Literature review is one of the essential part in thesis writing. It is always related to the previous works done by the other researchers in a specific field closely relates with the thesis title. Here is some tips shared to write a good literature review (credit to Dr Thava, ProofreadingByPhD )

1. Introduction – Definition of the topic and provide an appropriate context for reviewing the literature; investigate the scope of the related literature; state the general findings of the review; and final sentence/s that signals list of key topics that will be used to discuss the selected sources.
2. Main body – Divide up your text into sections/topics; move from a general or wider view to the specific focus of your research; synthesis each paragraph of the many texts that you have chosen for your literature review; and explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others
3. Conclusion – Summarize the key findings of the review in general terms; identify significant flaws or gaps in existing knowledge; outline areas for future study; and link your research to existing knowledge.

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i10-index is the measurement that based on the number of publication with at least 10 citations. i-10-index is a more straightforward measure tool compare with h-index. i10-index is only been used by Google Scholar compared with h-index that recognized by almost all scientific communities. based on i10-index, all papers with at least 10 citations are counted, while for papers with more than 10 citations or less than 10 citations, the impact is less and the weight is eliminated which cannot comprehensively reflects the quantity and quality of the publication works done by a scholar.

The h-index is used to measure both the productivity and citation impact of an author’s publications. Initially used for a scholar and/or individual scientist. So, how the h-index is counted? Here i provided some case studies for your better understanding.

1. If an author have 3 papers with 30 citations for the first paper, 2 citations for second paper and 1 citation for the third paper, his/her h-index should be 2, that is because the citations for both second and third papers are not enough, to achieve 3 for the h-index, at least 3 citations needed for the second and third papers. Although there are many citations for the first paper but it should be balance for the others.
2. If an author have 1 paper with 25 citations, the h-index of the author will be 1 (only 1 paper) although the citations for the only paper is more than 1.
3. Conceptually, if an author have 5 papers in total, the highest h-index of the author will only be 5. To achieve the highest h-index, the author needed to have minimum 5 citations of each of his/her paper. If the author want to improve his/her h-index, more publications needed.
4. Generally, h-index is counted on both total publications (to decide the highest h-index to be achieved) and total citations to achieve the highest h-index (each paper has at least the number of citations equal to the highest h-index).

A supervisor of a postgrad student will do the following tasks (What a postgrad student can ask her/his supervisor):

1. Propose your research idea and discuss with your supervisor. Your supervisor will provide his/her professional suggestions either the research idea worth to do/ can be done within the research time frame/ agree with your idea and allowing you to proceed with it OR you need to read more papers to find out more evidences of the validity of the idea and ensure it is novel.
2. After done your proposal, discuss with your supervisor. She/he will check for you, modify it to be more feasible/ suggest potential existing solutions as guide to consummate your proposal to proceed with the next step.
3. When you are facing any difficulties when conducting your research, you can ask your supervisor and discuss for the solution.
4. If you feel that the data collected is dubious after analyzed such as the results not as expected, find out the reason -Why and discuss with your supervisor either additional steps/ more data to be collected or more evidence should be found to convincing the existing results.
5. Submit your thesis draft for your supervisor to check and she/he should comments on the essential modification for you to do the corrections.
6. For research paper submission, find out the particular list of journals that you interested with and discuss with your supervisor to decide the final journal submission. Do the paper writing, proofread and submission by your own. Ensure that your supervisor agree with your decision for the journal submission.
7. If you receive the comments from the reviewers about your paper, do the corrections line-by-line, discuss with your supervisor after you done the corrections before submit to the journal’s editors. Don’t be afraid to submit high impact journals and don’t disappointed when your paper being rejected. Be positive and keep writing, improve your paper quality until acceptance.

Enjoy doing your research!

Are you a postgraduate student? Here some tips for you. What you shouldn’t do as a postgraduate student.

