Bournemouth University Library: Research Support

New design for JournalTOCs

2011-05-26T16:15:00.003+01:00

Check out the new design for JournalTOCs, the largest, free collection of scholarly journal Tables of Contents (TOCs)

>>> JournalTOCs

Features:

Tables of Contents for 16,300 journals (including 2140 Open Access journals) from 825 publishers.
Follow journals of interest, and be alerted to the contents of new issues.
Receive Email Alerts when new issues are published in the journals you follow.
Search by keyword(s) within the half a million recently published articles indexed by JournalTOCs.
Browse journal publications by subject or publisher.
Export TOC RSS feeds.
Link from anywhere (a blog, a website, Facebook, an email message, etc.) to the latest Table of Contents of a journal.
Create customised RSS feeds to follow the latest scholarly articles on a topic.
Suggest new journal titles to add to JournalTOCs.
View the most Followed journals.

And more...

New EndNote Web features

2011-03-28T14:39:00.003+01:00

The bibliographic management software EndnoteWeb enables you to manage your references quickly and easily, then export them in 2000 styles, including Bournemouth University's version of the Harvard referencing style - Harvard(BourneU). Directly export citations from many databases including mySearch, the resource discovery tool.

New features include:

Cite While You Write™ in Word 2011 for Mac. Get the new plug-in from the "Download Installers" page in EndNote Web.
Link to Biosis Citation Index source records directly within EndNote Web including one-click author searches.
Access Shibboleth federations on the EndNote Web login page.

E-only scholarly journals: overcoming the barriers

2010-12-16T16:13:00.003Z

Whilst at BU we have already expanded our e-provision of journals to the maximum possible given the titles to which we are subscribing, in the UK, we are still some way from a wholly electronic journal environment. A 2008 a survey of publishers found that 10% of all scholarly journals were still not available online, more in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

Read about how librarians, suppliers and publishers are working together to achieve 100% e-access to journals.

>>E-only scholarly journals: overcoming the barriers - report

BURO - how many times have your items been downloaded?

2010-08-05T18:02:00.005+01:00

We have implemented some exciting new software in BURO called IRStats which allows researchers to see how many visitors have accessed each of their full text Open Access research outputs.

Beneath each item find 2 barcharts depicting the number of times your item has been downloaded e.g. http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/11216/

Select More Statistics for this Item to see how users are finding your research outputs and using which search terms.

The newly added BU e-theses are already proving popular as is the work of BU academics who have added full text open access copies of their research outputs. Contact your Subject Librarian for help and advice on how to add legal open access copies of your work and attract more citations.

BURO Upgrade Complete

2010-08-05T16:41:00.005+01:00

The BURO upgrade to Eprints 3.2 is now complete!

There are some great new features to help you:

A-Z Author Browse - find yourself even more quickly
Tools that allow you to share your research e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Messenger
Tools that allow you to bookmark and share your research e.g. Delicious, Google, Digg
A vast array of export formats including Endnote
View and Edit items in your 'Manage deposits' area more easily

BURO Upgrade 28th July

2010-07-27T14:34:00.002+01:00

We plan to upgrade the software that runs BURO, Bournemouth's institutional repository, on 28th July. This upgrade will mean between half and one day's downtime. In addition to this general upgrade we are also implementing some exciting new software called IRStats which will allow researchers to see how many visitors have accessed each of their full text Open Access research outputs.

New school name changes (School of Applied Sciences and School of Tourism) will be effected on thursday 29th July.

REF assessment postponed until 2014

2010-07-12T10:47:00.004+01:00

David Willetts, Minister of State for Universities and Science, has announced the new timetable for the Research Excellence Framework (REF). The assessment phase of the REF will now take place during 2014 to inform funding from 2015-16

This will allow HEFCE and other funding partners more time to gain feedback from universities and develop a robust method for assessing the impact of research.

Journal Citation Reports 2009 now available

2010-07-09T10:52:00.008+01:00

The Journal Citation Reports 2009 are now available. Use the JCR to help you decide which journals you submit your articles to.

Included this year are 1000+ new titles with first journal impact factor. This list incorporates the following UK titles:

Accounting and Business Research
African Studies
Animal Cells and Systems
Applicable Analysis
Asia Pacific Journal of Education
Asian Businuss & Management
Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education
Avian Biology Research
Behavioral and Brain Functions
Bioinspiration and Biomimetics
Biotechnology for Biofuels
BMC Family Practice
BMC Medical Genomics
BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making
BMC Medical Methodology
BMC Psychiatry
Cardiovascular Diabetology
Chemistry Education Research and Practice
Child & Family Social Work
CNS Neuroscience and Therapeutics
Computer Aided Surgery
Cultural Sociology
Current Sociology
Developing World Bioethics
Disease Models & Mechanisms
Discourse & Communication
Educational Psychology
Enterprise Information Sustems
Environmental Communication - A Journal of Nature and Culture
European Early Childhood Education Research Journal
European Journal of Developmental Psychology
European Journal of Industrial Engineering
European Law Journal
European Review of Economic History
European Review of Social Psychology
Evolotionary Applications
Expert opinion on Drug Delivery
Expert Review on Ant-infective Therapy
Food Additives & Contaminents Part B - Surveillance
Fungal Ecology
German Economic Review
Health Education Journal
Hydrology Research
IET Renewable Power Gernation
Implementation Science
Informatics for Heath & Social Care
Innate Immunity
Innovation-the European Journal of Social Science Research
International Finance
InternationalJournal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity
International Journal of Bilingualism
International Journal of Digital Earth
International Journal of Engine Research
International Journal of Health Geographics
International Journal of Law Crime and Justice
International Journal of Urological Nursing
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Irish Educational Studies
Journal of African Law
Journal of Applied Econometrics
Journal of the Asia-Pacific Ecomomy
Journal of Contemporary History
Journal of Environmental Planning and Management
Journal of Estyetic and Restorative Dentistory
Journal of Grey System
Journal of Hematology & Oncology
Journal of Hospitality Leisure Sport & Tourism Education
Journal of the Institute of Telecommunications Professionals
Journal of Industrial Relations
Journal of International Trade & Economic Development
Journal of Integrative Neuroscience
Journal of Israeli History
Journal of K-Theory
Journal of Maps
Journal of Marine Engineering and Technology
Journal of Mathematics and Music
Journal of Neuropsychology
Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Journal of Operational Oceanography
Journal of Plant Ecology-UK
Journal of Quantative Linguistics
Journal of Refugee Studies
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine
Journal of Topology
Japanese Journal of Political Science
Labor History
Language Matters
Language Variation and Change
Management Decision
Mediterranean Historical Review
Mediterranean Politics
Mitochondrial DNA
Molecular Ecology Resources
Molecular Neurodegeneration
Molecular Oncology
Nature Geoscience
Nordic Journal of Linguistics
Obesity Research & Cliniacl Practice
Parasites & Vectors
Plant Methods
Psycho-oncology
South European Society and Politics
Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research
Scandinavian Journal of Management
Sensor Review
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Social Neuroscience
Social Science Japan Journal
Strategic Organization
Substance Abuse Treatment Prevention and Policy

Also included are 10 new ACM titles

If you require help, advice or training in the use of JCR or any of the Library Database products contact your School's Subject Librarian.

>>Contact your Subject Librarian

Thomson Reuters also provide both live and recorded web-based training

>> Live web-based training

>>Recorded training

BURO crashes through 9000 items barrier

2010-03-04T18:15:00.005Z

With increasing numbers of academic staff becoming autonomous users BURO (BU Research Online) continues to grow rapidly. BURO is Bournemouth University's institutional repository and now includes in excess of 9000 items.

Authors self archiving more open access copies of their research outputs (post-prints or pre-prints) is now a big challenge. The SHERPA RoMEO web site is an excellent source for authors to use when checking copyright issues for journal articles.

Citations for British and Irish PG Dissertations and Theses now searchable on Proquest

2010-02-26T11:55:00.002Z

You now have access to the citations for British and Irish postgraduate dissertations and theses as part of the University's licence to ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.

Proquest's collection of British and Irish dissertations and master’s theses is published by Expert Information and currently comprises over half a million records, with some additional 15,000 citations added annually.

The collection offers:

A comprehensive listing of theses, with abstracts accepted for higher degrees by universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland, since 1716;
Access to bibliographic coverage of theses produced by British and Irish universities;
Bibliographic listings for content for 1950-1986;
Abstracts for content since 1986.

>>Go to ProQuest Dissertations and Theses

The UK and Ireland data also remains available at Index to Theses

UK Government data available for re-use

2010-02-02T15:04:00.004Z

Advised by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Professor Nigel Shadbolt and others, government are opening up data for reuse. There is great potential for academics, researchers and students.

data.gov.uk seeks to give a way into the wealth of government data and is under constant development. Feedback and reuse of data in innovative applications is very much encouraged.

>>>About data.gov.uk

AtmosPeer

2010-02-02T14:29:00.001Z

ProQuest has designed a new social network for researchers, academics, librarians and students in the atmospheric science community. AtmosPeer connects atmospheric scientists with colleagues, emerging research trends, current news feeds, conference information, and funding opportunities. It allows scholars to identify peers doing similar research and creates a simple method for document sharing and collaboration. It also includes background on current and upcoming conferences and a deep indexing tool that uncovers data and findings not only in the text, but in the tables and figures, too.

>>>Go to AtmosPeer

BURO now ranks amongst the World's top 200 institutional repositories

2010-01-29T14:44:00.002Z

BURO (Bournemouth University Research Online) has risen to an impressive 195th in the Ranking Web of World Institutional Repositories - a rise of 86 places since January 2009!

BURO now contains more than 8950 research outputs by 815 BU academics, research students and professional staff. This reflects BURO's excellent growth, visability and the increasing commitment of academic staff to autonomous contribution as part of their research processes.

The Subject Librarians continue to offer high quality help, training and advice to all members of staff.

Temporary BURO Editing Problem now resolved

2010-01-15T12:21:00.007Z

If you experience any problems whilst editing you documents in BURO or require any other BURO-related help please contact your School Subject Librarian

>>>Subject Librarians

*****NOW RESOLVED*****
We have discovered an intermittent error that seems to be occurring when editing items in BURO. ePrints are currently trying to resolve this. Please refrain from editing items for the moment until you are notified that this problem has been resolved.

EndNoteWeb - authenticate every 12months for continuous use.

2010-01-04T11:01:00.003Z

Staff/students/researchers may freely use EndNote Web for 12 months after they leave BU. Current users need to login via an on-campus pc at least once every year to authenicate their roaming EndNote Web for use off-campus.

>>>EndNote Web - roaming advice

Create an EndNote Web account to manage your references both on and off-campus and output them in the Harvard(BourneU) style. You must be on-campus to create an account.

Patterns of information use and exchange: case studies of researchers in the life sciences

2009-11-26T16:16:00.002Z

The Research Information Network (RIN) and the British Library have produced a report that addresses research patterns in life sciences.

It reveals that researcher practices diverge from policies promoted by funders and information service providers. The report concludes ‘one-size-ﬁts-all’ information and data sharing policies are not achieving scientiﬁcally productive and cost-efﬁcient information use in life sciences.

Key ﬁndings include:

* Researchers use informal and trusted sources of advice from colleagues, rather than institutional service teams, to help identify information sources and resources
* The use of social networking tools for scientiﬁc research purposes is far more limited than expected
* Data and information sharing activities are mainly driven by needs and beneﬁts perceived as most important by life scientists rather than ‘top-down’ policies and strategies
* There are marked differences in the patterns of information use and exchange between research groups active in different areas of the life sciences, reinforcing the need to avoid standardised policy approaches

>>>Patterns of information use and exchange: case studies of researchers in the life sciences

EThOS - Update

2009-11-16T19:21:00.001Z

EThOS, the British Library's thesis digitisation service launched in January and has so far made over 24,000 theses available for immediate download. It allows researchers to access theses online and showcases the quality of UK postgraduate research.

The service has been extremely popular with researchers and digitisation times for theses not already available electronically have dramatically reduced.

Already Bournemouth University has 142 digitised theses in EThOS, which are also being added to BURO.

Early Career Researchers - New Guide

2009-11-16T19:11:00.002Z

Elsevier has published a guide that helps Early Career Researchers make informed decisions about their direction following completion of their doctorates.

In two parts, Professor Alan Johnson's booklet explains how to create a career plan, select a research discipline, supervisor/mentor and the importance of collaboration and networking

The second half of the guide discusses ethics, how to publish research, where to publish, funding, collaborating with industry and academia etc.

>>>Charting a Course for a Successful Research Career: A Guide for Early Career Researchers

Academia.edu helps academics discover 'Who's researching what?'

2009-11-13T12:37:00.004Z

Academia.edu is an example of a multidisciplinary social networking site for academics. It helps academics worldwide answer the question 'Who's researching what?'

You can find people with similar research interests to you

You can keep track of the latest developments in your research area - the latest papers, talks, blog posts and status updates

You can create an academic webpage, listing your research interests and any papers you have written.

Sample webpages:

http://oxford.academia.edu/RichardPrice
http://bournemouth.academia.edu/DimitriosBuhalis

As when adding your full text items to BURO (Bournemouth University Research Online), you must abide by your publisher copyright agreements.

Open Access Week

2009-10-20T15:20:00.003+01:00

Open Access is a growing international movement that uses the Web to open access to previously hidden knowledge. It encourages the unrestricted sharing of research outputs with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of science and society.

This week (October 19-23) marks the first international Open Access Wee k. Open Access Week is an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research, including access policies from all types of research funders, within the international higher education community and the general public.

Examples of open access resources:-

Research repositories, such as BURO (Bournemouth University Research Online)
Open Access journal services, such as DOAJ, Open J-Gate

BURO - New Author Browse function

2009-08-05T17:37:00.007+01:00

The new Author Browse function in BURO allows BU Staff and external users to locate individual members of staff much more easily.

BU academics can also use the persistent web address (url) that exists for their individual research outputs in their email signatures to promote their work to colleagues, national and international collaborators.

Go to Author Browse in BURO
Select your name
Copy the url from your web browser
Paste into your email signature

e.g.

Professor Ralph Clarke
Centre for Conservation Ecology and Environmental Change
School of Conservation Sciences
Bournemouth University
rclarke@bournemouth.ac.uk
www.bournemouth.ac.uk/cceec

My publications:
Researcher ID
http://www.researcherid.com/rid/B-3859-2009
BURO
http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/view/author/9e882aad8837e2681384821abf8aa476.html

BURO - Service Outage 6pm 7/7/09

2009-07-07T12:08:00.004+01:00

A short service outage is scheduled for this evening between 6 and 7pm in order to carry out essential maintenance to the BURO server. This includes a substantial RAM upgrade which should increase the performance of the repository. We estimate 10-20 minutes downtime.

Please accept our apologies for the short notice, this is not our usual policy. Any queries, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the BURO Manager.

