Endnote

Now for the technical bit. How do you capitalize titles or stop them from capitalizing?

• Open Endnote.
• Go to Edit and in the drop down list find Output styles - see the figure
• Pick a style - I've chosen Academy Management J
• Click on Edit - it's highlighted in the figure
• That will open a new window with information about this style. Go down the information on the left hand style and highlight Bibliography. That opens a different window on the right hand side with three radio buttons that allow you to choose what sort of capitalization you want. Select your choice.
• Baboom! You've done it.
  

Transfer of knowledge

It's been bugging me - how does transfer of knowledge link with social capital?

One of our first year PhDs had a problem with Endnote. If you import a reference and it comes with capitals, then how can you automatically change it so in your references it isn't capitals? He came to ask me as one of the second years in the room. (This is an open plan office with desks for around 30 people, around 15-16 of whom are students and the rest are academics.) I knew it had to be something with the template but didn't know what, so I faffed about a bit, looking on templates that did and didn't change the CAPITALISATION but then went back to what I was doing.

First year student returned an hour later having worked out how to do it and told me.

So there's a transfer of knowledge - in one minute I knew, and so did the third year student who over heard. There's value from knowing and being in the same room as that first year and we saved two more hours of two other students searching independently. Why did he come and ask? Probably because he knew in the first place that other students are approachable, because the room lends itself to moving around casually and asking, because he suspected I might already know, which he could guess from already having chatted over coffee. See coffee video - he's often at coffee with us. So sharing coffee builds social capital and shares learning.

Endnote

I use Endnote to record literature. I need some citation software, am aware that Cranfield uses Procite. The associate lecturers and students at the OU have access to RefWorks, but the full time staff and post-grads can have Endnote on their desktops and get technical training. We have access to a course in professional English with a session in which the lecturer demonstrated practical rather than technical use of Endnote, like how to select and print

• author
• title
• research notes

So I now use Endnote to

• export citations from databases such as Web of Science and EBSCO
• connect to the OU library to export citations for books
• copy {first_author, year, #ref_no} into my word document

This means that I have all the citation information without having to check if I've missed something, and it's rarely mistyped. When I run my word processing program, I press one button and all my references appear at the end of the document. I need only change a selection in given list and I can format in anything: Harvard, Journal of X, or Y or Z! Dead easy!

I've started to note my comments on articles in the notes sections, because if I pick up an existing reference for some reason, I can see what I last noted about it. And the search function allows me to find my articles on consulting, or engagement, or collaboration, or participation, or project management quickly.

One of my colleagues is struggling with his Endnote database that has got corrupted, so I'm making copies of mine each month, just in case. His experience demonstrates that it takes a bit of effort to learn and use it.

I was slightly surprised to find that my supervisors don't use citation software. This is because they don't have to write a whopping great long 100,000 word thesis with loads of references. But then, when they need a reference, they've nowhere to go and look for it, and must wait for a student to provide it! LOL!

Qualitative analysis

I've just realised that I could use NVivo, could have been using NVivo, to extract and analyse data from my literature review.

Why did no-one point that out before?

• Because supervisors don't need to know much about software and aren't going to point their students at it.
• Because there isn't training in using software, but training that is either about the product (e.g. Word, NVivo, Endnote) or about the process, and not how to integrate the two.

The best integration the OU has provided in the last two years was through the Professional Academic Communication in English sessions (PACE) when one of the lecturers explained how she'd used Endnote to keep notes and print them off or insert them in Word.

Here are slides that discuss the training issue, from the 2006 ESRC research methods festival. And here's a paper from Silvana di Gregorio on using NVivo to analyse literature for the review. And here's a discussion on qualitative data analysis.

Literature search

This first year is about the literature search, as I understand it. By the end of the year, I have a probationary report, must present a review of the literature and a proposal for research at a viva. So now I must plan how I go about this.

Dave Denyer from Cranfield came and talked to us last year about a systematic review of the literature as a means of ensuring that you have covered all the relevant sources, and can provide an audit trail.

Secondly, last year we were introduced to Endnote. I'd come across Refworks, but not doing academic research had not seen the need for it. Now I do see the need for an electronic tool for referencing and citing. However, my skills with Endnote haven't been sufficiently honed so went on a refresher course. I think that together with a systematic review of the literature I should find enough to keep me going for the first few months. But I'll check when I get my first supervisory meeting next week.