1. Passive. It is prohibited to request your supervisor to think about your research title, research direction and solution. As a postgrad student, you should have your own idea, innovative solution and creativity to conduct your own research, don’t depending on your supervisor to think about it and always pushing you to go ahead.
2. Take the initiative to get your own research idea. Don’t expect the research idea from your supervisor. Where the idea come from? The convincing answer should be Reading. Start your research from reading and find your idea from there (can find the reading tips as posted previously).
3. How to create the chart/graph/table? Don’t try to ask your supervisor to do that for you or write the thesis for you. When you done your research or when your research is on-going, how to convert your research into publishable technical/research paper? The smart way is find out existing good-writing papers in benchmarked (high impact) journals, read that paper and imitate the writing style, the way the authors wrote their papers, how they created their chart/data analysis report and so on. Start to write papers as much as you can to get the conductive comments from the experts and you will find out that it is easy afterwards when you write your thesis.
4. If your research is a part of a team/giant research, teamwork is important, don’t be too cattiness about your own achievement/contribution or knowledge, share with your team, help your team members and ask if you face any difficulties. Teamwork will help you to control your research flow, momentum and the stamina.
5. If you are a scholarship owner or you are not facing any financial problem, don’t simply take a part-time job. It will spoilt your research mood and causing the delay of your research. Consequently, you may lost your idea, taken by other researchers because of your delay, or your potential research solutions had been done by others (they are quicker than you).

For postgraduate students , reading is a must when doing research. Reading literature is the first step when doing research, which literature to read is the question for many students. Here are some tips that help you with your readings.

1. Which papers to choose? Firstly, you need to know which research area you are interested with. Search journal or conference that been benchmarked in your area. From the journal/conf. databases, start finding review/survey papers in your area as the starting point to read.
2. Next, if you find some interesting points when you read a particular paper, try to find out all the papers/articles cited in that paper to read all of them in details. Specify the time frame to read either present 10 years or 15 years’ papers.
3. How to read effectively? Read the abstract, introduction, statistics and conclusion at first. After reading that particular parts, think awhile, try to find out what is being conveyed by the author/s. Why the author/s want to do that research? What the contribution/s? After that just read thoroughly the whole paper. Practicing in this way can help you to find out the gaps of a particular issue/problem and the potential solutions.

Enjoy reading!

During the pandemic, there are several tips to protect yourself at the workspace.

1. To stagger the lunch hour with other staffs, bring your own food and avoid eating outside. If you unable to cook/prepare the food yourself, heat the food bought from eatery/restaurant in the oven for awhile for disinfection purpose.
2. Always wear double-masks and face shield when working and talking with others, avoid face-to face communication and contact by turning your head/body when talk.
3. Open the windows in the office/factory to ensure the good air-flow at your workspace.
4. Wash your hands always and don’t touch any surface when walking/talking, disinfecting your hands with sanitizer (>70% alcohol) when you touch any surfaces within communal areas.
5. Social distancing (at least 1 meter) is a must in the communal areas.

Self-isolation become the main method to prevent Covid-19 breakout in Malaysia. Patients with mild symptoms mostly requested to do self-isolation at home. Here some tips for safe self-isolation at home to minimize the chances to infect the other family members.

1. Decide a room with toilet/bathroom attached for the patient. All the daily activities of that patient happen in that room.
2. For breakfast, lunch and dinner or any food/drink served to the patient using separated containers that specific for the patient.
3. To avoid cross-infection, especially for big family that have children under 18 years old, specify the communal area and enforce all family members to wear mask when move/walk within that area.
4. When contact/communicate with patient, ensure wearing mask when do so.

Double masking and wearing face shields had been emphasized by our Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah recently as one of the effective self-protection tip to combat Covid-19 mutated virus like Delta variant and Lambda variant. Here some tips to wear masks and face shield effectively.

1. Disposable surgical mask (Fig.1) – Wear your mask correctly as stated here.
2. Cloth mask (Fig.2) – Ensure that you wash your cloth mask everyday and replace the filter piece in your cloth mask. If you feel breathing difficulties while wearing double masks, you can switch to wear KN95 mask to replace double-masks (Fig.3).
3. Face shield – The commonly-use face shield is the ease-to-wear product that can be used like you ae wearing the eyeglasses (click here to view). However this type of face shields not really suitable for long-term glasses wearers. Fortunately, there are innovative product that suitable for glasses wearers (click here to view)

Do you know that every single image/illustration/photo or the music/sound that you download from the public websites are not 100% copyright-free. All of the images/sound sources created by others mostly have been copy-righted. There are some websites provides images that is free to use either for personnel intention or for commercial purpose. You can download those images that been remarked as “Free for commercial use. No attribution required” without any copyright issue. Some tips to obtain the copyright-free sources from webs.

1. Some useful websites such as Pixabay, Pexels are some example of platforms that providing free-to-use images.
2. You can also directly navigate/search using google browser. Below the search bar, click Images to search image that you want, click Tools and Under the Usage Rights, click on Creative Common licenses to filter copyright-free images.
3. For music/sound sources, the popular platform is the Audio library under Youtube channel which provides a huge number of music/sound effect with the copyright-free licenses, no attribution required.

Enjoy!