22 May launch of 'Digital Tools for Research': online course for Warwick's researchers.

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/insite/news/intnews2/digital_tools_research

Yesterday, I attended an event on "Embracing digital tools as an academic", where researchers discussed technology tools that they had been using and the ways in which they were useful. It's part of the work of the Digital Change programme at the University of Warwick.

There were three panel members, and they gave their examples first, before discussion was opened to the floor. A lot of the discussion was about Twitter and its use/value, and the question was asked "How long does it take to compose a tweet?"

The examples from the panel were all different: one researcher used a suite of different technology tools to manage all his research online (he was particularly keen on Evernote), and so although he has a Twitter channel, he never has to actually compose a tweet. Another researcher is very active in chatting and direct messaging on Twitter, and can spend some time composing the exact 140 characters to express her views on a conference or a research related thought. And the third panel member took the approach which I relate to most, being a combination of considered reflections on a blog and quick thoughts on Twitter, with feeds from the blog onto Twitter as well.

I came away from the event even more convinced of the value to researchers of investigating all sorts of tools, and finding ways to make them work for your own style of research and your own needs.

Which means that it is perfect timing that we are about to launch our "Digital tools for Research" online training programme for Early Career Researchers, building on the work previously done for PhD students in the blog based course "23 Things for the Digital Professional".

Jenny Delasalle : 18 May 2012 12:23 |  Tags: Research Skills Researchers Tools |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Guest post by Sam Johnson: Funded by the Wellcome Trust? Get funding for open access publishing fees

Today’s post is from Sam Johnson, Academic Support Librarian for Life Sciences, Medicine & Psychology, and the University of Warwick’s main contact for information about funding to cover the publication fees of Wellcome Trust-funded research.

Are you working on or have you recently completed research funded by the Wellcome Trust?
You will be aware that you are obliged to publish your research in an open access (OA) publication, so that anyone can access and read your findings in full text. OA costs can be quite considerable and in recognition of this, the Wellcome Trust has given the University a sum of money to support the open access publication of its research.

Why Open Access Publishing?
The aim of open access publishing is to disseminate research as widely as possible and to make the full text of current research easily available to anyone in the world. Open access publishing also helps to raise the impact of your research and your own research profile by making it more visible and easily accessible. Whilst OA is great news in terms of generating visibility for your research, the OA publication costs are the responsibility of the author/s and they can be quite significant..

The Wellcome Trust, along with most research funders, have an OA policy that mandates that their funded research is disseminated as widely as possible to maximise the impact and value of the findings. For more information see their Author’s FAQs.

Apply for OA Wellcome funding
Please email Samantha.A.Johnson@warwick.ac.uk for an application form. This will then be forwarded to Research Support Services for processing. Applications will need to come in soon as the funding needs to be spent by the end of September.

Sian Prosser : 02 May 2012 15:27 |  Tags: Dissemination Funders Open Access Publishing Researchers |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Informed Researcher: Vitae's new resource for researchers

Last week Vitae continued its mission of supporting the development of researchers by publishing The Informed Researcher. This booklet maps the Researcher Development Framework onto a set of practical steps that all researchers can take to ensure that they are making the most of the information they gather, analyse, evaluate and disseminate. Devised by researchers and librarians expert in information literacy, it starts with the importance of research questions and ends with an examination of publishing models and measuring impact. Considering that the authors have written it so that it is relevant to researchers across disciplines, it’s very detailed, and prompts you to audit your own information skills.

Sian Prosser : 30 Apr 2012 18:32 |  Tags: Information Skills Researchers |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A useful blog: New Media for Researchers

New Media for Researchers is a blog provided by Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. It’s aimed at researchers in Business Studies, but is full of links and resources on reference management and finding information that will be useful to people working across a range of disciplines. I particularly like the new series of posts entitled ‘Stuff librarians know (that you should know too)’’.

Sian Prosser : 27 Apr 2012 19:21 |  Tags: Finding Resources Information Skills Reference Management Researchers |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Guest post: Hocus Scopus

With 46 million records of peer-reviewed literature, Elsevier’s SciVerse Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database, with citation data for papers published from 1996 onwards. It’s a valuable resource for finding scholarly literature, but also offers tools for analyzing journal performance, finding out where and how frequently authors and articles are being cited, and tracking research trends. Some of the REF panels will be using citation data as one of several indicators of academic significance during the assessment process, and Scopus has been selected as the provider of this data. In this post I’m going to share some tips on how to get started with Scopus.

