Module 5 Assignment 1: Literature Search

Author

Ellen Bledsoe, Lily McMullen

Assignment Details

Purpose

The goal of this assignment is to find, summarize, and cite research articles related to your research question and practice writing an abstract.

Task

Use generative AI to find relevant articles, assess their relevance, and integrate scientific literature into your writing about your research question.

Criteria for Success

  • Find and report on 10 scientific articles using the given prompts.
  • Determine which 3 articles are most related to your research question and provide a summary of those articles.
  • Write an abstract to a scientific article focused on your research question using the resources selected and information about your dataset.

Assignment Instructions

This assignment will guide you through the process of finding, citing, and summarizing scientific articles related to your research question for your final assignment (see M2 Assignment 3 and M3 Assignment 3 to refresh your memory).

You will use Scholar GPT to identify relevant sources and practice synthesizing scientific information.

Note

If you feel uncomfortable using generative AI, there is a library-based version of this assignment that uses the UA Library instead. It covers the same skills without generative AI, and you only need to complete one version.

By the way, I used ChatGPT to help me create this assignment! It took a lot of iteration and very specific prompts, and I still needed to make numerous edits. Generative AI is awesome as a partner, but you need to make sure you are using it critically, not as the only tool.

Part 1: Find 10 Relevant Articles (5 Points)

What is Scholar GPT, and Why Are We Using It?

Scholar GPT is a tool that utilizes OpenAI’s ChatGPT and specializes in helping users find academic articles. Unlike ChatGPT, Scholar GPT focuses on academic research and avoids fabricating citations, which ChatGPT is prone to do. Fabricated citations are misleading, unethical, and unacceptable in academic work.

How to Access Scholar GPT:

Open Scholar GPT. If you have an account with ChatGPT, sign in. If you do not, you can create a free account.

Note

Make sure you make your way back to Scholar GPT!

If you log in with your ChatGPT account, it will likely take you to ChatGPT, not Scholar GPT.

How to Write a Good Prompt

In the text box, prompt Scholar GPT to provide 10 academic articles related to your research question. The better your prompt is, the better the results will be!

Look back at M2 Assignment 3 or M3 Assignment 3 to remind yourself what your research question is.

  • Include a clear and concise version of your research question in the prompt. That said, though, most research papers will be written about your general topic but rarely about your exact dataset or exact question. Think about the general trend that your research question is asking.
  • Also include clear instructions for the outputs that Scholar GPT should provide. In this case, make sure that each article has a summary that is 3-5 sentences.
  • You might have to ask again to get what you want. I gave Scholar GPT the following prompt: “Provide 10 peer-reviewed academic articles related to the effects of urbanization on bird migration patterns. Return a 3-5 sentence summary of each article.”, but each summary was 1-2 sentences! I followed up with “Each summary should be a minimum of 3 sentences”, and the results were much more informative!

You might need to write a few different versions of your prompt until you get results from Scholar GPT that make sense. This iterative process is a really important part of using generative AI responsibly!

Include Your Results

Once you have some results that look good, copy and paste them into this document.

  • First, tell me what prompt you eventually used to get your answers. If you had to offer follow-up instructions (like I did above), include that as well. (1 point)

Prompt:

  • Copy the list of articles and their summaries. (4 points)

Results:

Part 2: Choose 3 Articles for Further Analysis (8 Points)

From the 10 articles, select the 3 most relevant to your research question.

Now, we are going to ask Scholar GPT to provide us with 2 additional pieces of information about these articles: the abstract of the article and a citation for the article using a common citation format.

  • An abstract in a published article is a concise summary of the main points of the research. It typically includes an objective, the methodology of the study, the results of the study, and what conclusions we can draw from the results.
  • We will be asking for citations in APA format, a common citation format. As you’ll see in the prompt below, we have specifically requested Scholar GPT to include a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). This is a permanent location on the internet where this article can be found for hundreds of years, at least.

Use the following prompt to get more information and citations for each of the three articles you identified. You will want to replace the numbers to match your 3 articles of interest:

“Provide the abstracts and APA citations for articles #, #, and #. Make sure you include DOIs for each article.”

  • Copy the results here. (3 points)

Results:

Now that you’ve gotten your results, click on the link that Scholar GPT has provided (either the DOI or the link in the list of 10 articles). For most of your articles, even if you aren’t logged into UA WiFi, you should still be able to see the abstract of the article.

Does the abstract of the article match the abstract that Scholar GPT provided? Does it contain more or less information? Do you see any issues with what Scholar GPT has provided? Write 3-5 sentences discussing this. (2 points)

Answer:

  • For each article, write 1-2 sentences explaining why it is relevant or valuable to your research question. (3 points)

First Article:

Second Article:

Third Article:

Part 3: Write an Abstract Using Selected Articles (5 Points)

Using at least 2 of the 3 articles you selected in Part 2, write an abstract for your research question. While you may not yet have the complete results for your research question, you can outline the data you are using, your research question, and your predicted results or actual results.

For full credit, the abstract should:

  • Include an opening sentence about the general topic of interest.
  • Include 1-2 sentences about the data (e.g., its source, type, or relevance).
  • Clearly state your research question in 1 sentence.
  • Use at least 2 sentences to reference the selected articles, supporting your research question, predicted results, or actual results. You should use in-text citations to reference your articles. See examples of in-text citations in the example abstract below.
  • Your abstract should be a minimum of 4 sentences.

Example Abstract:

Urbanization has been shown by many scholars to correlate with reduced bird populations (Johnson et al. 2021). Smith and Doe (2020) specifically demonstrated that urban sprawl leads to habitat fragmentation, which disrupts migratory routes. This study utilizes data from the National Bird Migration Database, focusing on population trends across urbanized regions. The research question examines how urbanization affects the migratory behaviors of birds. Based on these findings, I predict a decline in migratory bird populations in highly urbanized areas.

  • Write your abstract here. It can follow a similar structure of the one above or be a little different, but it should follow the guidelines above for full credit. (5 points)

Abstract:

Part 4: Reflection (2 points)

In this assignment, you’ve used generative AI to help you find scientific literature related to your research topic, summarize and cite those research papers, and write an abstract.

In some ways, generative AI probably did a great job; in other ways, it probably did not perform its task as directed. I know that I had to spend another 2 hours to finalize the creation of this assignment, even after generative AI produced a nice outline for me!

  • Based on your experiences in this assignment, what are your takeaways about using generative AI to help conduct research or generally answer questions? Where does it excel? What are potential pitfalls? Your response should be at least 4 sentences (and should not be written by generative AI!). (2 points)

Reflection: