Today's lecture discussed aspects concerning the related literature study and how to cite correctly.

The related literature study is a beginning of what will eventually end up as the chapter "state of the art" in the final master thesis. We now start figuring out in that domain we want to do research and we define a problem that is hopefully not completely answered. In order to get on top of the chosen domain we need to know what others have done before us. Based on our initial problem we should define some keywords with synonyms and start systematically searching for related things. While searching it's important to keep track of results by keeping references (create a BibTeX file) and make notes while reading. The goal of reading is to get up to date, but also to be critical to what you read. You might find the problem is solved, or at least partially solved. You might find new interesting directions in the "further work" sections, inconsistencies between different sources, shortcoming, wrong/partially true assumptions that can inspire a new take on the problem. It can be difficult to start finding the correct words to search for, but when you start finding interesting sources, they will typically include references to guide you further. We have access to most of the interesting journals via the library or via proxy. Google scholar is also a great way to fast search many journals and peer reviewed publishers. Note the difference between journal papers and conference papers. Conference papers are typically shorter and lack details, but are more "state of the art". Be extra critical to sources like blogs and Wikipedia.

To summarize, be critical, evaluate, build relationships between sources, relate that you read to your problem, notice changes in methods over time (it the problem is old). Make your own cohesive whole out of all the information.

The next topic was citations. The term plagiarism refers to taking the honor of somebody else's work. Good research builds on existing knowledge and thus we need to explain what we build on. Those ideas must be cited correctly. Plagiarism also includes using others formulation, which means it's important not to copy and paste (except for quoting). Write everything with your own words so that it's clear you understand it, and give credit to the sources you got the idea from. This is naturally a very grey zone as all ideas you will ever have are heavily inspired by the environment you live in. Also, we don't cite common knowledge. This is also a grey line. For formatting, use LaTeX and you won't have to worry all that much. Just make sure you are consistent. Use references for scientific works and use footnotes for other stuff like a simple reference like product homepages, Wikipedia articles etc.