There is a useful set of short online tutorials on how to use Scopus here, which you can play, pause, or just click through. The SciVerseTraining Desk provides a range of training videos with more details on how to make the most of this database. Also, on the top right of every page of the Scopus there is a ‘help’ link to more information about particular tools and services.

• This tutorial explains how to carry out a document search, and also shows how citation analysis is built into the search results.

• It is worth registering for a personal account with Scopus if you want to save searches to run in future browsing sessions, set up alerts every time documents matching your search terms are uploaded to Scopus, or every time a document or author is cited.

• One useful feature is Scopus’ Document Download Manager. If the Library subscribes to journal content listed in the search results, Scopus allows you to save time by downloading multiple article pdfs.

• Another tutorial shows how you can select up to ten journals to analyse using SJR and SNIP, as well as simpler metrics like the total number of citations received in a year, and the total number of documents published in a year. You can view the data as a line chart or table. The line chart has data points which you can mouse over get a snapshot of journal performance at a moment in time.

• This tutorial shows how to search by author and affiliation, and how you can track research by setting up alerts to be notified when a given author is cited or publishes a new document.

• The author details page provides information about an author’s publishing history and research interests, and is a starting point for finding co-authors, tracking citations, and using the author evaluator tool. This displays an author’s publishing output, the number of citations received, and the h-index in the form of a graph and document list.

• Errors of attribution and affiliation do occur. To correct records, click on ‘give feedback’ on the author details page, then ‘request author detail corrections’ and use the ‘wizard’ to input and review the information. The correction goes back to the Scopus feedback team.

Citation data is only one kind of indicator for evaluating research. For a good general introduction to the use of bibliometrics in research assessment, see the Measuring Your Research Impact toolkit.

Sian Prosser : 20 Apr 2012 18:47 |  Tags: Bibliometrics Information Skills Researchers Scopus |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Guest Post: Emerald Author’s Workshop at Warwick – Guide to Getting Published

On 29^th March 2012 we invited publisher Emerald to present their ‘Guide to Getting Published’ at the Research Exchange. Many thanks to Sharon Parkinson for her very informative presentation; I wanted to share some of the best tips and advice to come out of the session…

Advice on getting published in journals:

1) Pick the right journal: This might seem obvious, but it was interesting to hear that the majority of rejections made by journal publishers were still due to the article being submitted to an inappropriate journal. You will need to:

• Consider who you research audience is, what they want to know, and what they are reading.

• Read at least one issue of a journal before you choose to submit work for it.

• Make sure you consider usage rates as well as journal rankings (which you are more interested in will depend on your motivations for publishing and what you hope to achieve with your work). Emerald suggested most editors would be happy to provide you with usage/download rates for a journal.

2) Send the editor an abstract: This is a great way to avoid problem 1. If you have done your research, but are still unsure if your paper is right for the journal, send an abstract to the editor asking for their opinion on its suitability. Check the author’s guidelines for the publisher you’re contacting to make sure your abstract fits their specifications. (Emerald’s can be found here: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/authors/guides/write/abstracts.htm)

3) Treat it like a job application: I’m not a fan of analogies, but this one seemed too apt to ignore. Much like you would tailor your CV to each position, Emerald emphasised the importance of tailoring your submission carefully to suit the journal/publisher you are approaching. You can also include a cover letter which, like a job application, should focus very clearly on what your paper has to offer to the journal and its readership, rather than on the benefits for yourself.

4) Get your own peer review: Don’t underestimate the value of getting an objective view; someone who isn’t close to your work will find it much easier to critically appraise it. From a personal perspective, I’ve always thought it useful to have someone outside of your field read your work; they tend to be able to spot jumps in your logic very easily.

5) Don’t give up: Getting a paper rejected is very common and shouldn’t deter you. Get feedback from the editor, work on their points and resubmit elsewhere. Also, requests for revisions can be seen as a very positive step – if a publisher has taken the time to do this, then they have obviously seen potential in your work, so don’t give up at this stage.

Advice on getting books published:

1) Make it travel: Obviously the key difference from publishing in journals is that a book must have considerable commercial appeal. Therefore, it needs to be of interest to and accessible by a wide audience: know your market and make sure your work has reach.

2) Attend a publishers’ conference: Emerald were clear that if you want your book commissioned, conferences are the place to be. You can contact a publisher in advance to book an appointment with a commissioning editor at the conference. Arrive prepared – you should complete a detailed proposal form and be ready to answer the publisher’s queries.

