quality
research.
• A researcher should be able to quickly identify the databases that
are of use in the idea or problem that one wishes to explore.
i) Web of Science
• Web of Science (formerly known as ISI(International Scientific
Indexing) or Thomson Reuters) includes multiple databases, as well
as specialized tools.
• It is a good search tool for scholarly materials requiring
- institutional license and
- allows the researcher to search in a particular topic of interest,
which can be made by selection in fields that are available in
drop down menu such as title, topic, author, address, etc.
• The tool also allows sorting by number of citations (highest to
lowest), publication date.
Search Techniques
- Put quotes around phrases
- add more keywords, or use the “Refine Results” panel on the left to
narrow down the search by keyword,
- phrases in quotation marks
- type of material such as peer-reviewed journal articles, date,
language, and more.
- Expanding the search results is possible by looking for alternate
word endings, breaking the search concepts down, thinking of
alternate search terms (including scientific names if applicable) and
connecting them with OR, and using the database’s features for
finding additional references.
- “Cited reference search” option enables a researcher to trace
articles which have cited a formerly published paper. Using this
element, it is possible to find how a familiar idea has been applied,
improved, or extended subsequently.
• Structured search is that enables narrowing and refining what one
is looking for is effective to ensure that the results throw up
relevant sources and time spent in studying those is likely to be
well utilized.
• Based on the researcher’s need the search result can be broadened
or narrowed down using the built-in fields provided in this website.
• When clicked on any of the search results, this website provides the
- title of the paper
- Authors
- the type of journal
- Volume
- issue number and
- year of publication
- Abstract
- keywords, etc.,
so that the researcher has enough information to decide if it is
worthwhile to acquire the full version of the paper.
ii) Google and Google Scholar

Google:
• Google is a great place to start one’s search when one is starting out
on a topic.
• It can be helpful in finding freely available information, such as
reports from governments, organizations, companies, and so on.

Limitations:
(i) It’s a “black box” of information. It searches everything on the
Internet, with no quality control—one does not know where results are
coming from.
(ii) There are limited search functionality and refinement
(improvement) options.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar limits one’s search to scholarly literature.

Limitations:
1. Some of the results are not actually scholarly. An article may look
scholarly at first glance, but is not a good source upon further inspection.
2. It is not comprehensive. Some publishers do not make their content
available to Google Scholar.
3. There is limited search functionality and refinement options.
Search Techniques
• Search operators that can be used to help narrow down the results.
• These help one find more relevant and useful sources of information.
Operators can be combined within searches.

Here are some basic ones that one can use:

(i) OR
• Find records containing any of the terms separated by the operator
• Example: Synchronous OR asynchronous will find results that have
either term present.

(ii) Brackets/Parentheses ( )
• Gather OR’d synonyms of a concept together, while combining them
with another concept.
• Example: RAM (synchronous OR asynchronous).
(iii) Quotation marks “ ”
• Narrow the search by finding words together as a phrase, instead of
separately.
• Example: RAM (synchronous OR asynchronous) “Texas
Instruments”.

