Open Book and Take Home Exams

What are open book exams?

Open book exams allow you to take notes, texts or resource materials into an exam situation. They test your ability to find and apply information and knowledge, so are often used in subjects requiring direct reference to written materials, like law statutes, statistics or acts of parliament.

Open book exams usually come in two forms:

• Traditional sit-down / limited-time exams, with varying degrees of access to resources and references.
• Take home exams–open book exams you do at home. Question(s) are handed out, answers are attempted without help from others, and the exam is returned within a specified period of time (often the next day).

What kinds of material can be used?

The materials you can take into an Open Book exam can vary. Some restrict the type of materials (e.g. formula sheets and tables or a limited number of texts), others may be totally unrestricted (any quantity of any material).

Materials might be:

• your notes
• readings, reference materials or textbooks
• equipment like calculators, drafting tools etc.

Materials used in Take Home exams are usually unrestricted. Check your course guide or with your lecturer to find out what you can use. The main restriction for Take Home exams is that they must be your work–you must attempt them by yourself without any help from others.

Why are some exams 'open book'?

Because they test for more than just rote-learning. At university, simply memorising and repeating information is not enough to get you a good mark. Higher education is supposed to equip you with intellectual abilities and skills. Open Book exams test your ability to quickly find relevant information and then to understand, analyse, apply knowledge and think critically.

What kinds of questions will an open book exam have?

Open Book Exams don't test your memory. They test your ability to find and use information for problem solving, and to deliver well-structured and well-presented arguments and solutions.

Open Book exam questions usually require you to apply knowledge, and they may be essay-style questions or involve problem solving or delivering solutions. The style of question depends on the faculty or school setting the exam. For example in Law, the questions may set up a hypothetical fact situation that you will need to discuss.

Misconceptions about open book exams

1) Open Book exams are a breeze

Open Book exams are not an easy option. Answering the questions well requires more than just copying information straight from texts. For example, having access to a textbook can stop you from giving a wrong answer if you can't remember a fact or formula, but just getting that fact correct won't get you good marks. In Open Book exams, it's how you locate, apply and use the information that is important.

2) You don't have to study

Probably the biggest misconception about Open Book exams is that there is no need to study anything. However, you should study just as you would for any other exam. Having books and notes to refer to might mean you don't have to memorise as much information, but you still need to be able to apply it effectively.

This means you must fully understand and be familiar with the content and materials of your course so you can find and use the appropriate information. In Open Book exams, you need to quickly find the relevant information  in the resources you have. If you don't study you won't be able to–you won't know where it is.

3) You can just copy straight from the book!

You can't copy chunks of text directly from textbooks or notes. This is plagiarism. In Open Book exams, the resource materials are made available to you, so you are expected to do more than just reproduce them. You must be able to find, interpret and apply the information in your sources to the exam questions. You usually need to reference as well, just as you would for any other assignment.

4) The more materials the better!

Don't get carried away and overload with materials and resources in the exam. Only take what you need. Stacks of books won't necessarily guarantee your performance, and you won't have time for extensive reading. Too many materials can end up distracting you and crowding up your work space. Carefully select your materials and organise them for quick reference.

Reference

https://student.unsw.edu.au/open-book-and-take-home-exams

Citaion Index

A citation index is a kind of bibliographic database, an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier documents. A form of citation index is first found in 12th-century Hebrew religious literature. Legal citation indexes are found in the 18th century and were made popular by citators such as Shepard's Citations (1873). In 1960, Eugene Garfield's Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) introduced the first citation index for papers published in academic journals, first the Science Citation Index (SCI), and later the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). The first automated citation indexing was done by CiteSeer in 1997. Other sources for such data include Google Scholar and Elsevier's Scopus.

Major citation indexing services

General-purpose academic citation indexes include:

• ISI (now part of Thomson Reuters) publishes the ISI citation indexes in print and compact disc. They are now generally accessed through the Web under the name Web of Science, which is in turn part of the group of databases in the Web of Knowledge.
• Elsevier publishes Scopus, available online only, which similarly combines subject searching with citation browsing and tracking in the sciences and social sciences.
• Indian Citation Index is an online citation data which covers peer reviewed journals published from India. It covers major subject areas such as scientific, technical, medical, and social sciences and includes arts and humanities. The citation database is the first of its kind in India.