3) Keep track of time: You need to be aware of the time constraints that apply to book publishing. Since the publishers will need to promote the book and publicise its release date, you can’t afford to fall behind. Make sure you discuss targets and timescales carefully with the editor and any other involved authors at an early stage.

Karina Hilder : 03 Apr 2012 11:40 |  Tags: Dissemination Getting Published Publishers Publishing Researchers |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Finding journal articles when we have no subscription

Warwick has a large and excellent collection of journal subscriptions but we don't subscribe to every journal! I sometimes find myself giving this same advice to PhD students, about finding journal articles in full text when we have no subscription to the journal(s) that they want access to.

If there are particular journal articles that you want access to, then you might be able to find some for free by searching on Google. In my experience, Google is better than Google Scholar at finding open access articles, if you already know article title and author to search by. Another place to look for open access versions of journal articles would be on a repository cross-searching tool like BASE for open access early versions of the articles.

Students can also complete document supply requests, with the support of a supervisor. Or if you can find a library which subscribes to a print version of the journal then you could possibly arrange to visit that library (see the Library advice page on Using other Libraries). COPAC is a good website to use, to find out about other libraries’ holdings, as it is a union catalogue of a number of UK research libraries.

Jenny Delasalle : 21 Mar 2012 16:29 |  Tags: Information Skills Open Access Quick Tip Research Skills Researchers |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Authors' guidelines on publishers' websites

I recently started to look at publishers' guides to authors, and I noticed which profile sites they recommend authors to use in the promotion of their work. There is quite a lot of variety amongst the publishers I visited today:

The Taylor and Francis website has a neat piece of advice on how authors might promote their work: http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/beyondpublication/promotearticle.asp Taylor and Francis advise the use of LinkedIn and academic social networking sites, mentioning MyNetResearch and Academici as examples… they wouldn’t have been my first choices as I didn't even cover them in my recent piece on profile sites (http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/libresearch/entry/warwick_people_on/). However, they could be worth exploring.

Springer’s Author pages (http://www.springer.com/authors) offer advice on using online tools and social media as well. They mention Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and ResearchGate, Twitter and Wikipedia.

Sage’s section on “Promote your article” for authors (http://www.sagepub.com/journalgateway/promote.htm) lists YouTube, Slideshare, Flickr and other Sage provided channels that authors can use. Their section on “Help readers find your article” also offers valuable advice on Search Engine Optimisation: http://www.sagepub.com/journalgateway/findArticle.htm

OUP's journal authors' "Social Media Author Guidelines" (http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_authors/socialmedia.html) are very comprehensive, covering blogs, twitter, facebook and youtube, and linking to the OUP channels on such sites in a similar way to Sage. They also list LinkedIn, Goodreads, flickr, tumblr and Quora.

Emerald’s “How to Guides” for authors include some valuable advice on disseminating your work: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/authors/guides/promote/disseminate.htm?part=1 but it is their advice on “drawing attention to your book” which covers the use of social media best, in my view.

None of these author guidelines mention repository deposit, however!

As an aside: I did also look for Elsevier and Wiley's guides but couldn't find comparable content easily: I recall Elsevier having published a very good guide to getting published, as a pdf file, but my link was broken.

With all this variety and plethora of strategies, then researchers could spend their entire time promoting their work. However, Brian Kelly's recent blog post on the value of inbound linking to enhancing access to papers gives a practical example of how some of these sites can be used in a strategic way. The difference between using these strategies to promote a repository version of a paper and the published version of a paper could be dependent on whether you're going to get article level metrics to tell you which of your activities are having the desired effect. Does your publisher or your repository give you such metrics?

Jenny Delasalle : 07 Mar 2012 19:17 |  Tags: Getting Published Researcher Profiles Researchers |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Who is interested in my online profile?

Writing about web page http://uk.news.yahoo.com/who%E2%80%99s-been-looking-at-your-facebook-page--can-you-find-out-.html

This recent news article on Yahoo inspired me to have a little look at what I can find out about people interested in my work online: I already get e-mails from Academia.edu whenever someone googles me and clicks to see my academia.edu profile.

I have never before explored Google's Adwords: I'm not a commercial organisation(!), but it has an interesting "Keyword tool" that you can use for free. I gave it my name as a phrase, and it told me that on average there are 22 searches per month, over the last 12 months for my name. It also came up with 2 keyword ideas: "information science" and "scholarly writing".