(iv) Site
• limits the search to results from a specific domain or website. This
operator is helpful when searching specific websites such as the BC
government
• Example: RAM(synchronous OR asynchronous) “Texas Instruments”
site: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
(v) File type
• limits the search to results with a specific file extension one could
look for pdf’s, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, and so
on.
• Example: RAM (synchronous OR asynchronous) “Texas
Instruments” site: http:// ieeexplore.ieee.org, filetype: pdf.
• The Search Tools button at the top of the Google results gives you a
variety of other options, such as limiting the results by date.
• There are other operators and tools that one can use in Google and
Google Scholar.
• Google is a search tool a researcher can use—it is not the only one! It
can be hard to sift through all the results in Google or Google
Scholar, especially if the intent is to find scholarly resources from a
specific subject area.
• To find the best resources on a topic, one should search in academic
databases, in addition to Google.
• Databases provide access to journal articles and conference
proceedings, as well as other scholarly resources. One gets more
relevant and focused results, because they have better quality control
and search functionality.
• One should choose a database based on subject area, date coverage,
and publication type. Interfaces vary between databases, but the
search techniques remain essentially the same.
4. Effective Search: The Way Forward
• Scholarly Publication- Published outcome is authored by
researchers in a specific field of skill. Such work cites all source
contents used and is generally peer reviewed for accuracy and
validity before publication.
• Audience: fellow experts and students in the field. The content is
typically more complex and advanced than those found in general
magazines.
• Approaches: Engineering researchers need to refer
- articles that appear in scholarly journals, books or other peer-
reviewed sources, there is also a substantially useful content
in more popular publications.
- These are informal in approach and aim to reach a large
number of readers including both the experts in the field, but
the content focuses on news and trends in the field.
- Research outcomes are not typically first disseminated here
but are usually meant for general reading. A researcher should
use all search tools for comprehensive (complete) search.
Information needed:
• No one place or one source exists that will provide all the
information one needs.
• A researcher must consider what type of information is needed, and
where it could be found.
• Not all information is available online. Some information is only
available in print. It can take time for scholarly and peer-reviewed
information to be published.
• One might not be able to find scholarly information about
something currently being reported in the news.
• The information may not be available, or studies on a topic of
interest to the researcher have not occurred. In such a case, the
researcher should
- look for similar studies that would be applicable to the specific
topic
- look for broad information (general process, technology, etc.),
- as well as information that addresses the specific context of the
researcher’s report.
Searching is an iterative process:
• Experiment with different keywords and operators;
• Evaluate and assess results
• use filters
• Modify the search as needed; and
• When relevant articles are found, look at their citations and
references.
Summary:
• After the search is complete, the researcher needs to engage in
critical and thorough reading, making observation of the salient
points in those sources, and summarize the findings.
• A detailed comparison and contrast of the findings is also required
to be done. This entire process may be needed to be done multiple
times.
• The conclusion of the entire process of literature survey includes
- a summary of the relevant and important work done
- The identification of the missing links and
- The challenges in the open problems in the area under study.
Success of Engineering Research
• Note: Literature survey is a continuous and cyclical process that
may involve the researcher going back and forth till the end of the
research project.
• Not many people begin research work in their graduate program
with an already acquired skill to efficiently analyze math-heavy
articles quickly, but those who eventually succeed in an engineering
research career quickly
- develop skill from reading a lot of papers
- seeking help in understanding confusing parts, and
- getting through relevant coursework to build up the required
skills and intuition (insight).
• It is very important to not lose sight of the purpose of an extensive
search or literature survey, for it is possible to spend a very
significant amount of one’s time doing so and actually falsely think
that one is working hard.
• Nothing will come of it unless one is an active reader and spends
sufficient time to develop one’s own ideas build on what one has
read.
• It is not as if literature survey ends and then research begins, for
new literature keeps appearing, and as one’s understanding of the
problem grows, one finds new connections and related/evolving
problems which may need more search.

Ph.D. scholar
• It is mandatory for a Ph.D. scholar to write a synopsis of the topic
and submit it to the doctoral committee for approval.
• During this stage, the scholar needs to undertake an extensive
literature survey connected with the problem.
• For this purpose, the archived journals and published or
unpublished bibliographies are the first place to check out. One
source leads to another.
5. Introduction to Technical Reading
• Reading a Newspaper is different from technical reading
• Not all the things are in one place.
• Important: rely on refereed journals/peer reviewed journals and
books published by reputed publishers
• Don’t rely on easily available random articles off the web.
• Goal of Engineering research paper: To understand the technical
contributions that the authors are making.
• Given the abundance of journal articles, it is useful to adopt a quick,
purposeful, and useful way of reading these manuscripts. It is not the
same as reading a newspaper.
• It may require rereading the paper multiple times and one might
expect to spend many hours reading the paper.
• A simple, efficient, and logical approach is to identify articles and
reading them suitably for effective research.
• Amount of time to be spent is to find out after an initial glance at
paper to decide whether it is worth reading or not.
• Start out the skimming (glance at) process by reading the title and
keywords
• If it is not interesting; it is better to stop reading and look for
something else to read.
• One should then read the abstract to get an overview of the paper in
minimum time.
• Again, if it does not seem sufficiently important to the field of study,
one should stop reading further.
• If the abstract is of interest, one should skip most of the paper and go
straight to the conclusions to find if the paper is relevant to the
intended purpose, and if so, then one should read the figures, tables,
and the captions therein, because these would not take much time but
would provide a broad enough idea as to what was done in the paper.
• If the paper has continued to be of interest so far, then one is now
ready to explore into the Introduction section to know the
background information about the work and also to ascertain why the
authors did that particular study and in what ways the paper furthers
the state of the art.
• The next sections to read are the Results and Discussion sections
which is really the heart of the paper.
• One should really read further sections like the Experimental
Setup/Modeling, etc., only if one is really interested and wishes to
understand exactly what was done to better understand the meaning
of the data and its interpretation.
• As one works through the literature in this way, one should consider
not only the knowledge that is written down but also the reputation of
the people who made that knowledge.
• A researcher will always need to be searching for the relevant
literature and keeping up to date with it.
• If one is busy with a small project, the advisor might just give a
single important paper to read.
• But with a larger one, you will be searching for one’s own literature
to read.
• For this one will need a strategy as there is just too much work out
there to read everything.
6. Conceptualizing Research
• The characteristics of a research objective are that it must have new
knowledge at the center, and that it must be accepted by the
community of other researchers and recognized as significant. But
how do we actually conceptualize the research?
• Besides being original and significant, a good research problem
should also be solvable or achievable.
• This requirement already asks us to think about the method and the
tools that could be used to obtain that new knowledge.
• Now, the significance and the originality and all the theory that we
read and tools and methods that we need to take on a problem, all of
these normally come from the existing recorded literature and
knowledge in the field.
• Coming up with a good research objective, conceptualizing the
research that meets all of these requirements is a tough thing to do. It
means that one must already be aware of what is in the literature.
• That is, by the time one actually has a good research objective, one is
probably already an expert at the edge of knowledge else it is difficult
to say with confidence that one has a good research objective.
• If one is doing research at the Ph.D. level or higher, then
conceptualizing the research is probably something that one needs to
do oneself. This is a very tough step because one needs to know all
that literature in the field.
• So, when working at the Ph.D. level, one needs to be prepared to
become that expert, one needs to be continually reading the literature
so as to bring together the three parts:
(i) significant problem
(ii) the knowledge that will address it, and
(iii) a possible way to make that new knowledge.
• How these three aspects would come together will be different for
every person doing research and it will be different in every field, but
the only way to be that expert is by immersing oneself in the literature
and knowing about what already exists in the field.
• However, if one is working on a research project that is of a smaller
scope than a Ph.D., let us say a master’s thesis, then conceptualizing
the research is possibly too tough to do, and one does not have the
time that it takes to become that expert at the edge of knowledge. In
this case, the researcher needs the help of someone else, typically the
supervisor who may already be an expert and an active researcher in
that field, and may advise on what a good research objective might be.
• An established researcher in any field should be able to immediately
point to the landmark literature that one should read first. Otherwise
one would need to spend a lot of time reading the literature to
discover.
• As engineers, we like to build things, and that’s good, but the
objective of research is to make knowledge.
• If one’s research is about building something, one ought to take a step
back and ask if new knowledge is being formulated.
• Even if what one is building is new and has never been built before, if
it is something that any experienced and competent engineer could
have come up with, one runs the risk of one’s work being labeled
obvious and rejected as research.
7. Critical and Creative Reading
Critical Reading
• Reading a research paper is a critical process (look for new ideas
rather to find mistakes).
• Don’t assume that the reported results are correct. Rather, asking
appropriate questions is in fact a good thing.
- Have the authors attempted to solve the right problem?
- Are there simpler solutions that have not been considered?
- Are there any limitations
- Are there any missing links?
- Are the assumptions that were made reasonable?
- Is there a logical flow to the paper or is there a flaw in the
reasoning?
• These need to be determine the importance of the work, by careful
reading.
• Use of critical approach and boldness to make judgments is needed
while reading.
• Flexibility to discard previous incorrect results is also critical.
• Additionally, it is important to determine
- whether the data presented in the paper is right data
- whether the data was gathered and interpreted in a correct
manner.
- whether some other dataset would have been more compelling.
• Critical reading is relatively easy. It is relatively easier to critically
read to find the mistakes than to read it, so as to find the good ideas
in the paper.
• Anyone who has been a regular reviewer of journal articles would
agree to such a statement.
Creative Reading
• Creative Reading is harder, and requires a positive approach in
search.
• Main idea:
- To actively look for other applications
- Extend the work that authors have missed?
- Look for reasonable modifications
• One who start the research read the work properly, an extended part
of work, and what should be the immediate next aspect to focus
upon.
8. Taking Notes While Reading
• A researcher reads to write and writes well only if the reading skills
are good.
• The bridge between reading and writing a paper is the act of taking
notes during and shortly after the process of reading.
• Finest writing is better than the best memory, and it applies to
researchers who need to read and build on that knowledge to write
building on the notes taken.
• Don’t take notes on the margins of papers.
• In each research paper, there are a lot of things that one might like
to highlight for later use such as definitions, explanations, and
concepts.
• Write down the important points so as to avoid being forgotten later
on. Such efforts pay significantly when one has to go back and
reread the same content after a long time.
• On completing a thorough reading, make a summary of the paper in
a few sentences describing the contributions.
• But to explain the technical merit, the paper needs to be looked at
from comparative perspective with respect to existing works in that
specific area.
• A thorough reading should bring out whether there are new ideas in
the paper, or if existing ideas were implemented through
experiments or in a new application, or if different existing ideas
were brought together under a novel framework.
• Obviously, the type of contribution a paper is actually making can
be determined better by having read other papers in the area.
9. Reading Mathematics and Algorithms
• Mathematics is often the foundation of new advances, for evolution
and development of engineering research and practice.
• An engineering researcher generally cannot avoid mathematical
derivations or proofs as part of research work.
• In fact, these are the heart of any technical paper.
• By thorough reading of the proofs or algorithms, after having
identified the relevance of the paper, one can develop sound
understanding about the problem that the authors have attempted to
solve.
• Read the technical section, or if it is too advanced for the research at
the present moment and needs additional reading to be
understandable, or if it seems to specialized and unlikely to be
needed in the course of the research program in which case one can
get back to it later on.
• Implementation of an complex algorithm in programming
languages such as C, C++ or Java is prone to errors.
• And even if the researcher is confident about the paper in hand, and
thinks that the algorithm will work, there is a fair chance that it will
not work at all.
• So one may wish to code it quickly to check if it actually works.
10. Reading a Datasheet
• Researchers in different fields of engineering will need to read
certain types of documents.
• For example, mechanical and civil engineers would need to read
drawings related to mechanical parts and buildings.
• Researchers in the field of electronics need to read datasheets.
• Researchers in other fields may also need to incorporate a certain
electronic part in which case careful reading of the datasheet is
imperative.
• Datasheets are instruction manuals for electronic components
- What a component does and
- How one may use it.
• Datasheets enable a researcher to design a circuit or debug any
given circuit with that component.
• The first page of the datasheet usually summarizes
- a part’s function and features
- basic specifications, and
- functional block diagram with the internal functions of the
part.
- Pinout details
- graphs showing performance versus various criteria (supply
voltage, temperature, etc.),
- graphs showing safe region for reliable operation which
should be carefully read and noted by the researcher.
- lookout for truth tables which describe: what sort of inputs
provide
- what types of outputs, and also timing diagrams which lay
out, how and at what speed data is sent and received from
the part.
• Datasheets usually end with accurate dimensions of the packages a
part is available in. This is useful for printed circuit board (PCB)
layout.
• When working with a new part, or when deciding which part to use
in the research work, it is recommended to carefully read that part’s
datasheet to come up with a bit of shortcut that may potentially save
many hours later on.
• Engineering researcher will have documents to read which are
specific to the branch of engineering in which one is researching in.
• However, the objective of the authors herein has been to use
datasheets as an example to state the need to pay attention to the art
of reading such documents.
• Technical published papers or books are not the only contents that a
researcher has to master reading!
Attributions and Citations: Giving Credit Wherever Due
1. Citations: Functions and Attributes
2. Impact of Title and Keywords on Citations
3. Knowledge Flow through Citation: Citing Datasets,
Styles for Citations
4. Acknowledgments and Attributions: What Should Be
Acknowledged, Acknowledgments in, Books
Dissertations, Dedication or Acknowledgments.
Attributions and Citations: Giving Credit Wherever Due
• Citation: Identifies for the reader the original source for an idea,
information or image that is referred to a work
• A citation is the way you tell your readers that certain material in your
work came from another work
• Gives your reader the information necessary to find the location
details of that source on the reference or works cited page

Why citation is important

• To be a responsible scholar by giving credit to other researchers and
acknowledging their ideas
• To show your reader you have done proper research by listing sources
you used to get your information
• Acknowledgment in research publications indicates contributions to
scientific work.
• Acknowledgment is arguably more personal, singular, and simply an
expression of appreciations and contribution.
1. Citations: Functions and Attributes
Citations:
• Citations are a way of giving credit to others for their work,
while allowing the readers to trace the source publication if needed.
• Sources: Books, journals, papers, patents, or presentations in your
research, you must give credit to the original author by citing the
source.
• This applies to texts, images, sounds, etc. and failure to do may be
considered plagiarism.
• Citations help the readers to verify the quality and importance of the
new work and justification of the findings.
• To tell readers that certain material in the researcher’s present
work has come from another source and as an ethical
responsibility, appropriate credit has been given to the original
author or writer.
• Materials that can be cited include journal papers, conference
proceeding, books, thesis, newspaper articles, websites, or other
online resources and personal communication.
Knowledge:
• The growth of knowledge in any field of study, especially in
technological fields, is primarily incremental and a researcher
always and naturally builds upon prior information.
• There are well-established means of preventing and spreading
knowledge through publication of
- Patents
- Papers (conference paper and the peer-reviewed journal
paper), or articles, and
- Textbooks and classrooms.
• Researcher needs to influence the prior art in the area of research
interest so as to make further development, at the same time it is
important to ensure that credit for that existing knowledge is
suitably acknowledged.
• When a bibliography of previously published patents or papers is
placed in the new works of a researcher, a connection is established
between the new and previous work.
• Citations should be given at the end of a sentence or the end of a
paragraph.
• Citation must contain enough details so that readers can easily find
the referenced material.
• A researcher needs to cite each source twice:
a) in-text citation, in the text of the article exactly where the
source is quoted or paraphrased, and
b) a second time in the references, typically at the end of the
chapter or a book or at the end of a research article.
Citation Styles:
• Most citation styles have the same or similar elements, but differ on
the order of elements and layout.
• The citation elements differ and so what is to be recorded can differ
from one source to another.
• It is also important to mention the date the source was published
and sometimes also the particular date it was accessed by the
researcher if it is related to web content.
• LaTeX, a document preparation system often used by
engineering researchers to automatically format documents that
comply with standard formatting needs, is very effective to track
and update citations.
• LaTeX has a steep learning curve and will be repeatedly used in this
book to address different issues pertaining to technical writing
which is intimately linked with research for engineers.
Functions of citations:
i) Verification function: To be able to identify if a citation is
complete or not. Citation offers the readers a chance to ascertain
if the original source is justified or not, and if that statement is
properly described in the present work.
ii) Acknowledgment function: acknowledging the source of
information used in a written work. Researchers primarily
receive credit for their work through citations. Citations play
crucial role in promotion of individual researchers and their
continued employment. Many reputed organizations and institutes
provide research funding based on the reputations of the
researchers. Citations help all researchers to enhance their
reputation and provide detailed background of the research work.
iii) Documentation function: Once your research paper is complete
you may need to create a bibliography or list of works cited. To
cite a source means to give credit for the original source of
information. Citations are also used to document scientific
concepts and historical progress of any particular technology over
the years.
• Citations are the currency that authors would wish to accumulate
and the technical community gives them credit for these
contributions. When other authors make citations, they honor those
who initiated the ideas.
• Authors demonstrate their comprehension skills by identifying,
estimating, and incorporating other’s research work and then create
and express their own ideas precisely while acknowledging
ownership of ideas through citation.
• Authors should cite sources to indicate significance of the work to
the reader.
• Relevant citations help authors develop an easily understandable
argument and prevent the need to navigate through work irrelevant
to the reader’s interest areas.
• Failure to cite appropriately infringes on the rights of the researcher
who did the original work.
Certain cases when references do not fulfill the actual goal of
citations and acknowledgments, and thus do not benefit the reader.
1. Spurious (false or fake) citations:
- references cited within the text body are omitted in an
ending bibliography or end notes page
- Entries contained in the end notes listing are not cited
within the body of the text

• When citation is not required or an appropriate one is not found, if

the author nevertheless goes ahead with including one anyways, it
would be considered as a spurious citation.
• These sorts of citations do not add any value to the reader in terms
of properly understanding the paper.
• Such actions result in loss of time of the reader or reviewer in
looking for the cited paper that is otherwise not relevant.
• Just as due credit should be given to a paper through citation,
inappropriate credit must be avoided so that the credibility of a
research work or of the journal or conference proceedings where
that paper is published is not lost through this sort of carelessness.
2. Biased citations:

- When authors cite the work of their friends or colleagues despite

there being no significant connection between the two works
- when they do not cite work of genuine significance because they
do not wish to give credit in the form of citation to certain
individuals

Neglect of citations to prior work whose conclusions or data contradict

the current work is also biased.
3. Self-citations :

- Citing one’s prior work, own work

• Self-citation of prior papers is natural because the latest paper is

often a part of a larger research project which is ongoing.
• Sometimes, it is also advantageous for the reader because citations
of all the related works of the same author are given in one paper
and this may reduce the effort of the reader in trying to find the full
versions of those papers.
• However, it is helpful and ethical only if all the papers are really
relevant to the present work.
• However, there can also be negative impact on the journal as well
as individual researchers due to inappropriate and irrelevant self-
citations.
• Self-citations in such cases may be either spurious or biased or even
both.
• Editors of journals who ignore such types of citations and allow by
negligence or otherwise, to be included in published materials end
up directly or indirectly altering the impact factor of those
publications.
4. Coercive citations:

- Is an academic publishing practice in which an editor

of a scientific or academic journal forces an author to
add spurious citations to an article before the journal
will agree to publish it.

• Despite shortcomings, impact factors remain a primary method of

quantification of research.
• One side effect is that it creates an incentive for editors to indulge in
coercion to add citations to the editor’s journal.
• Even if not explicitly stated, the implied message is that the author
could either add citations or risk rejection.
• Such demands consequently diminish the reputation of the journal.
2. Impact of Title and Keywords on Citations
• The citation rate of any research paper depends on various factors
including
- significance and availability of the journal
- publication types
- research area, and
- importance of the published research work.
Other factors like
- length of the title
- type of the title, and
- selected keywords also impact the citation count.
Title
• Title is the most important characteristics of any research paper.
• It is the main indication of the research area or subject and is used
by researcher as a source of information during literature survey.
• Title plays important role in marketing and makes research papers
traceable.
• A good title is informative, gains readers attention.
• Some titles are informative but do not capture attention of readers,
some titles are attractive but not informative or related to the
readers’ research area.
• The download count and citation of a research paper might be
influenced by title.

There are three different aspects which provide a particular behavior

to the title:
(i) types of the title
(ii) length of the title, and
(iii) presence of specific markers (indicators).

• Title length positively affects the number of citations.

• Highly amusing titles have fewer citations and pleasant titles have
no significant relation with citations.
• Highly cited articles have many words in the title compared with
lower cited papers.
• The articles with question-type titles are downloaded more but
poorly cited compared to the descriptive or declarative titles.
• Declarative titles are downloaded and cited less than descriptive
titles but difference is not much.
• Longer titles are strongly associated with higher citation rates.
• Longer titles mainly include the study methodology and/or results
in more detail, and so attracts more attention and citations.
• In general, titles containing a question mark, colon, and reference to
a specific geographical region are associated with lower citation
rates, also result-describing titles usually get citations than method-
describing titles.
• Additionally, review articles and original articles usually receive
more citations than short communication articles.
• At least two keywords in the title can increase the chance of finding
and reading the article as well as get more citations.
Keywords
• Keywords represent essential information as well as main content
of the article, which are relevant to the area of research.
• Search engines, journal, digital libraries, and indexing services use
keywords for categorization of the research topic and to direct the
work to the relevant audience.
• Keywords are important to ensure that readers are aware about
research articles and their content.
• If maximum number of keywords are used, then the chance of the
article being found increases and so does the probability of citation
count of the article.
• Usage of new keywords should be minimal as such keywords may
not be well known to the research community and so may lead to
low visibility of the article.
3. Knowledge Flow Through Citation
• Knowledge flows through verbal communications, books,
documents, video, audio, and images, which plays a powerful role
in research community in promoting the formulation of new
knowledge.
• In engineering research, knowledge flow is primarily in the form of
books, thesis, articles, patents, and reports.
• Citing a source is important for transmission of knowledge from
previous work to an innovation.
• Production of knowledge can be related to the citation network.
• Knowledge flow happens between
- co-authors during research collaboration
- among other researchers through their paper citation
network, and
- between institutions, departments, research fields or topics,
and elements of research.
• Figure shows the relationship between citations, knowledge flow,
and elements such as researchers, papers, journal publications or
conferences, and institutions. If paper A is cited by paper B, then
knowledge flows through citation networks across institutions.
• The complex interdisciplinary nature of research encourages
scholars to cooperate with each other to grab more advantages
through collaboration, thereby improving quality of the research.
• Co-authored publications had more citations than single author
paper and there was a positive co-relation between number of
authors and the number of citations.
 Figure shows a relationship between co-authorship and different types of
citations.
• Three articles (X, Y, and Z) and five
references (X1, X2, X3, Y1, and Y2) of
article X and Y, respectively, are considered.
• A, B, and C are authors of article X, and D,
E, F, G, and also A are authors of article Y.
Article Z has two authors H and E.
• References X1, X2, X3, Y1, and Y2 have
authors (A, P), (H, R), (D), (Q, B, F), and
(R), respectively.
• Based on co-authorship citation network,
references X1 and Y1 are considered self-
We conclude that papers which citation, reference X3 is a level-1 co-author
frequently cite collaborators will citation because author of article Y is direct
also often cite collaborators of
collaborator of author A, reference X2 is a
collaborators. Collaborations
certainly impact citation counts. level-1 co-author network because author A
is collaborator of E who collaborated with
H.
i) Citing Datasets
• The nature of engineering research has evolved rapidly and now
depends heavily on data to justify claims and provide experimental
evidences and so data citations must fetch proper credit to the creator
of the dataset as citations of other objects like research articles.
• Data citations should have provisions to give credit and legal
attribution to all contributors, enable identification and access, while
recognizing that a specific style may not apply to all data.
• Ascertaining the ownership of data can be a complicated issue
especially with large datasets, and issues of funding can also make it a
difficult matter.
• A researcher should obtain necessary permission for using data from a
particular source.
• Citations related to datasets should include enough information so that
a reader could find the same dataset again in the future, even if the
link provided no longer works.
• It is proper to include a mixture of general and specific information to
enable a reader to be certain that the search result is the same dataset
that was sought.

Examples:
1. Historical Data, Sotavento (Wind Farm), Corunna, Spain (July
2016): [Accessed: 4 Oct, 2016] Retrieved from
http://www.sotaventogalicia.com/en/real-time-data/ historical
2. Deb, D (2016). [Personnel survey]. Unpublished raw data.
ii) Styles for Citations
• Citation styles differ primarily in the order, and syntax of information
about references, depending on difference in priorities attributed to
concision, readability, dates, authors, and publications.
• Some of the most common styles for citation (as well as other aspects
of technical writing) used by engineers are as follows:

- ASCE style (American Society of Civil Engineers)

- IEEE style (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
- ASME style (The Association of Mechanical Engineers)
1) ASCE style (American Society of Civil Engineers)
(a) Reference list: This part is to be placed in the bibliography or
references at the end of the article or report. A template with example for
the same is given below:
(b) In-text citation for journals or books: The following part is to be
placed right after the reference to the source of the citation assignment:
2) IEEE style (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
• IEEE style is standard for all IEEE journals and magazines, and is
frequently used for papers and articles in the fields of electrical
engineering and computer science.
• The IEEE style requires endnotes and that references be cited
numerically in the text. Those submitting to an IEEE publication
should see guidelines for the specific journal or magazine and may
also refer to the complete IEEE editorial style manual.
• Some examples of IEEE styles of citations for different types of
sources are enumerated below:

3) ASME style (The Association of Mechanical Engineers)

4. Acknowledgments and Attributions
• Acknowledgment section is a place to provide a brief appreciation
of the contribution of someone or an organization or funding body to
the present work.
• If no particular guideline is available for the intended publication,
then it can be introduced at the end of the text or as a footnote.
• Acknowledgment is a common practice to recognize persons or
agencies for being responsible in some form or other for completion
of a publishable research outcome.
• Acknowledgment displays a relationship among people, agencies,
institutions, and research.
• In some case, certain individuals may help in the research work but
may not deserve to be included as authors. As a sign of gratitude, such
contributions should be acknowledged.
• Classification of acknowledgment into six different categories like
moral, financial, editorial, institutional or technical, and conceptual
support.
• Acknowledgments and attributions are also very important in the
publications of journal or conference papers.
• Giving proper credit wherever it is due is very important and even if
the contribution is minor, it should not be neglected.
• A researcher should always recognize the proprietary interest of
others.
• Whenever possible, author shall give name of persons who may be
responsible, even if nominally, for designs, inventions, writings, or
other accomplishments.
• Given the importance of work published, authorship is also important.
The reward triangle theory shows a relationship between citations,
acknowledgment, and authorship.
• In engineering research, acknowledgments are meant for participating
technicians, students, funding agency, grant number, institution, or
anyone who provide scientific inputs, shared unpublished results,
provided equipment, or participated in discussions.
1) What Should Be Acknowledged?
• Every author should know that what should/should not be
acknowledged.
• Author should acknowledge quotation, ideas, facts, paraphrasing,
funding organization, oral discussion or support, laboratory, and
computer work.

i) Quotation: In technical writing such as in the field of engineering,

quotes are used very rarely. Quotations are of two types:

(a) Direct quotations are used when author use actual words or
sentences in the same order as the original one. Author should
use quotation marks for the words or sentences with proper
acknowledgment.
(b) Indirect quotation summarizes or paraphrases the actual
quote. In such cases, it is important to acknowledge with
proper name and date.
ii. Authors should acknowledge people who give appropriate
contribution in their research work. Non-research work contributions
are not generally acknowledged in a scientific paper but it may be in
a thesis. Persons must be acknowledged by authors, who gave a
scientific or technical guidance, take part in some discussions, or
shared information to author. Authors should acknowledge
assistants, students, or technicians, who helped experimentally and
theoretically during the research work.
iii. If the researcher received grant from a funding agency and if those
funds were used in the work reported in the publication, then such
support should always be acknowledged by providing full details of
the funding program and grant number in the acknowledgment
section. The authors should also gratefully acknowledge use of the
services and facilities of any center or organization with which they
are not formally affiliated to. An example of acknowledgment of
grant received is as follows:
An example of acknowledgment of grant received is as follows:

Acknowledgments:
This research work was funded in part by the Extra Mural Research
Funding 2014–17 (Individual Centric) of the Department of Science and
Technology (DST), Govt. of India.

