Information is the key to your success!
It sounds like a quote by an entrepreneur or somebody in Wall Street, but I believe it is true to academia. When it comes to academic research, “the less you know, the better” is
not correct. (Somebody who said it "to pursue his/her own originality" most likely is just lazy.) The more you read, the better to improve your skill to see your
research in the third-person perspective. And you can know what is new and what is known. That is how you claim a novelty. Over the past years, for my own
research, I have read 1000 papers per year on average.
But you just started your research in the lab, so you may wonder, for example, what to read and how to organize them. Actually, it is important skills that you want to cultivate in your Ph.D. course. The goal is to be comfortable enough with
research that you can find research as easily as searching for your favorite
video on YouTube. (I know it is sometimes difficult though!)
Tools to use
Search engine: Google Scholar (free), Web of
Science (free on campus), SciFinder (free on campus)
Paper organizing: ReadCube (paid), Mendeley (free)
Exercise (for example, gold nanocrystals)
Task 1: Find top-five cited papers about
gold nanocrystal papers
Task 2: Find top-five cited papers but
not review paper about gold nanocrystal papers
Task 3: Find top-five cited papers
published after 2013
Task 4: Find top-five cited papers
published after 2005 about gold nanocrystal in oil (not in water) phase
Task 5: Find famous researchers in the
gold nanocrystal synthesis field
Task 6: Save all papers and organize
using Mendeley
Good luck orienting yourself with
research!
