Introduction to Library Research

Your course assignments will require you to use sources available through the Utica University Library.

This guide will help you identify how to find appropriate sources, evaluate sources, and cite your sources.

Without knowing what to look for, it can be hard to recognize fraudulent papers from legitimate sources.

Here are some examples: 

Famous Fraudulent Papers:

• Mitochondria: Structure, Function and Clinical Relevance
  • A neuroscientist by the pen name of Neuroskeptic sent this paper to predatory journals*. The paper plagiarizes Wikipedia articles on mitochondria, replacing the word mitochondria with Star Wars' midi-chlorians, and inserting the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise monologue from Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith directly into the paper. Four journals accepted this article, and three published it.

*publications that claim to be legitimate scholarly journals, but misrepresent their publishing practices.

• Rapid Genetic and Developmental Morphological Change Following Extreme Celerity 
  • Inspired by Neuroskeptic's paper, the text of this paper is the plot summary of an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. The paper was published by the American Research Journal of Biosciences for a fee of $50. The journal promptly took down the article once the hoax was revealed.
     
• Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy
  • This 2005 conference paper is a computer science paper generator created by three MIT graduate students.  Once the hoax was discovered, WMSCI conference papers were pulled from IEEE sponsorship. In 2013 IEEE and Springer Publishing removed all WMSCI papers from their collections.