Each of these offer an index of citations between publications and a mechanism to establish which documents cite which other documents. They differ widely in cost: the ISI databases and Scopus are available by subscription (generally to libraries).

In addition, CiteSeer and Google Scholar are freely available online.

Reference 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_index

Difference Between Type I and Type II Errors

Hypothesis Testing

The process of hypothesis testing can seem to be quite varied with a multitude of test statistics. But the general process is the same. Hypothesis testing involves the statement of a null hypothesis, and the selection of a level of significance. The null hypothesis is either true or false, and represents the default claim for a treatment or procedure. For example, when examining the effectiveness of a drug, the null hypothesis would be that the drug has no effect on a disease.

After formulating the null hypothesis and choosing a level of significance, we acquire data through observation. Statistical calculations tell us whether or not we should reject the null hypothesis.

In an ideal world we would always reject the null hypothesis when it is false, and we would not reject the null hypothesis when it is indeed true. But there are two other scenarios that are possible, each of which will result in an error.  

Type I Error

The first kind of error that is possible involves the rejection of a null hypothesis that is actually true. This kind of error is called a type I error, and is sometimes called an error of the first kind.

Type I errors are equivalent to false positives. Let’s go back to the example of a drug being used to treat a disease. If we reject the null hypothesis in this situation, then our claim is that the drug does in fact have some effect on a disease. But if the null hypothesis is true, then in reality the drug does not combat the disease at all. The drug is falsely claimed to have a positive effect on a disease.

Type I errors can be controlled. The value of alpha, which is related to the level of significance that we selected has a direct bearing on type I errors. Alpha is the maximum probability that we have a type I error. For a 95% confidence level, the value of alpha is 0.05. This means that there is a 5% probability that we will reject a true null hypothesis. In the long run, one out of every twenty hypothesis tests that we perform at this level will result in a type I error.

Type II Error

The other kind of error that is possible occurs when we do not reject a null hypothesis that is false. This sort of error is called a type II error, and is also referred to as an error of the second kind.

Type II errors are equivalent to false negatives. If we think back again to the scenario in which we are testing a drug, what would a type II error look like? A type II error would occur if we accepted that the drug had no effect on a disease, but in reality it did.

The probability of a type II error is given by the Greek letter beta. This number is related to the power or sensitivity of the hypothesis test, denoted by 1 – beta.

How to Avoid Errors

Type I and type II errors are part of the process of hypothesis testing. Although the errors cannot be completely eliminated, we can minimize one type of error.

Typically when we try to decrease the probability one type of error, the probability for the other type increases. We could decrease the value of alpha from 0.05 to 0.01, corresponding to a 99% level of confidence. However, if everything else remains the same, then the probability of a type II error will nearly always increase.

Many times the real world application of our hypothesis test will determine if we are more accepting of type I or type II errors. This will then be used when we design our statistical experiment

Reference

http://statistics.about.com/od/Inferential-Statistics/a/Type-I-And-Type-II-Errors.htm

Errata,addendum,corrigendum

Errata

Short and minor revisions to a printed or published document to correct spelling and/or

 

typing mistakes. In contrast to 'addendum,' an errata does not adds to the text and, in

 contrast to 'corrigendum,' does not subtract from it.

 http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/errata.html#ixzz3jovufRBC

Addendum

Document or information attached or added to clarify, modify, or support the information

 in the original document or written work. In construction industry, for example, an addendum 

issued by a client during the bidding process becomes part of the contract documents when 

the  contract is awarded.

more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/addendum.html#ixzz3jowMoJYM

Corrigendum

Revision of a printed or published document. A corrigendum contains corrections that are larger and more significant than those listed in an errata.

Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/corrigendum.html#ixzz3jows1OSb

Author Impact

An author's impact on their field or discipline has traditionally been meausred using the number of times their academic publications are cited by other researchers.  There are numerous algorithms that account for such things as the recency of the publication, or poorly or highly cited papers.  While citation metrics may reflect the impact of research in a field, there are many potential biases with these measurements and they should be used with care.  For a critique of author impact factors, see this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Click on the links to learn more.

• H-Index

  The most widely used research metric, measures both productivity and impact of an author's scholarly output. Tools for calculating your H-index include Web of Science and Google Scholar.
• G-Index

  Proposed in 2006 by Leo Egghe as an alternative to the H-index, adds more weight to highly cited articles.
• i10-Index

  A very simple measure of impact, this metric is only used by Google Scholar.

The Web of Science uses the H-Index to quantify research output by measuring author productivity and impact.

H-Index = number of papers (h) with a citation number ≥ h.  

Example: a scientist with an H-Index of 37 has 37 papers cited at least 37 times.  

Advantages of the H-Index:

• Allows for direct comparisons within disciplines
• Measures quantity and impact by a single value.

Disadvantages of the H-Index:

• Does not give an accurate measure for early-career researchers
• Calculated by using only articles that are indexed in Web of Science.  If a researcher publishes an article in a journal that is not indexed by Web of Science, the article as well as any citations to it will not be included in the H-Index calculation.

Tools for measuring H-Index:

• Web of Science
• Google Scholar

The G-index was proposed by Leo Egghe in his paper "Theory and Practice of the G-Index" in 2006 as an improvement on the H-Index.  

G-Index is calculated this way: "[Given a set of articles] ranked in decreasing order of the number of citations that they received, the G-Index is the (unique) largest number such that the top g articles received (together) at least g^2 citations." (from Harzig's Publish or Perish Manual)

Advantages of the G-Index:

• Accounts for the performance of author's top articles
• Helps to make more apparent the difference between authors' respective impacts.  The inflated values of the G-Index help to give credit to lowly-cited or non-cited papers while giving credit for highly-cited papers.  

Disadvantages of the G-Index:

• Introduced in 2006. and debate continues whether G-Index is superior to H-Index.  Might not be as widely accepted as H-Index.  

Created by Google Scholar and used in Google's My Citations feature. 

i10-Index = the number of publications with at least 10 citations.  

This very simple measure is only used by Google Scholar, and is another way to help gauge the productivity of a scholar.  

Advantages of i10-Index

• Very simple and straightforward to calculate
• My Citations in Google Scholar is free and easy to use

Disadvantages of i10-Index

• Used only in Google Scholar

Here is a screenshot of a Google Scholar My Citations page for Charles Darwin (you can see the i10-Index highlighted in the small table):

Reference

http://guides.library.cornell.edu/c.php?g=32272&p=203393

Difference Between Citation and Reference

Citation vs Reference  

As citation and reference are two important terms used in research methodology, the difference between these two terms have to be understood clearly. Citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source. It is generally an abbreviated alphanumeric expression found in the pages of a thesis or a dissertation. The primary motive of citation is to exhibit your intellectual honesty. On the other hand, reference consists of the act of referring. Reference appears at the bottom of a page as a footnote as well as a list at the end of the thesis or the paper you are writing.

What is Citation?

A citation is how you quote the source of the ideas within the body of the research paper. Citation is included at the places wherever you quote from different authors. Normally, you put the citation at the end of the sentence within brackets. Inside this bracket, the author’s name, year the book was published or the page in which this particular extraction appeared are included. What exactly comes inside this bracket is a decision made by the format you follow in writing the paper. Different formats have different styles for citation. You can see that from the following examples.

APA – ‘Her blood warmed the earth (Martin, 2014).’

MLA – ‘Her blood warmed the earth (Martin 263).’

The very purpose of citation lies in the fact that you are willfully acknowledging the writer of the work from whom you have borrowed a quotation.

What is Reference?

Reference consists of the act of referring. As a researcher, you refer to some books and journals while writing the thesis or dissertation. As a matter of fact, you would include some references in the pages of your thesis in the form of footnotes. The footnotes contain the reference passages taken from the relevant books and journals from which you quote them. At the end of each chapter, you would give the corresponding books and journals from which you have picked the quotationsmentioned in the footnotes. These are references. However, you do not have footnotes in APA style. You only have a list called ‘References’ at the end. Also, when it comes to the end list that gives references, there are small changes between those lists in different styles too. This list of reference is normally known as the Bibliography. In APA, this list is known, as mentioned earlier, as ‘References.’ In MLA, the list is named ‘Works Cited.’ Also, APA reference list only contains the sources you have actually cited in the text. In other lists of reference, normally the sources that were only consulted are also included. Here are some examples of the way reference appears in these end lists.

APA:

MLA:

Usually, references are included at the end of every chapter of a thesis or towards the end of the thesis. The purpose of reference is only to let the reader of the thesis know the various books from which you have quoted, from the list at the end or footnotes.

