A netizen of science net (CHJK) recently left a message to me: "Mr. Liu, science net has not spoken of their own "document management", as Xu's lifelong rookie how to organize and classify documents is very important.Can you tell me something about yourself and how your son managed the documentation?I'll write one when I have time. This is a very important topic. My son wrote an article many years ago by a Ph.D. graduate student at NTU Singapore, "The SCI Paper's Topic and Innovation" (reported on ScienceNet on February 10 last year) about scientific literature: "Keep looking at the literature and think; it's better not to do it if you don't know!To do so one must first look at the literature! To know how to put an article up, to know how others discuss it, to know if your data shows something different or someone else hasn't done, is to read the literature and think about it, and it's easy to write."
It is well known that literature plays an important role in scientific research.Because there are always very few geniuses in the world who are able to raise some far-reaching and world-shattering scientific problems and research results on their own.However, the vast majority of us belong to the "human", we are all scientific and technological research in a certain direction of development of the inheritance, is the scientific and technological long-distance race "ordinary baton".As an ordinary member of the scientific research team, we know that scientific research is conducted on the basis of predecessors' research, and we are satisfied that we can "stand on the shoulders of countless predecessors."Literature interpretation is to understand the status of peer research and put one's research on the basis of peer research.In guiding graduate students, I discuss the research direction of peer literature is one of the main contents.There are three levels of reading comprehension in the course of postgraduate study. The first level is to understand what peers do through reading the literature.What do you getin'This level mainly belongs to the most basic content of professional research process, of course, for English literature to pass a language.The second level is to be able to evaluate the quality of peer results, analyze and judge where the results are outstanding.The third level is to accurately identify the international representative figures (cow people) and their representative achievements (cow achievements), the progress of research direction and existing major scientific and technical problems.Generally speaking, as a qualified doctoral student, the third level of literature reading ability and level should be reached.Although there is not necessarily a completely positive correlation between the level of literature study and the level of doctoral thesis, there should be some positive correlation between the two for most people.Therefore, I say that a young man with a good "documentary concept" is an important indicator of his suitability for scientific research, especially basic research.In order to highlight the importance of this concept, we call out the slogan "Documents are the life of scientific research".
The management and utilization of scientific and technological documents is a big topic. I don't have to talk about it well, I can only say a little experience.In my experience, there are two main approaches to scientific and technological literature: quantity (read extensively), quality (read intensively) and correct handling of "reviewed literature and specialized literature".For the former, it is emphasized that the first thing to read is quantity, because it is impossible to have quality without quantity.A researcher is always eager to retrieve high-quality literature as soon as possible, but these high-quality literature is hidden in a large database of literature.If "speculation" is adopted, or if one is lucky, only important or high-quality literature can be seen occasionally.To illustrate this point, I mentioned in a blog post that a smart person may have more than 20 or even a little more information than a less smart person can get from reading 100, 200 or more documents.No matter how smart a person is, he or she has a higher level of understanding, but he or she is limited.Because the amount of information contained in the dozens of documents he read could not have included the amount of information contained in hundreds of documents.The more literature you read, the more likely you are to encounter high-quality literature.Of course, this refers to the most common form of document reading analysis and management.When a researcher reaches a certain level, the choice of literature and the way he reads it are also diversified.
As a young researcher, it is important to establish a "document database" in "document management".I did not do enough myself, mainly involving two categories: the "documentary evolution database"."History" is a term used to describe the history of a unit or enterprise, or technology development, in the order of publication of documents."Documentary evolution" includes: classical literature and development process literature.In the course of "documentary evolution" of your research direction, you will fully understand the development process of this research direction, which is the basis of your becoming a scientific researcher.When we listen to some bullies talking about his scientific achievements, we are often struck by his thorough understanding of the research direction.This is actually the inevitable experience and consequence of the success of those bullmen.Of course, it is far from enough to establish its own "documentary evolution database".Because, "documentary evolution database" document material mainly embodies a research direction development course only.For example, I once had a bibliography of geosciences in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau edited by the Institute of Geology of the Chinese Academy of Geosciences, including geology (also rock, mineral, tectonic geology, etc.).
On the basis of "documentary evolution database", a more important "key document database" should be established.It is difficult for a young man to establish a "key document database" because it requires a certain amount of scientific research to accurately identify the importance of a document.As mentioned above, "documentary understanding of three levels", if in the first level, it can only belong to "documentary evolution", only to the second and third levels to accurately analyze and judge the importance of literature.Therefore, the establishment of "documentary evolution database" and "key document database" actually accompany a research direction research content and development process.The establishment of two literature databases is a tracking process for a certain research direction or field. It is a process with no starting point and no ending point. It is accompanied by timely and continuous tracking analysis.We have people who make great efforts to keep track of their peers' results. When you search for them again before submitting them, your so-called "innovation results" are just repetition of others' results, and you should regret it.I see that the annual application for the National Fund's "reason for project" documentation increases the impact of my review of the application if there is a peer's paper published that year.
Nowadays, electronic literature provides us with great convenience for scientific and technological literature management.Recall that more than 30 years ago, when we read paper documents, only cards were used in document management, and I still keep a box of document cards as a souvenir.When visiting the library's weekly periodical library, magazines were more frequently consulted (which involved more disciplines to expand knowledge, if only for a narrow professional direction, it might be rare).At present, it is necessary to set up some rich and easy-to-use literature databases, including magazines, conferences and monographs, dissertations, patents and some video-discs.In the past, we could only record the titles of documents, but now we can establish a "full-text document database" at the same time.For some very specialized literature database management is relatively simple, but for some multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary literature database establishment is more complex.As long as we take "document management database" as an indispensable part of our scientific research, we will definitely set up our own high-quality "document database" to provide positive energy for your scientific research.