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This web page is intended to help you with your SEE 110 assignments. Slides from Sept 28 presentation. See What is a scholarly (or peer-reviewed) journal? for more information on finding peer reviewed articles.
Sources for Technical Analysis
The assignment asks students to demonstrate they understand the technical underpinnings of their topic. The sources listed below provide factual information and use scientific methods to collect and analyze data.
E-books and encyclopedias
Knovel : Collection of technical handbooks, including chemicals and formulae.
AccessScience :Technical and scientific encyclopedia.
Access Engineering : Engineering reference and teaching platform
Encyclopedia of Sustainable Technologies: An authoritative assessment of the sustainable technologies that are currently available or in development.
Encyclopedia of Renewable and Sustainable Materials: Research and development on all aspects of renewable, recyclable and sustainable materials.
Publisher platforms and databases
ScienceDirect: Technical articles and book chapters published by Elsevier
Springer LINK Search: Highly technical books that include energy, engineering, and computing science
Ei Compendex: Multidisciplinary index to journal articles and trade publications in engineering.
IEEE Xplore: Publications from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Prime source for the topic of electricity (electric power, electric vehicles, electric grid...)
Applied Science and Technology Index Technical journal articles
Web of Science Articles and conference papers from scholarly journals in many disciplines
Synthesis Digital Library of Engineering and Computing Science Hybrid of encyclopedia and book! Provides in-depth overviews of technical topics.
Safari Tech Books Online: Includes titles from publishers such as O'Reilly, Pearson, and CRC. Some titles assume very little technical knowledge (eg also includes the "For Dummies" series.) Requires separate login.
Statistics and data
Official sources
- Environmental Reporting BC (Province of British Columbia)
- Energy Data and Analysis (Natural Resources Canada)
- Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data & Inventories (Province of British Columbia)
- Environmental indicators on air, climate, water, nature, and human influence (Statistics Canada)
Statistics database
- Statista: statistics aggregator that includes both official and unofficial sources
Government agencies
Provide policy documents, plans, and reports
Electricity & Alternative Energy (Province of British Columbia)
Clean Transportation Policies & Programs
Renewable & Low Carbon Fuels
Green Vancouver
Sources for Persuasive Paper
The library catalogue provides some journal articles, but to conduct more comprehensive and focused searches, you will need to consult databases.
Subject-specific databases
Environment Complete
Provides articles on all aspects of the environment: from renewable energy and pollution to environmental technology and urban planning.
Business Source Complete
Indexes journals which examine commodities from economic and financial perspectives
Multidisciplinary databases
Multidisciplinary databases provide resources from a wide range of disciplines
Academic Search Premier
Covers several different subject areas, including science and technology as well as social sciences. Some of the articles included are not from scholarly journals, and not all articles have the full text.
CBCA Complete
Includes articles from academic journals and popular magazines. Covers a broad range of topics. Articles from Canadian sources, including some scholarly journals, business magazines, and popular news magazines and newspapers. Good for learning about the 'Canadian' angle to any question.
Canadian Points of View Reference Centre
Provides students with a series of essays that present multiple sides of a current issue.
Gale Virtual Reference Library
Encyclopedia collection for social science topics
Sometimes a database only provides a citation for a journal article and not the full text of the article itself. If this happens, it is likely that SFU Library still has access to the full-text article, usually through a different database; just look for the Get@SFU icon.
Organization websites
This includes both non-profit and industry organizations. Their websites often contain documents, reports, and statistics that support their cause:
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
David Suzuki Foundation
Pembina Institute
Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers
Fraser Institute Research: Environment
News sources
Canadian Newsstream
Full text access to major Canadian daily newspapers (such as the Globe and Mail, National Post, The Gazette (Montreal), and Vancouver Sun) as well as small market newspapers and weeklies published in Canada.
Factiva
Wide range of information from newspapers, newswires, industry publications, websites, and company reports.
Nexis Uni (formerly Lexis Nexis)
International news coverage, business news, legal cases and law reports from early 1970's to present.
Opinions
Canadian Points of View database
New Yorker, Salon, The Atlantic, Slate
Citing Sources
For your annotated reference list, you will be using APA style, and for your persuasive paper, you will be using IEEE style.
Citing your sources allows you to give credit to the original researchers, to point your reader(s) to where you found information.
Questions about what constitutes plagiarism? Try the SFU Library's Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism tutorial. If you have questions about citing or doing research, please ask a librarian.
IEEE style guides:
- IEEE citation style (Queen's University, Engineering and Science Library)
- IEEE Reference guide
Writing your paper
The Student Learning Commons (SLC) provides help with writing and formatting your paper, including a WriteAway service that promises a 48 hour turnaround for feedback on a paper.
There are also several books at the library on writing technical reports and different types of essays.