Determining how pertinent information is - The art of staying on topic

[Voice-over]
It’s Thursday afternoon. Anna has decided to start selecting the bibliography for her paper on the history of molecular genetics, to avoid what happened last time. Here’s what happened last time.

[Dialogues]
Professor: Okay, I got your bibliography. 
Thank you. 
Here, wait, which one is it? 
Here it is. 
Outstanding book. I really recommend it. 
This one here is a must, 
no doubt about it. 
Oh, and this one too. Excellent. 
You must read this one.

Professor: Now, find me publications 
that are actually related to the topic. 
Not these. On the topic. 
See you next week. 
Here you go.

Song: #you don’t get it 

[Voice-over]
Anna, at this stage in your research, you’ve clearly forgotten a basic documentary research principle: evaluate the pertinence of the documents you’ve selected. What exactly does pertinent mean?

How about you? How do you determine the pertinence of a document when you’re doing research for a paper?

Systematically evaluate the pertinence of the information for a specific topic by asking the right questions:

•	The field: Does the scientific content cover part or all of my topic? Is the information specific enough for my research?
•	The type of document: What type of document is it (book, research article, literature review, thesis, etc.)? What type of information does it provide (graphs, diagrams, maps, raw data, numbers, statistics, images, commentaries, etc.)?

These criteria will not help you determine the quality of a document, but they will help you ascertain if the information contained is relevant to your needs.

Remember! Good quality documents are not always pertinent.

[Dialogues}
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