Publishing Opportunities Database

2009-07-06T10:10:00.004+01:00

Publishing Opportunities Database provides an extensive listing of opportunities from three distinct sources for those wishing to present and publish their research papers:

Journal Call for Papers records index
Conference Call for Papers
Special Issue Call for Papers

>>>Go to Publishing Opportunities Database

You can save advanced searches as alerts and have EBSCOhost e-mail you with any new results. You will need to create a personal My EBSCOhost account first.

>>>Saving a Search as an Alert

Please note, Publishing Opportunities Database replaces Papers Invited.

Elsevier threat to Open Access

2009-06-24T18:14:00.004+01:00

It has been reported that Elsevier has been approaching university v-cs about taking repositories out of universities' hands. Publishers are feeling threatened by the researcher-led open access movement that supports full text access to publications via institutional repositories.

Most UK universities, such as Bournemouth University operate open-access repositories e.g. BURO, where researchers can voluntarily deposit final drafts of their pay-to-access journal publications online. Increasing numbers are also making deposition mandatory.

A repository operated by a journal publisher could set access conditions that undermine the needs of researchers and make it hard to search the data.

Stevan Harnad, a professor at the University of Southampton who champions institutional repositories via his Open Access Evangelism blog, suggests that this could give repository access only to an unsatisfactory version of a document.

>> Read Zoe Corbyn's story in the THE

2008 data now added to Journal Citation Reports

2009-06-22T09:33:00.003+01:00

Journal Citation Reports (JCR) provides a systematic and objective means to critically evaluate the world's leading journals, with quantifiable, statistical information based on citation data. By compiling the references that cite articles, it helps to measure research influence and impact at the journal and category levels, and shows the relationship between citing and cited journals.

New JCR Web metrics and data complement the Impact Factor, depicting a more precise view of journal citation results, from a broader range of scholarly disciplines in farther-reaching contexts. Expanded analytical capabilities include Five-year Impact Factor, Eigenfactor™, Impact Factor boxplots, Rank-in-Category Tables and Journal Self-Citations.

>>More information about JCR

>>JCR Quick Reference Card

>>Go to JCR

New digital research hubs to be set up in the UK

2009-06-03T11:19:00.007+01:00

Research Councils UK has revealed that three digital research hubs are being set up. The new centres will be based in Nottingham University, Newcastle University and Aberdeen University and will develop new technologies to enhance life in the UK and to create a "Digital Britain".

Each centre will specialise in a a particular area. Nottingham will focus on business, Newcastle on social inclusion and Aberdeen on rural issues.

Links

Digital hubs to transform how we live in Digital Britain
Research Councils UK

BURO - Service Now Resumed

2009-06-02T09:43:00.005+01:00

Problems have been reported with the BURO server this morning. Eprints have alerted our ISP who are investigating the problem with highest priority. Apologies for the temporary loss of service.

Lessons learned through Research Excellence Framework (REF) bibliometrics pilot

2009-05-28T10:37:00.007+01:00

Bournemouth University were one of the participating institutions in HEFCE’s recent pilot to inform the use of bibliometric indicators in the Research Excellence Framework. HEFCE commissioned Technopolis to identify and disseminate the key lessons learned by all participating HEIs. The report Identification and dissemination of lessons learned by institutions participating in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) bibliometrics pilot highlights their findings. Concern is expressed regarding a proposed developmental REF bibliometrics exercise in 2010 which may risk rushed decision-making and implementation. This now appears to have been scrapped by HEFCE as bibliometrics are becoming less important to the REF.

Zoe Corbyn of the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) reports on HEFCE's current thinking on the REF as a work in progress. She suggests that evolution rather than revolution looks set to be the hallmark of the REF. Bibliometrics will be used to inform expert review rather than replacing it, but subject discipline will be key with more relevance to science and medicine.

Methodspace – a global networking space for Research Methods

2009-05-27T17:25:00.004+01:00

SAGE has recently launched Methodspace – a global networking space for communicating about Research Methods.

Hosted by Ning, Methodspace allows you to

Read a featured book or journal article of the month
Share your latest research methods questions on the forums
Blog about your latest research methods activities
Look up events that are coming up in research methods

>>Go to Methodspace

Do you use the British library?

2009-05-21T10:00:00.002+01:00

The British Library are looking to understand more about the value that they add to your research or work. Have you used their collections and services (including their digital resources) to, for example

Complete a post-graduate qualification?
Write a book?
Help set up a business?
Develop a new product?

If so, they would like you to tell them your story.

EThOS - an update

2009-05-13T11:38:00.004+01:00

Since its beta launch in January 2009, EThOS, the open access repository for UK theses, has become one of the British Library's most popular online resources.

Over the three months that it has been available as a beta version:

• Over 100 UK universities have signed up to participate in the service;
• Traffic to the site has grown to over 550,000 hits per month;
• The number of theses available for immediate download has tripled, from 4,000 in January to over 12,500 at the end of April;
• It has become the most popular linking destination from the British Library Integrated Catalogue, generating four times more links than the next most popular resource.

EThOS has quickly been adopted by the research community and is effectively showcasing UK research to the World. However, this popularity has created some service delays.

Demand has been twice British Library's expectation, resulting in a backlog of theses waiting to be digitised. The British Library has taken steps to minimise the backlog by introducing a second digitisation shift and investing in new scanning machinery.

Details on the size of the backlog at the end of April:

1) Number of theses waiting to be digitised: c10,000;
2) Average number of new requests for theses per day (as of 6/5/09): 100;
3) Digitisation capacity (theses per day): 175;
4) Forecast date for complete digitisation of theses in backlog: October 2009.

The British Library realise that this is a frustrating time for EThOS users and they appreciate your patience while they work to overcome the short term digitisation issues.If you have any questions about EThOS, please contact the Customer Services team at EThOS-help@bl.uk

Publishing Opportunities Database trial

2009-05-05T08:37:00.003+01:00

Publishing Opportunities Database provides an extensive listing of opportunities from three distinct sources, for researchers interested in presenting and publishing their research papers: Journal Call for Papers records index, Conference Call for Papers, and Special Issue Call for Papers.

Publishing Opportunities Database is a potential alternative to PapersInvited. The trial expires at the end of May. We welcome your feedback.

>>Go to Publishing Opportunities Database

Please note this trial has been extended until the end of June

Software upgrade required for SED Inter Library Loan users

2009-05-01T08:35:00.003+01:00

On 4th May Adobe are due to release a software upgrade for Adobe Digital Editions (Version 1.7.1).

For Inter library Loan users to continue receiving documents via the Secure Electronic Delivery (SED) service it is necessary for the version of Adobe Digital Editions on your pc to be upgraded.

Please contact IT Services help desk to request an upgrade, giving your pc number, office location and contact telephone number. IT Services help desk can be contacted by e-mail, phone or ICT Self Service

E-journals: their use, value and impact

2009-04-24T15:30:00.004+01:00

This Research Information Network (RIN) report takes an in-depth look at how researchers in the UK use electronic journals, the value they bring to universities and research institutions and the contribution they make to research productivity, quality and outcomes.

The late 1990s brought a revolution in the scholarly communications process. Now a very high proportion of journal articles are available online – 96 per cent of journal titles in science, technology and medicine, and 86 per cent of titles in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

The report examines how researchers interact with journal websites and whether enhanced access to journal articles has led to greater productivity, research quality and other outcomes. It finds that researchers are savvy when it comes to using e-journals, finding the information they need quickly and efficiently, and that higher spending on e-journals is linked to better research outcomes. tarts to build a clear picture of how e-journals are shaping the information landscape – a picture that we’ll add to as our research in this area continues.

The full report is available on the RIN website.

PhD student volunteers wanted for a ground‐breaking research study!

2009-04-22T09:32:00.002+01:00

Were you born between 1982 and 1994? Does your doctorate start in 2008 or 2009?

Education for Change (EfC) is managing a research study for the British Library and the JISC to investigate the information seeking and research behaviour of doctoral students born between 1982 and 1994 – commonly dubbed ‘Generation Y’.

They need volunteers to take part in a longitudinal research study over 2½ years of about 70 full‐time UK doctoral students from all subject disciplines, which will track information‐seeking behaviour and changing attitudes to research. They want to find out how you do your research, how and when you use libraries, information and research resources both online and off.

Being involved in the Researchers of Tomorrow study will offer interesting and valuable
opportunities to share your own research experiences and exchange ideas with
other doctoral students in the study. There will be get‐togethers at the British Library in London and there will be free opportunities to attend events and take advantage of the
Library’s facilities and services.

If this interests you, please contact Louise Wetheridge immediately l.wetheridge@efc.co.uk or
telephone 020 7247 3370.

e-infrastructure for scientific data

2009-04-03T15:47:00.004+01:00

The rapid changes in information technology are a real threat to the preservation of digital material. File formats and software become obsolete over time therefore making the task of preserving data for future generations a real challenge. PARSE.Insight (Permanent Access to Scientific Data) is an EU funded project which aims to preserve scientific information from initial data through to published research. The project will create a roadmap for developing an e-infrastructure to ensure the long term accessibility of scientific data. A draft document is available at http://www.parse-insight.eu/publications.php

Links

PARSE.Insight
Alliance for Permanent Access to Records of Science

JISC podcasts

2009-03-30T15:42:00.007+01:00

The JISC web site has a range of podcasts available for download. One of particular interest is an interview with Ewan McIntosh the Digital Commissioner for 4ip. Ewan, who was one of the keynote speakers at the recent JISC conference in Edinburgh, discusses how mashup and digitisation can encourage researchers to be more innovative and creative.

Links

Podcast: Mashing up research and connecting with learners through social media
JISC Podcasts

Researchers of Tomorrow

2009-03-27T10:38:00.005Z

The British Library and JISC have engaged Education for Change to undertake a 3 year study of the research behaviour of young doctoral students (those born between 1982-1994). This study of the so called 'Generation Y' researcher will look at their information seeking behaviour and their use of both physical and electronic research environments.

Further details of the study can be found on the Education for Change website.

Links

Education for Change
Researchers of Tomorrow

Accessing Grey Literature

2009-03-23T11:40:00.014Z

Identifying and tracking down 'grey literature' can be very problematic due to its lack of conventional bibliographic control. There are now several web sites designed to keep you up to date with what is available:

DocuTicker is a daily update of new reports from think tanks government agencies and and non-governmental organisations. Sign up for an RSS feed or subscribe to the weekly email newsletter.

GreyNet aims to facilitate dialog, research, and communication between persons and organisations in the field of grey literature.

New editors for the Research Support blog

2009-03-09T10:48:00.003Z

Two new editors will be contributing to the Research Support blog from the beginning of March, Emma Crowley (Subject Librarian for the School of Conservation Sciences) and Anne Davey (Subject Librarian for The School of Design, Engineering and Computing). Matt Holland is leaving the University to take up a new post.

BURO ranks in World Top 300 Repositories

2009-03-05T22:58:00.005Z

BURO is ranked 281 in the Top 300 World Repositories measured using four quantitative web indicators. The highest placed UK repository is University of Southampton Eprints in 9th place.

SciTopics

2009-03-02T00:42:00.009Z

SciTopics is a free online expert-generated knowledge sharing service for the research community to quickly offer scientific, technical and medical knowledge on a variety of subjects. It provides distilled, authoritative and up-to-date, information for researchers. (SciTopics Website).

Articles on SciTopics are backed up with links to related sites, links to related articles from SciTopics, references to other literature, and most recent and most cited relevant articles sourced from SCOPUS. Scirus, also provides relevant news items from established news sources and relevant results from the web. Topics cover a full range of topics from Science, Social Sciences and the Arts and Humanities, although most articles are on Science and Science related topics.

You need to register to be able to add comments and create a profile. Profiles link to Scopus and can import your references from Scopus using your Scopus Author ID.

SciTopics links a number of products from Elsevier, Scirus, 2collab, Scopus and ScienceDirect. SciTopics profile is comparable to Thomson Reuters ResearcherID although the functionality is different.

Links

SciTopics
SciTopics FAQ

Resources on Open Access

2009-02-27T14:30:00.003Z

The idea of Open Access (OA) has been around for some time. The Open Access Directory timeline begins in 1966 with the launch of Education Resources Information Center [ERIC]. OA publishing has a strong presence in some disciplines (the High Energy Physics Repository arXiv; BioMed Central and Cogprints - Cognitive Sciences Eprint Archive) and a growing community of OA journals (see Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and African Journals Online).

Discussions about OA has been limited to a small group of proponents, however, increasingly policies and statements supporting OA are being adopted by organisations who fund and support UK Research, including HEFCE, JISC, Research Information network (RIN) and the Research Councils. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) now mandates Open Access publishing in line with all UK Research Councils.

As researchers you may already have a stake in OA, if you publish in an OA journal, if your work is funded by an organisation that mandates OA, if you use OA journals or access OA articles, or if you have contributed a pre or post print to Bournemouth University Research Online (BURO).

OA is divided into two types. These are complementary not exclusive. Gold - publishing in a journal, paying a fee to the publisher to enable OA to your article and Green - publishing pre or post prints on a repository (OA self archiving).

For more information on OA look at Peter Subers Open Access Overview, the Open Access pages from Eprints (who also provide the software and support for BURO) and the Open Access Directory - a comprehensive resource on all aspects of Open Access.

If you want to get involved with OA, add a pre or postprint to BURO, you need to check your publishers policies on OA on the SHERPA/RoMEO website which expalins what publishers will or will not allow. You can also write to publishers to request permission to include material on BURO.

Links

African Journals Online
BioMed Central
Cogprints - Cognitive Sciences Eprint Archive
Declartions in support for Open Accesss
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
High Energy Physics Repository arXiv
JISC Open Access briefing paper version 2 Briefing Guide
Open Access: Why should we have it? Article by Alma Swan which puts the case for Open Access
Open Access from eprints
Open Access Directory
Peter Subers Open Access Overview
Report on Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the costs and benefits (very long)
Wikipedia article on Open Access

European digital library launched

2009-02-25T12:50:00.006Z

Europeana, Europe’s multimedia online library is now available. It enables people around the world to access more than two million books, maps, recordings, photographs, archival documents, paintings and films online. These resources come from national libraries and cultural institutions of the European Union's 27 Member States.

Europeana was created by the European Commission in 2005 and is run by the European Digital Library Foundation. It is hosted by the Dutch national library, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, and contains material from over 1,000 cultural organisations from across Europe. The Commission plans to invest €2 million per year of EU funding in Europeana over the next 2 years.

Links

Europeana

Bibliometrics and the REF

2009-02-20T01:11:00.011Z

The Research Excellence Framework [REF] will use citation analysis or bibliometrics as one part of research assessment. The extent to which bibliometrics is used compared to qualitative methods will depend on the subject. Subjects that favour publication in journals and conference papers are better suited to bibliometric analysis than subjects which use the full range of publication and other forms of non print outputs - performance, animation or artefact's.

Citation counts for individual researchers do not tell us much about the impact of an article or conference paper, is 24 citations good or bad? Set against the average of citations in a particular subject it is possible to assess whether a paper has above or below average citations. So if the average number of citations for papers in subject X is 16 then 24 (24/16) is 1.5 times the norm for that subject.

The REF is likely to profile the output from one subject within an institution against the norms for citations in that subject assigning outputs to categories on a scale of excellence, below average citations through to well above average (see link to leaflet on Bibliometrics and the REF below).

Perhaps more of a challenge is how to define subjects in terms of collections of journal titles from which citation subject norms can be derived. The REF may follow a similar path to that of the Excellence in Research for Australia [ERA], creating lists of journals through a process of expert review and assigning journal lists to Fields of Research [FoR] [2 digits] further broken down into sub fields [4 digits].

Links

Leaflet on Bibliometrics and the Research Excellence Framework

Options for Defining Normalisation Fields - A report to HEFCE by RAND Europe

First EThOS Ph.D. thesis added to BURO

2009-02-11T19:09:00.003Z

The first digitised Ph.D thesis requested from Bournemouth University through EThOS, and supplied to the University has been added to BURO.

Saunders, R., 1987. Road traffic accidents and their implications for management. PhD Thesis (PhD). Dorset: Institute of Higher Education.

Bournemouth University is a full Open Access member of EThOS which means that any thesis requested from Bournemouth University through the British Library will be digitised and made available on the EThOS website for registered users and a copy placed on BURO.

Links

Bournemouth University Research Online BURO
EHtOS website

Archival Sound Recordings – Recording of the Month competition

2009-02-06T09:00:00.001Z

Archival Sound Recordings is an online audio resource which makes selections of music, spoken word and environmental sounds from the British Library Sound Archive available online. Recordings are available for playback and download to staff and students in UK higher and further education.

To enter the Recording of the Month competition, simply log in to the website using your Athens password, pick a favourite recording, write up to 50 words about why you love it, and send it to [ ginevra.house@bl.uk ].

The prize is a £20 book token and winners are picked monthly.

Why We Cite

2009-02-05T09:00:00.004Z

Bibliometrics and its sub disciplines citation analysis and citation behaviour (or why we cite) used to be a fairly obscure branch of academic activity. However, with the use of citation data to evaluate research in national research assessment exercises this topic has relevance to all active researchers.

Despite many decades of research no systematic explanation of citation behaviour has emerged, beyond the fact that motivations for citing are a complex mixture of local context, cultural and psychological factors. There does seem to be a consensus that aggregated citation statistics do identify significant contributions to any discipline (Bornmann and Daniel 2008).

The recent REF consultation exercise indicated concerns about techniques researchers could use to influence citation patterns - reported in the THES (Corbyn 2008). For example, citation clubs, groups of researchers working together to inflate citation counts by citing each others work or excessive self citation - which will be eliminated from the REF. These concerns may be too negative. For a more positive view on why we cite, Research Trends - a bi-monthly newsletter from Scopus - runs a regular feature on why elite researchers are cited or cite others.

The focus on citations may also have distorting effects on publication and citation behaviour. Researchers increasingly focusing on highly cited journal titles, senior researchers publishing less but in 'better' journals, a reluctance to co-author with junior researchers papers that are less likely to have a citation impact and publishing review articles which are thought to be more highly cited.

References

Bornmann, L. & Daniel, L-D., 2008. What do citation counts measure? A review of studies on citing behavior. Journal of Documentation. 64 (1), 45-80. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00220410810844150 [Accessed: 05 February 2009].

Corbyn, Z., 2008. Researchers may play dirty to beat REF. Times Higher Education. 7 February 2008. Available from: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=400516 [Accessed 05 February 2009].

News from SCOPUS

2009-02-03T09:45:00.000Z

In April 2009 1,450 journals in Arts and Humanities core areas such as history, literature and visual arts will be added to Scopus. Many countries will be better represented as a result of these added titles and researchers will have enhanced access to international Arts and Humanities content. Journal subjects include literature and literary theory (30% of new titles), general arts and humanities (22%), history (17%), visual/performing arts (16%), among others.

SCOPUS has been chosen by the Australian Research Council (ARC) for its Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative. The ERA initiative will assess research quality within Australia's higher education institutions using a combination of indicators and expert review by committees comprised of experienced, internationally-recognized experts. Scopus Custom Data will be the sole provider used to assess the country’s higher education research output for the ERA’s first group of science disciplines (Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences (PCE)) in 41 Higher Education Providers (HEPs): Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences (PCE). The ERA process is similar to the planned REF, currently HEFCE is running a pilot exercise using data provided Thomson Reuters/Evidence.

Keeping up to date with the REF

2009-02-03T09:00:00.003Z

Now that the RAE is published, with a further announcement due in March on the actual allocation of money for research, thoughts are turning to the REF. Bournemouth University was one of 22 Universities to take part in the REF Pilot exercise and one of five Case Studies commissioned by JISC to look specifically at the issues of data collection. Bournemouth was chosen because of interest in the development of BURO. Both the REF Pilot website and the REF Home Website have links to key documents and reports.

The REF has been in the news most recently because of the takeover of Evidence by Thomson Reuters, who also own one of the key data sources for analysing the pilot data the WOS ISI Citation Indexes. Evidence is managing the REF pilot on behalf of HEFCE. Questions about a conflict of interest were raised by THES and denied by Evidence. However, Evidence will now only use data from WOS according the the HEFCE website. The other possible data source is Elsevier's SCOPUS.

Research Information Network (RIN) Factsheet - Making sense of research funding in UK higher education

2009-02-02T09:00:00.000Z

The Making sense of research funding in UK higher education guide from RIN, explains the "Haldane Principle", dual funding and the TRAC system and much more in four pages. A very good summary.

European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH)

2009-01-29T23:52:00.011Z

The ERIH Lists categorises journals in the Humanities using a three point scale A, B and C. Definitions of these categories are presented in ERIH guidelines :

A high-ranking international publications with a very strong reputation among researchers of the field in different countries, regularly cited all over the world.
B: standard international publications with a good reputation among researchers of the field in different countries.
C: research journals with an important local / regional significance in Europe, occasionally cited outside the publishing country though their main target
group is the domestic academic community.

The aim of the project is to identify areas of excellence in the humanities. The lists are compiled by groups of experts, which reflect a similar process used by the Australian Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA). Clearly stated on the ERIH website is that lists are not intended as a ranking exercise and should not be used as a bibliographic analysis tool. Their aim is to identify excellent research in the 15 areas analysed.

However, the ERIH has generated controversy among publishers and editors who argue that whatever the intention of the exercise, the outcome will be to produce a hierarchy of journals and to encourage academics and those who evaluate research outputs to focus on A category titles. Following protests from publishers, the A B C categories are being replaced by textual descriptors, reported in the THES. Some journal editors plan to publish a letter outlining their concerns with the ERIH in January 09 issues. Australian academics have voiced similar concerns, noting that journals in some areas of research, for example in media and film, there are few or no journals in the top A* category. The arguement continues in the blogosphere.

The debate is particular interst in view of the future planning for the REF, and the percieved problems of trying to assess the quality of research outputs in the Arts and Humanities.

National e-Book Observatory - final questionnaire

2009-01-27T18:06:00.004Z

Last January, JISC the National e-Book Observatory conducted one of the biggest surveys of Libray users ever conducted, with more than 23,000 responses from students and staff at UK universities. The project is now finishing and is asking students and staff to complete a final questionnaire.

If you recall the project provided access to e-books in media studies; business and management; engineering; medicine to generate data for the project. They are asking for responses from users of those e-books and from non-users.

Questionnaires can be found here ...

Student Questionnaire

Staff Questionnaire

Links
More information about National e-Books Observatory Project
List of e-books in the project. These titles are available on the BU Library Catalogue for the duration of the project.

Electronic Theses Online Service (EThOS) Update

2009-01-27T17:11:00.009Z

Electronic Theses Online Service or EThOS is a new British Library/JISC project to make available PhD theses to researchers over the web. The project has now moved into a new phase with a live system located at [ ethos.bl.uk ].

You need to register as a user before you can request a thesis, although if you just want to search there is a basic search engine to check what is available. Some theses are available for immediate download - you have to log in to access these. This number will increase as the project rolls out and more digitised content is added.

This service is free to you. However, as with Inter-Library Loan, there are costs in the system which are being absorbed by participating universities and the project funders. Bournemouth University will monitor our own use of the system and may review costs in the light of actual usage.

Bournemouth University theses requested by other UK universities and digitised for EThOS will also be added to BURO.

Links
EThOS website ethos.bl.uk
More about the EThOS project
Detailed description of how EThOS will work

BURO - log in problems on 23 January 2009

2009-01-25T01:42:00.004Z

You may have experienced some problems accessing BURO yesterday, 23 January 2009. The problem is now resolved. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA)

2009-01-18T01:53:00.014Z

The Australian Research Council [ARC] is in the process of developing a similar evaluation exercise to the Research Excellence Framework [REF] in the UK. The Australian framework for evaluation, Excellence in Research for Australia [ERA], is more advanced than the REF and will use a mix of performance Indicators including citation analysis and peer review depending on the specific requirements of each discipline. The ERA divides research into 8 discipline clusters, which are further broken down into 157 sub disciplines, or Fields of Research [FoR] identified by four number codes.

One Indicator will be based on the ranking of c21,000 journals according to their standing relative to each other. Journals are assessed in 4 Tiers A* (All articles report Top level research of international standing), A (Most articles report Top level research of international standing), B (Few articles of high quality, a high proportion of articles by PhD and early career researchers), C (Journals not included in the higher tiers). Institutions and Discipline clusters can be assessed by what proportion of publications appear in journals in each category.The rankings are subject to Peer Review by subject experts.

Although, not as mathematically precise as rankings derived from citation analysis, they promise an interesting exercise in combining journal rankings with peer review. The final rankings will be made available during 2009. The 2008 list can be viewed here, listed by title and FoR (Field of Research).

Links
Australian Research Council [ ARC ]
The Excellence in Research for Australia [ ERA ] Initiative
Research Excellence Indicators
Description of the Consultation process
ARC Journal Rankings 2008

British Library Newsletter - January 2009

2009-01-14T22:17:00.003Z

Latest news from the British Library. In this issue there is information on Taking Liberties Study Day, an Entrepreneurship Training Day for postgraduates, news on the Burney Newspapers Collection now available free to HE institutions, also news of the Jewish Holocaust Survivors collection on the Archival Sound Recordings website.

Brief Guide to Searching BURO - Hints and Tips Part Two

2009-01-13T18:44:00.005Z

This presentation provides a simple overview of browsing, searching
and exporting results to your personal EndNote library.

Contact Matt Holland if you would like a copy of the original .ppt presentation. May not display correctly in all browsers.

Links

Previous related post

Electronic versions of theses and EThOS

2009-01-07T13:53:00.007Z

We have had a number of questions about electronic access to theses recently, this summarises some of the issues.

EThOS

Bournemouth University is participating in the EThOS programme at the Open Access Sponsor level.

EThOS is currently operating in a beta test phase and has not been officially launched to the community. Whilst the aim of the service is to allow individuals to find, access and archive e-theses produced in UK Higher Education Institutions, at this stage it is not a mechanism for the systematic digitization of all UK doctoral theses.

As an Open Access Sponsor, Bournemouth University is committed to supply to British Library on demand paper copies of Bournemouth University doctoral theses and pay for the digitization. Initially the selection mechanism for which theses are digitized is based purely on demand from British Library users. However, there may be an opportunity as the project progresses in 2009 and 2010 for the University to select specific theses for digitization. As such there is currently no mechanism for automatically adding a digital copy of your thesis.

Electronic Submission of Theses

The University does not require electronic submission of theses. The question has been raised, but as you might expect, a significant change like this has to go through the appropriate University Committee structure for scrutiny before regulations on submission can be changed. Were this change to happen it is likely theses will be made available via BURO.

Did I write this? Author misidentification

2009-01-01T09:00:00.007Z

Author misidentification has always been a problem for large databases like SCOPUS and Thomson Reuters Web of Science [WOS]. Unless you have a unique surname any search for your own output, or anyone else's, using Author Name is going to find articles written by authors with the same or similar name. There are over 100 "Holland M's" identified in WOS for example.

This might just be an irritating side issue but it will become more important for the next version of the RAE, the Research Excellence Framework [REF] which will be based on citation data sourced from either SCOPUS or WOS, where accurate identification of authors is critical to the integrity of the exercise.

It may not be a coincidence that both SCOPUS and Thomson Reuters have brought out tools for users this year that are seeking to address this problem.

ResearchID (Thomson Reuters) which creates a unique number for those who register, and allows you to create a list of your publications sourced direct from Web of Science.

SCOPUS Author Preview which allows you to search for your own papers, provide Feedback to SCOPUS where papers have been misidentified, and use RSS to create your own publications list.

Links

Previous blog entry on ResearcherID
Promotional fact sheet for ResearcherID from Thomson Reuters
HEFCE Report Appraisal of Citation Data Sources comparing SCOPUS and WOS
SCOPUS Newsletter announcing Author Preview feature

Seasons Greetings to all readers

2008-12-25T00:01:00.001Z

... more posts in the New Year.

New features on SCOPUS

2008-12-21T10:57:00.001Z

SCOPUS has a new feature that allows you to display the results from a Saved Search on your own website/blog, in the jargon an HTML feed. This clever tool helps you to keep up to date with recent publications on a specific topic, by an author, group of authors or publications from an institution. Displaying the results on your blog or website means that you can share results easily with colleagues or promote publication activity. Each record has a link directly back to SCOPUS to display full information.

The Tool does have some Advanced Features but just using the basic output - without changing any of the settings - produces a very usable output.

The service is available from http://feeds.scopus.com/. There is a simple demo that takes you through step by step and a printable .pdf guide. The product information page has more information with links to examples of the Tool in action from around the world.

Bournemouth University has a subscription to SCOPUS, but you have to register individually (email address and create a password) with SCOPUS Tools to be able to set up a feed. If you access SCOPUS from outside the University you will be asked for your ATHENS account.

This feature - diplayed on this blog - shows the most recent 10 articles/conference papers added to SCOPUS from academics working at Bournemouth University.

ticTOCs - New Table of Contents service

2008-12-19T09:00:00.003Z

ticTOCs is a new Table of Contents service that aggregates data from journal publishers RSS feeds, currently over 11,000 titles from 400 plus publishers. It's free to register and use. If you are not familiar with RSS you can just use the ticTOCs interface to manage your subscriptions to individual titles. Search for the titles you want to monitor and add them to your personal list. Just login to check for updates.

If you use an RSS reader, for example Google Reader or Bloglines, you can add titles to your reader account using the ticTOCs service. ticTOCs can also export groups of titles to an RSS reader using an OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) file.

Added functionality is promised in later upgrades, for example the ability to export records to EndNote. Currently the only bibliographic software supported is RefWorks.

ticTOCs provides a useful alternative to ZETOC (although not as comprehensive) or you can use it to search for RSS feeds to your favourite journals and add them to an existing RSS reader.

ticTOCs is funded under the JISC Users and Innovations programme and developed by a consortium lead by Liverpool University.