What is the difference between Citation and Reference?

It is customary to write the references in the preparation of research papers and dissertations. It is important to note that both reference and citation contribute to the making of a thesis. Both are equally important but in different senses. A reader of a thesis gets to know about the authors and the subject while going through the reference and the citation. Remember, the format of the citation and reference is decided according to the format of the paper you are following.

• A citation is how you quote the source of the ideas within the body of the research paper. Reference is the sources you have used to write the sources. These sources can include both included and consulted sources. However, in APA, only included sources come under the reference list.

• List of reference that appears at the end of an APA paper is known as References. List of reference that appears at the end of a MLA paper is known as Works Cited. Citation is known as citation in any format.

• Usually, references are included at the end of every chapter of a thesis or towards the end of the thesis. On the other hand, citation is included at the places wherever you quote from different authors.

• The very purpose of citation lies in the fact that you are willfully acknowledging the writer of the work from whom you have borrowed a quotation. On the other hand, the purpose of reference is only to let the reader of the thesis know the various books from which you have quoted, from the list at the end or footnotes.

Reference

http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-citation-and-vs-reference/

Citations and References

Documenting your Sources In your lab reports you will typically use information from sources such as your textbook, lab manual, a reference book, and articles published in a science or engineering journal. When you use information from sources, you need to tell the readers where the information came from and where the readers can locate the sources. This is what citations and references are for. A citation tells the readers where the information came from. In your writing, you cite or refer to the source of information. A reference gives the readers details about the source so that they have a good understanding of what kind of source it is and could find the source themselves if necessary. The references are typically listed at the end of the lab report. There are many different forms of documentation (systems of citation and reference), varying across academic fields. You may be familiar with MLA (Modern Language Association) used in English or CBE (Council of Biological Editors) used in the life sciences. But even within academic fields there are different forms because different scholarly journals specify a system to be used in those journals. Smart Advice: Find out what form of documentation is appropriate to use in your class before you write your first report. The best place to look is the lab manual. If you don't see the form of documentation given there, then ask the lab instructor or the professor of the lecture section. More smart advice: If you can't find out from the lab manual or the teacher what form of documentation you should use, or if you are told to choose one on your own, find out what scholarly journal is appropriate to the field you are studying and use it as a guide to documentation. Find a recent copy of journal in the library or online. It will say what form that it uses (in the "guide to authors"). But you can also determine what to do by looking at how the citations and references are done in an article in the journal. Generally speaking, there are three basic systems of documentation in science and engineering: the name-and-year system, the alphabet-number system, and thecitation-order system. If your teacher says to use one of these systems, you can use the following brief descriptions to guide you in documenting sources: The name-and-year system. Citations: When you cite the source of information in the report, you give the names of the authors and the date of publication. Jenkins and Busher (1979) report that beavers eat several kinds of herbaceous plants as well as the leaves, twigs, and bark of most species of woody plants that grow near water. Beavers have been shown to be discriminate eaters of hardwoods (Crawford, Hooper, and Harlow 1976). References: The sources are listed at the end of the report in alphabetical order according to the last name of the first author, as in the following book and article. Crawford, H.S., R.G. Hooper, and R.F Harlow. 1976. Woody Plants Selected by Beavers in the Appalachian and Valley Province. Upper Darby, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture. Jenkins, S.H., and P.E. Busher. 1979. Castor canadensis. Mammalian Species. 120:1-8. The alphabet-number system. Citations: When you cite the source of information in the report, you give a number in parentheses that corresponds to the number of the source in the alphabetical listing in the "References." Jenkins and Busher report that beavers eat several kinds of herbaceous plants as well as the leaves, twigs, and bark of most species of woody plants that grow near water (4). Beavers have been shown to be discriminate eaters of hardwoods (3). References: The sources are listed in alphabetical order and numbered accordingly, as in the following book and article. 3. Crawford, H.S., R.G. Hooper, and R.F Harlow. 1976. Woody Plants Selected by Beavers in the Appalachian and Valley Province. Upper Darby, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture. 4. Jenkins, S.H., and P.E. Busher. 1979. Castor canadensis. Mammalian Species. 120:1-8. The Citation-Order System (typically used in engineering--IEEE documentation). Citations: When you cite the sources of information in the report, you give a number in brackets that corresponds to the number of the source listed in the order in which they appear in the report, the source listed first as [1], the next source [2], etc. Jenkins and Busher report that beavers eat several kinds of herbaceous plants as well as the leaves, twigs, and bark of most species of woody plants that grow near water [1]. Beavers have been shown to be discriminate eaters of hardwoods [2]. References: The sources are listed in the order in which they are cited in the report, as in the following book and article. [1] S.H. Jenkins and P.E. Busher, "Castor canadensis,"Mammalian Species. Vol. 20, Jan. 1979. [2] H.S. Crawford, R.G. Hooper, and R.F Harlow, Woody Plants Selected by Beavers in the Appalachian and Valley Province. Upper Darby, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1976. Reference https://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite/res/res-citsandrefs.html

