Our class was also able to attend very informative seminars that focused on the importance of open access, and how to form research questions. These seminars were led by Ilo Maimets from the Steacie library. Ms. Maimets helped us create Racer and Mendeley accounts that would aide us with our future research papers. During my years at York University, I have written many papers that required outside sources. This is where my gratitude for open access comes in, because without it, I would not have been able to get these papers done! Ms. Maimets showed us how to use Mendeley, and how we can use it to help us organize our citations, and how to see similar articles. Also, if there was a journal we could not access freely, we can simply request it on the Racer site using our student numbers, and the university would obtain it for us – free of charge! I found this tip to be especially helpful, because I have had situations where I was not able to read a journal because of paywall restrictions and had to settle for something else. Now that I am aware of these resources, I am sure my future papers will be even better than before.
I believe these lessons improved my researching skills since we learned how to use other scholarly websites and how to properly access them within the York paywall. I feel this knowledge will help me in other courses, especially courses where I will need to write research papers or create posters that require outside sources. One of the things Dr. Bazely always repeated was to immediately look up anything you did not know on your phone/laptop. Since we live in a digital world, technology makes learning easier. I found this advice to be very helpful, because after Googling and understanding what was said in a discussion, I was able add my own perspective and further the conversation.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 