Links

ticTOCs home page
ticTOCs blog
ticTOCs Project Home Page

RAE 2008 results out today

2008-12-17T20:47:00.026Z

The RAE 2008 results are published today, 18 December 2008. You can find an explanation of the RAE marking scheme here. The results are available on the RAE home page. Bournemouth University's results can be found here. For comment visit the Guardian Education website or the Times Higher Education which has a special issue on RAE 2008.

Rankings

The Times Higher ranks Bournemouth =75 overall in their Table of Excellence up from 107 place (2001 RAE). Guardian Education table ranks Bournemouth in 70th place. ResearchResearch ranks Bournemouth in 65th place. The Independent ranks Bournemouth 65th.

The Independent and ResearchResearch (Research Fortnight) use a Quality Index for their ranking using the following formula. Quality Index = [ (% in 4* x 16) + (% in 3* x 9) + (% in 2* x 4) + (% in 1* x 1) ] / 16.

Using the example of Bournemouth

Quality Index =

[ (8.08453237410071 x 16) +

(31.2005396 x 9) +

(35.278777 x 4) +

(21.807554 x 1) ] / 16

which calculates out as 573.08 / 16 = 35.8175

The Quality Index is 35.8175 . Have a look at Independent ranking for the bigger picture.

The Times Higher uses an Average Score. This is calculated using the percentage of staff within an institution who receive a 4* grade multiplied by 4, the percentage of staff to receive a 3* multiplied by 3, the percentage of staff to receive a 2* multiplied by 2 and the percentage of staff to receive a 1* multiplied by 1. Those who are U/C are not counted. The results are added together and divided by 100 to give an average score of between 0 and 4. To use Bournemouth as an example: (8 * 4) + (31 * 3) + (35 * 2 ) + (22 * 1) / 100 or 217/100 = 2.17 although the Times Higher actually puts the BU score at 2.18.

Links

Press Release from HEFCE
BBC News item
Exquisite Life ResearchResearch hosted blog

ResearchResearch

2008-12-17T11:51:00.004Z

How do I find out the latest news on the Research Assessment Exercise [RAE] or the Research Excellence Framework [REF], where can I find information on research funding, where do I look to get information on potential funders and sponsors? Bournemouth University has an institutional subscription to ResearchResearch a comprehensive current awareness service for the research community.

ResearchResearch is the world's leading publisher of news and information for the international research community. From their offices in London, Brussels, Washington, Amsterdam and Sydney their editorial team provides unrivalled expertise and in-depth news coverage of research policy and politics, and comprehensive listings of funding opportunities and sponsors across all disciplines. (ResearchResearch website).

ResearchResearch provides information in three interlinked databases:

Funding Opportunities

Sponsors

News

Staff can register for a ResearchResearch Personal Account to use ResearchResearch off campus, or ask Centre for Research and Knowledge Transfer (Kelly Deacon-Smith) to set up an account for you. You don't need an account to use ResearchResearch on campus.

Links

ResearchResearch
Welome page for Bournemouth University Staff.

BURO - how are we doing?

2008-12-14T23:25:00.009Z

The offer to input your personal publications list ends on the 18th December 2008. If you would like to take up this offer please e-mail your publication lists to Julie Cheshire. If you have an urgent reason for your publications to appear on BURO please contact Matt Holland, and we will fast track your list.

Currently BURO has over 5000 entries. 1100 entries are in Review awaiting bibliographic checking before being made publically available. There is a backlog of lists which we will catch up with in the New Year (2009). BURO will be the main data collection tool for the University for data for the Research Excellence Framework [REF] pilot. If you don't take up this offer you need to plan to enter your own publications. Contact Matt Holland, if you need advice or training on BURO.

Links

Message on Staff Portal Important news about BURO
BURO
Research Excellence Framework

Conference proceedings and their impact on global research

2008-12-11T22:47:00.005Z

Thomson Reuters have just published a White Paper on Conference proceedings and their impact on global research, promoting the integration of their Conference Proceedings Citation Index [CPCI] product into Web of Science [WOS]. CPCI has two editions Science and Social Science and Humanities. Bournemouth University only subscribes to the Science edition. The paper points out that it is now possible to analyse citations for conference papers to identify significant papers, and measure the impact of whole conferences. Citation analysis has particular value in fast moving areas of research, computer science, engineering and the physical sciences, where conference proceedings are a key part of the dissemination of new ideas. There are some interesting statistics and specific product information about CPCI.

Links

Previous entry on this topic

Conference Proceedings in SCOPUS and Web of Science [WOS]

2008-12-04T12:53:00.002Z

Published conference proceedings are the first time many ideas appear in print, most papers presented at conferences will be developed into papers in scholarly or peer reviewed journals. However, for some areas of research, especially in science and technology, conferences papers are the main form of publication. Conference papers are also going to form part of the data for Research Excellence Framework [REF]. This has put pressure on the two potential partners to support the citation analysis for the REF, SCOPUS and Web of Science [WOS] to include confernce papers in their main products.

SCOPUS includes conference papers as part of the main product offering from over 500 conference proceedings. Searches can be limited by Document Type: conference.

Web of Science [WOS] has incorprated Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science (CPCI-S) now included in the Bournemouth University subscription. This enables you to do citation searches using conference papers, analyse citations and use the new ciation mapping tool.

Links

Product information for Conference Proceedings Citation Index.

Web of Science [WOS]

SCOPUS

BURO Service Outage

2008-11-28T11:44:00.001Z

BURO will go off line on the 8th December for a brief time for a software upgrade.

Web of Science - Citation Mapping Tool

2008-11-21T14:27:00.011Z

The web of Science have introduced a beta version of a Citation Mapping Tool. It is available as an option when you view an individual record on the Web of Science database. The tool creates a map of documents cited by an individual article and documents that have cited that article. In the terminology of the tool documents cited are backward and documents that cite the article you are looking at (route document) are forward.

The tool has a number of useful features. You can for example move the icon for the route document around the screen changing the perspective of the map. This has the effect of zooming in or out. The tool also provides for a second generation of citing, so you can view the citations of documents cited by the document you started with (route document).

The visual effect is intriguing but is it useful? Well it adds another dimension to the ways of understanding the relationships between documents and it makes exploring those relationships easier just by manipulating your own perspective on the map using your mouse. Textual information is retained in panes at the base of the screen or can be retrieved from a pop-up menu if you roll the mouse over any node on the map. Added value comes in being able to reorder the nodes by author, date, institution etc., and colour code the nodes to easily identify for example the range of dates in a group of citations.

Screen shots generated from the Citation Mapping Tool are included in the PowerPoint presentation.

Links

Web of Science - requires an ATHENS Account off campus

Eigenfactor, SCImago, Journal Rankings and the PageRank algorithm

2008-11-08T19:34:00.028Z

PageRank is a trade mark of Google, and describes the process by which Google ranks pages using hyperlinks to web pages. The same process can be used to rank journals and collections of journals using citations. It helps to understand the basic principles of page ranking to interpret journal ranking tools that use the same principles. There is a very accessible article on Wikipedia about PageRank.

Two substantial websites that rank journals in this way, Eigenfactor using Thomson Scientific's Journal Citation Reports (JCR) data and SCImagio using SCOPUS data.

Eigenfactor.org

Eigenfactor generates two measures the Eigenfactor Score and an Article Influence measure. You can search for individual titles and groups of titles by subject category to achieve a ranking of journal titles. Each measure is presented as a graphic representing changes in the value over time.

Eigenfactor Measure. A journal's Eigenfactor score is our measure of the journal's total importance to the scientific community.