You can also give Google Adwords a URL, so I gave it the one for this blog: this time there were 98 keyword ideas. I think that the idea is that you could pay for your advert to appear whenever someone searches for such keywords. Which I'm not going to do, but it could also be an interesting tool for researchers who are looking for keywords to enhance their searching! They could give it the URL or title of a paper of particular interest and see what is suggested, if they are struggling to come up with ideas for themselves.

LinkedIn also tells me how many people have viewed my profile there in the last 90 days, and how many times my profile has shown up in search results. Not quite so high as the figure from Adwords, but then it's only about LinkedIn. On LinkedIn I can see the profiles of the people who viewed my profile, along with some anonymous users... there is more information for those prepared to pay for it, too.

Academia.edu has a "stats dashboard" which tells me how many profile views and document views I've had in the last 30 days: even fewer than LinkedIn. I can also see what country the views were from and which referring site and keyword led them to find my profile/article.

Now of course, there is also Google Analytics which can tell me how many people have viewed my blog, and Twitter and Hootsuite between them can give me an idea of who is following me and how many people click on the links I share and so on and so forth... and if I had the time to track all of this then I might be able to see whether/which blog posts and tweets and activities in general are having some kind of impact... but still, I'm just happy that Google Adwords has suggested some words associated with my work interests!

Jenny Delasalle : 02 Mar 2012 09:00 |  Tags: Google Impact Information Skills Researcher Profiles Researchers |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Guest post: Reference management, a few thoughts following a Mendeley Workshop and Trial

Writing about web page http://salmapatel.com/academia/mendeley-workshop-at-the-university-of-warwick

Karina Hilder is an Academic Support Officer in the Library at the University of Warwick. This guest post by Karina describes her thoughts on Mendeley and EndNote, following the Mendeley workshop, held in the Library on 16th February 2012.

As a contented and long-term user of EndNote Web, I hadn’t intended to consider Mendeley desktop for personal use; I was only hoping to gain knowledge which may enable me to do my job better. Primarily, I wanted to be able to field questions from researchers and students interested in using the software. After attending a workshop and using the software for a week however, I am flitting between moments of being sure that Mendeley is the answer to all my referencing problems, and times when I wonder why I ever considered abandoning EndNote Web. Here are a few of the issues I have been considering:

• Interface – Mendeley desktop has a more modern appearance in this respect – it almost resembles an email inbox, so navigating around the page is second nature for most of us. However, the EndNote Web tabs do make it very easy to find the function you are looking for, it’s just that the whole thing just looks and feels a little outdated.

• Handling Pdfs – It seems to me that the main advantage of Mendeley over EndNote Web is its ability to be a reference manager and a Pdf reader in one. The highlighting and comments features are neat and user friendly, and being able to categorize your papers as read, reviewed, unread etc. is very handy. However, this only works for those of us who are willing to read papers on the computer screen. I have always printed papers in the past and now read them on my Kindle as it is easier on the eye and saves me lugging my laptop around. Unfortunately, Mendeley doesn’t offer any synchronisation between the two, although it looks like there are a few independent (but potentially costly) applets around which offer this function, such as kinsync. I’d be interested to know if anyone has tried one of these – and how it handled transferring comments and highlighted sections.

• Importing Data – There are two main options for importing reference metadata into Mendeley:

1. you can use the Mendeley Importer Bookmark to import data directly from a database search
2. or you can extract the data from a Pdf file.

I’ve tried Option 1. with JSTOR, Pubmed, Google Scholar and EBSCOHost. In each case the fields were copied correctly (but I would still always recommend checking the data before using the reference in your work). However, Mendeley didn’t manage to transfer the Pdfs, meaning I then had to download these separately and then add them to my Mendeley library -so overall, the process wasn’t any quicker than with EndNote Web.

Option 2, of simply adding all your Pdf files to Mendeley and letting it populate the fields seems too good to be true. This is perhaps why - despite trying this with several of my Pdfs and getting largely correct data - I have remained suspicious of it. Even the Mendeley FAQs aren’t very reassuring about this process: “Mendeley tries to 'guess' which text constitutes the authors, title and other metadata. The accuracy of this step will depend on factors such as the complexity of the article's layout.” Again, I would recommend double checking all imported data.

For me, the jury is still out on this one, but I suppose the beauty of it is that as EndNote Web and Mendeley Desktop are free, I can continue to use both until my thoughts settle.

Jenny Delasalle : 27 Feb 2012 14:16 |  Tags: Endnote Mendeley Reference Management Researchers |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem