Food Systems

Organize your thoughts...

Peer Review in Three Minutes

Take this 5-minute quiz.

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.

Wondering about the viability of a source? 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.

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