Journal Impact Factors

Definition

The impact factor is a citation measure produced by Thompson Scientific's ISI Web of Knowledge database. Impact factors are published annually in ISI's Journal Citation Reports Database. Impact factors are only available for journals that are indexed in ISI databases.

One journal's impact factor on its own doesn't mean much. Instead, it's important to look at impact factors of multiple journals in the same subject area. This way, one can determine if the impact factor of the journal of interest is high or low compared to other journals in a subject area.

Impact Factor Debate

Impact factors have been much debated in the literature in terms of their value for evaluating research quality. The general consensus is that impact factors have been misunderstood and abused by many institutions that place too much value on something that is not entirely scientific or reliable. Please refer to the 'Factors that Influence Impact Factors' and 'Additional Readings' sections to find out more.

How Impact Factors are Calculated

A journal's impact factor for 2012 would be calculated by taking the number of citations in 2012 from articles that were published in 2011 and 2010 and dividing that number by the total number of articles published in that same journal in 2011 and 2010. Please see the example below.

Example:

The specific calculations for Nursing Research's 2011 impact factor are displayed below.

Articles published in 2010 that were cited in 2011: 63
Articles published in 2009 that were cited in 2011: 94
63+94=157

Total Number of articles published in 2010: 61
Total number of articles published in 2009: 51
61+51=112

157 (articles published in 2010 and 2009 that were cited in 2011)
112 (total number of articles published in 2010 and 2009)
= 1.402

The 2011 Impact Factor for the journal Nursing Research means that, on average, articles published in this journal from one or two years ago have been cited around 1.4 times.

Factors that Influence Impact Factors

Date of Publication
The impact factor is based solely on citation data and only looks at the citation frequency of articles from a journal in their first couple years of publication. Journals with articles that are steadily cited for a long period of time (say, 10 years) rather than only immediately lose out with this calculation.

Large vs. Small Journals
Large and small journals are compared equally. Large journals tend to have higher impact factors--nothing to do with their quality.

Average Citation
It’s important to remember that the impact factor only looks at an average citation and that a journal may have a few highly cited papers that greatly increase its impact factor, while other papers in that same journal may not be cited at all. Therefore, there is no direct correlation between an individual article’s citation frequency or quality and the journal impact factor.

Review Articles
Impact factors are calculated using citations not only from research articles but also review articles (which tend to receive more citations), editorials, letters, meeting abstracts, and notes. The inclusion of these publications provides the opportunity for editors and publishers to manipulate the ratio used to calculate impact factor and falsely try to increase their number.

Changing / Growing Fields
Rapidly changing and growing fields (e.g. biochemistry and molecular biology) have much higher immediate citation rates, so those journals will always have higher impact factors than nursing, for instance.

ISI's Indexing / Citation Focus
There is unequal depth of coverage in different disciplines. In the health sciences, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), the company which publishes impact factors, has focused much of their attention on indexing and citation data from journals in clinical medicine and biomedical research and has not focused on nursing as much. Very few nursing journals are included in their calculations (around 45). This does not mean that nursing journals they do not include are of lesser quality, and, in fact, they do not give any explanation for why some journals are included and others are not. In general, ISI focuses more heavily on journal dependent disciplines in the sciences and provides less coverage for areas of the social sciences and humanities, where books and other publishing formats are still common.

Research vs. Clinical Journals
In some disciplines such as some areas of clinical medicine where there is not a distinct separation between clinical/practitioner versus research journals, research journals tend to have higher citation rates. This may also apply to nursing.

Reference

http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/impactfactors