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Doing a research project is not easy. If you are working alone, or you are not part of research group it is even more difficult. The things that you should do at the begining is as follows: 1. Start from libraries (METU / Bilkent / YOK and more) You can find lots of sources such as: xxx Completed Disserations xxx Submitted Technical Reports (if any) xxx Books xxx Journals xxx Conference Proceedings Note: Bilkent Library has print copies of IEEE journals. It is a lot easier to search through the paperbased journals if you do not exactly know what you are looking for. Make note of articles, download them later. 2. A random search on a topic is not possible in general, and never recommended. Coordinate your efforts. If you can find a recent dissertation on the subject you are interested, it is great source of background information. Go to the websites of local libraries, go to UMI's website on the internet to find one. If you can not find any, look for tutorial paper, in xxx IEEE Proceedings, xxx IEEE Magazines etc. 3. If you can find a good first source, back trace the references cited in the source and start a collection of papers (don't forget to read them). Try to organize the papers in different piles, make shorts notes on the covers (it will help you during thesis writing) 3+. Go and check this link IEEE EXPLORE (only works from campus IP addresses) Thousands of papers. 3++ If you have found an old but a highly important paper and would like to read more papers related to that paper, you should use SCIENCE CITATION INDEX: SCIENCE CITATION INDEX: THere are two modes of search Mode 1: The usual search with title, author fields Mode 2: The CITED REFERENCE SEARCH. Let's say that you have found a paper by R.E. Kalman published in 1969. If you search for "Kalman RE, 1969" you get the list of the papers published after 1969 which has a citation to the 1969 Kalman paper. (That is you can find the related works published afterwards) 3+++ INSPEC is another database, more general the science citation index. It includes conferences papers also. (METU library has aggrements with IEEE EXPLORE, INSPEC and SCIENCE CITATION INDEX providers. You can find more databases on the library site.) 3++++ GOOGLE SCHOLAR RESEARCH: A recent search tool for scholar writings. You can check Google's database to locate research documents. Google search can be faster than any other conventional method. www.scholar.google.com 4. While doing the background search, you should always look for alternative approaches to the problem. Background search is great for developing ideas, some ideas are realized by others, some are not. Check out books from library that can be related to your subject. The "can be" part is critical and you will get better and better in seeing the links (and not so trivial links) as time goes on. 5. Some books are fundamentally important. Try to cover the contents of these books as much as you can. The information in these classical texts are highly valuable and can be refered and cited in many different contexts. The difference between a good and an amazing paper lies not in the specific details, but your overall understanding of the problem. A good paper may have very short "half life", an amazing paper has much longer half life. Here are some classical textbooks: x1. Books of Papoulis (Probability book, Signal Analysis and Fourier Transform) : Signal Processing ***** x2. Book of Martin Veterli (Wavelets) : Signal Processing **** x3. Book of Vaidyanathan, Multirate Systems : Signal Processing *** x4. Books of Bertsekas, Data Networks: Communication **** x5. Book of Gallager, Information Theory and Reliable Communication : Information Theory, Communication and more ***** x6. Original IT paper of Shannon: Communication, Information Theory : ***** link x7. Linear Algebra is very critical : A Theory of Matrices, Schaum's Linear Algebra Set was very useful for me x8. Random Processes is very critical : Ross has a book on Stochastic Processes. It is not an easy read, but very interesting. Papoulis and Ross present the same subjects from different view points. Do a comparative reading. 6. Try to build your mathematical tool set in the meantime. You never know what you need. Try to follow what your friends and other professors are working on. Try to attend lectures, seminars. Any work related or unrelated work can be an interesting lead for your research. Just be curious. 7. Stay curious. If you keep your focus on single subject for a long time, you may lose the intensity of your focus which is not good. Do alternative stuff, read books, see movies, play soccer; do not do activities total waste of time activities eating 50 lolipops at one sitting, watching televole etc. Read good stuff, watch good stuff, good is never defined :) |