• If there are any concerns that the provision of the information

provided in acknowledgment may compromise the anonymity
dependent on the peer review policy of a particular journal or
conference proceedings, the author(s) may withhold the
acknowledgment information until the submission of the final
accepted manuscript.
• Many technical journals explicitly discourage authors to thank the
reviewers in their article submissions. This could be construed as
favoritism or an attempt to encourage reviewers to accept their
manuscript for reasons other than scientific merit.
(iv) Acknowledging that results have been presented elsewhere: If the
results were presented as an abstract in a journal, then there should be a
suitable citation. If the results were presented as part of scientific
meeting, symposium, or other gathering, then some relevant information
should be provided. At the very least, the name of the gathering and year
should be cited. Other helpful items include the location of the gathering
(city and state or country) and the full date of the occasion.

• By acknowledging all help received in one’s research work, the

author(s) demonstrate integrity as a researcher, which in turn
encourages continued collaboration from those who helped out in
different ways.
• One may also appropriately bolster one’s colleagues’ careers, as being
credited in an acknowledgment section is emerging as one of many
ways a researcher’s professional impact is evaluated.
• Acknowledgment is no longer simply a means of expressing gratitude.
Funding agencies these days often require that their grant be
acknowledged and explicitly state the exact information to be
provided if the research work leads to a publication.
• The grantee is responsible for assuring that an acknowledgment of
support is made in any publication (including websites) of any direct
or indirect outcomes from the funded project.
• The format of required information is often explicitly stated in the
terms and conditions of grants provided. Acknowledgments are also
appropriate in technical presentations.
• Failure to acknowledge funding may result in the discontinuation of
current funding and/or ineligibility to receive future funding for a
certain number of years or indefinitely.
• Unless the information can be considered “common knowledge,”
proper attribution of an idea, algorithm, computational methodology,
or experimental design is required even if a journal operates with
double-blind review.
2) Acknowledgments in Books/Dissertations
• A page of acknowledgments is usually included at the beginning of a
thesis/dissertation immediately following the table of contents.
• These acknowledgments are longer than the one or two sentence
statements in journal papers or articles in conference proceedings.
• These detailed acknowledgments enable the researcher to thank all
those who have contributed in completion of the research work.
• Careful thought needs to be given concerning those whose inputs are
to be acknowledged and in what order. Generally, one should express
appreciation in a concise manner and avoid emotive language.
• The following are often acknowledged in these types of
acknowledgments: main supervisor, second supervisor, peers in the
lab, other academic staff in the department, technical or support staff
in the department, colleagues from other departments, other
institutions, or organizations, former students, family, and friends.
3) Dedication or Acknowledgments?
• Dedication is almost never used in a journal paper, an article in a
conference proceedings, or a patent, and it is used exclusively in
larger documents like books, thesis, or dissertations.
• While acknowledgments are reserved for those who helped out with
the book in some way or another (editing, moral support, etc), a
dedication is to whomever the author would like it to be dedicated to,
whether it is the author’s mother, the best friend, the pet dog, or
Almighty God.
• And yes, it is possible to dedicate something to someone while also
mentioning them in the acknowledgments.
• For example, one may dedicate a book to one’s spouse, but
acknowledge them for being the moral support and putting up with
when one got very stressed.
• The acknowledgments in technical books can be sometimes as brief as
the ones in journal articles.
• The acknowledgment section of a technical report may be a paragraph
that is longer than a journal paper but shorter than dissertations.
• Generally, the length of the acknowledgment may have some
correlation with the length of the document.

Summary
• Citation is a specific form of attribution, but attribution itself can be
done in many different ways.
• For engineers, citation is very useful to their careers due to the
prevailing publish or perish environment. Proper citation and
reference:
- Gives credit and respect to the original author(s).
- Allows readers to find the original source(s).
- Strengthens the credibility of your report. If a researcher does
not cite the sources, it is plagiarism.
• Plagiarism is using another person’s ideas without giving credit or
citation and is an intellectual theft.
• Plagiarism comes in varying degrees, and there are serious
consequences for a researcher if caught plagiarizing.
• All academic and industrial research organizations have integrity and
misconduct policies.
• Even past one’s time at a research organization, evidence of
plagiarism can affect the integrity and credibility and can also
retrospectively make an earned degree null and void.