Agriculture - Research Guide

Organize your thoughts...

Journal vs. Magazine - What's the difference?

Plagiarism is misrepresenting somebody else's intellectual work - ideas, information, writing, thinking - as your own. In other words, it is a misuse of source material. Plagiarism is a serious violation of the UMass Amherst Academic Honesty Policy.

Take this five-minute quiz.

The RADAR Challenge is an online game developed by the librarians at Loyola Marymount University. You can play in teams during a class or library session. RADAR stands for Rationale, Accuracy, Date, Authority, Relevance.

When searching in a library database...

SUBJECT SEARCHING searches specific, standardized subject headings assigned to materials. A subject search limits your search to an exact word or an exact combination of words.

Advantage: Subject searching retrieves exactly what you ask for.
Disadvantage: Subject searching limits you to only what you ask for.

 KEYWORD SEARCHING retrieves any and all occurrences of a word or combination of words, whether the words appear in the subject headings, title, or description of the item.

Advantage: Keyword searching expands the search to all occurrences of a word or combination of words.
Disadvantage: Keyword searching may retrieve much more than you want.

The Turnitin Plagiarism Prevention System compares your paper to:

• Proprietary and subscription databases
• The Internet
• Student papers submitted from other Turn It In institutions
• Student papers previously submitted at UMass Amherst

Pick from this series of short library videos to learn more about the research process.