UTUGuides: Basics of Information Seeking: Reference Management, RSS, and Research Data

Reference Management

With reference management programmes, you can:

Collect search results you have found from databases together in one place where you can organise, edit, and search them in different ways. You can save both the reference information for the source and the source itself as a PDF.
Add in-text citations automatically, such as the literature references in your thesis.
Create a bibliography automatically according to the citation style you have chosen in your text.
Create reference lists for different purposes according to different citation styles.

Turku University Library’s Reference Management Guide has instructions on how to use the free versions of Zotero and Mendeley.

Search Alerts and Staying Up to Date

Most of the frequently updated websites and news sites support RSS feeds (Rich Site Summary; Really Simple Syndication). Even though all sites and platforms do not offer RSS, you can still turn them into newsfeeds with the help of webtools such as WatchThatPage or TrackEngine.

There are also services, such as Feedly and NetVibes, that you can use to collect all subscribed feeds (news, publications, blog posts, YouTube videos etc.) in one place. There’s also Outlook instructions on how to subscribe to RSS feeds and have them delivered to designated folders instead of receiving them as regular emails.

More information is available in the RSS and Alerts page of the Keeping Up Guide.

Research Data

You can find research datasets from data archives that you can use in your own thesis or research.
Citing research data: Ball, A. & Duke, M. (2015). ‘How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications’. DCC How-to Guides. Edinburgh: Digital Curation Centre. Available online: https://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides.

Research Data Management Guide for Students
A clear and concise guide that you can explore before diving into the more extensive research data guides.
Research Data Guide
The university library's research data management guide, which is aimed mainly at the university's researchers and research groups.
Data Management Guidelines
The Finnish Social Science Data Archive’s (FSD) guide on data management.
Social Science Data Archive Guide of the University of Turku
A guide to international research databases in social sciences.

Research Data Archives:

Aila
Research datasets archived in FSD’s data service.
UN Data
A data service where you can search for statistical data from international statistical databases. Contains data from the UN and other international organisations.
Data Citation Index - Web of Science
Contains reference information on research datasets as well as information on articles citing the data in Web of Science. The research data reference information has been collected from several international research data archives.
Zenodo
A general-purpose open repository operated by CERN. Contains research papers, datasets, research software, reports, and any other research related digital artefacts.

You can find more research datasets in our Subject Guides under “Other Resources”.