With all else equal, a journal's Eigenfactor score doubles when it doubles in size. Thus a very large journal such as the Journal of Biological Chemistry which publishes more than 6,000 articles annually, will have extremely high Eigenfactor scores simply based upon its size.

Eigenfactor scores are scaled so that the sum of the Eigenfactor scores of all journals listed in Thomson's Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is 100. In 2006, the journal Nature has the highest Eigenfactor, with a score of 1.992. The top thousand journals, as ranked by Eigenfactor, all have Eigenfactors above 0.01. (Eigenfactor.org FAQ)

Article Influence measure. A journal's Article Influence score is a measure of the average influence of each of its articles over the first five years after publication.

Article Influence measures the average influence, per article, of the papers in a journal. As such, it is comparable to Thomson Scientific's widely-used Impact Factor. Article Influence scores are normalized so that the mean article in the entire Thomson Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database has an article influence of 1.00.

In 2006, the top journal by Article Influence is Annual Reviews of Immunology, with an article influence of 27.454. This means that the average article in that journal has twenty seven times the influence of the mean journal in the JCR (Eigenfactor.org FAQ).

Eigenfator also has a mapping function showing the flows of citations between discipline/subjects areas, and the volume of publication within each discipline/subjects area. Eigenfactor inherits the subject structure of JCR, with some differences for example in the Eigenfactor data journals can only belong to one subject area.

SCImago

SCImago has similar functions to Eigenfactor.org but with a geographical component, statistics generated by country and region, and a much broader selection of 19 measures. These include familiar measures such as the h-index and SCImago's unique ranking SJR. SCImago has the capability to compare indicators by region or country (USA comes top of most tables followed by UK, Germany and Japan) as well as compare groups of journals and select individual titles. Each measure is presnted graphically. Basic functions are:

Journal Indicators

Journal Search (Search for individual titles)

Country Indicators

Country Search (clickable map)

Compare (countries and regions)

Map Generator (co-citation and bibble charts)

Both websites are free to access.

Links

Journal Citation Reports. Requires an ATHENS User Name and Password.
Short list of Journal Ranking websites
SCOPUS. Requires an ATHENS User Name and Password, off-campus.

Box of Broadcasts [BoB]

2008-11-03T13:43:00.006Z

Bournemouth University now has access to the new version of Box of Broadcasts [BoB]. The original version which went off line in September was created by Bournemouth University's our own CEMP. The new service has been scaled up to a national service by BUFVC for those who hold an ERA Plus Licence.

BoB records programmes from the Freeview signal. You can schedule recordings up to 7 days in advance using an Electronic Programme Guide [EPG] and record programmes broadcast in the previous 7 days (BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, ITV1, Channel 4, Channel 5, News 24, Parliament, Radio 3, Radio 4, and Five Live only). To use BoB you need to register to create an individual account form the BoB home page. BoB can be accessed off campus.

BoB has a number of additional features. You can create playlists to share with other users and clips from recorded programmes. BoB is only accessible within the UK. Programmes are streamed but cannot be downloaded, however, you can link to programmes or clips using a hyperlink. You have to be a registered user to access.

For colleagues using moving image in research (Jackson 2005), BoB answers a number of challenges, in particular how to record, store and access television for research projects, especially news. BBC News24 is available on the 7 day buffer and the Library will ensure that two main news broadcasts on BBC 1 and ITV are recorded each day.

Links
Box of Broadcasts [BOB]
Box of Broadcasts licence agreement
Box of Broadcasts User Guide
Educational Recording Agency [ERA] Plus Licence
Centre for Excellence in Media Practice CEMP
British Universities Film & Video Council BUFVC

Reference
Jackson, D., 2005. Using off-air recordings in media research: issues and challenges. Viewfinder (60), 13.

Institutional Citation Analysis on Web of Knowledge

2008-10-30T20:12:00.010Z

Web of Knowledge [WOK] allows users to analyse the citation output of an institution, generating a number of metrics including: average citations per item, h-index, average citations per year, and citation totals for each year and each cited article over time. Metrics can be generated for any institution by WOK, and used to create comparative data. Similar data can be generated using SCOPUS's Affiliation search. The following presentation illustrates the basics. It can be viewed using Firefox or IE 6.0 or below.

Links
Web of Science factsheet
Post on Affiliation Search on Scopus

Scopus uses Scirus as a bolt on web search

2008-10-28T19:50:00.015Z

SCOPUS has a built in web search using another Elsevier product, Scirus, a web search tool specialising in scientific information only. Any search done in SCOPUS is replicated on Scirus and can be accessed from the Web tab on the SCOPUS results search screen. Scirus sources its results from repositories including, institutional repositories*. This very clever tool allows you to refine your web search by keyword and source repository as well as use the SCOPUS reference management options (print, e-mail, download). Brief presentation can only be viewed using Firefox or IE 6.0 and below.

Scirus can also be accessed direct. *We have requested BURO be added as a source.

Links

Go Direct to Scopus. Requires an ATHENS Personal Account off campus.
Go direct to Scirus
Do the Google - Scirus Comparison Test
Previous post on a competitor product (Scientific WebPlus) from Web of Knowledge.

Scientific WebPlus Beta from Web of Knowledge

2008-10-23T19:57:00.036+01:00

ISI Web of Knowledge [WOK] have introduced a new addition their search tools, Scientific WebPlus (Beta). WebPlus searches open access/web resources, including BURO. Scientific WebPlus has a number of clever features:

Scientific WebPlus displays results by domain (clickcable bar chart); subject (tag cloud) and file type (clickable bar chart).

If you search the Web of Science [WOS] you can click on the Scientific WebPlus link and repeat the search using terms taken form your current search in WOS.

Scientific WebPlus offers a number of special searches in addition to Topic and Author. Gene, Organism and Drug.

Scientific WebPlus is designed specifically to focus on the scientific content of the open Web, although you might take issue with this. Results are sometimes broader than the focus on "scientific content" claimed.

You get more features if you register, the ability to tag records for your own use and to see tags for Groups based on the information provided for your profile when registering (Role - Librarian, Subject - Social Sciences, Speciality - Communication).

Access to Scientific WebPlus is only available through Web of Knowledge. Bournemouth University subscribes to the Web of Knowledge which you can access from here. You will need an ATHENS Account if you are off-campus.

Links

Fact Sheet on Scientific WebPlus
WebPlus blog

BURO - What's in it for me?

2008-10-21T20:42:00.008+01:00

For busy researchers, academics and academic+practioners it is hard to make the argument that more work, not directly related to current research or professional activity, is a good thing. However, responding to comments at a recent BURO training event it is possible to make an argument that using BURO can save you time by serving a number of demands for your bibliographic data simultaneously:

The coming Research Excellence Framework [REF] will make use of citation analysis and will require from institutions accurate, structured and timely data to support the process. One obvious source of data, and one being tested by HEFCE, is to use the institutional repositories like BURO.

BURO can be used to support the routine process of maintaining personal bibliographies and CV's. Data from BURO can be exported to EndNote, for example, and from there into 3,500 different citation styles.

BURO is a public facing website, and can be used to integrate bibliographic data into personal, research centre websites and school websites or just as a means of directing people to your publications.

Previous posts on this topic

Personal Bibliographies and BURO [ click here. ]

10 Reasons to Use BURO [ click here . ]

BURO Outage 16 October 2008

2008-10-16T16:37:00.002+01:00

This afternoon [16 October 2008] for approximately 2 hours between 13:30 and 15:30.

We apologise for the break in service.

BURO Update

2008-10-13T23:20:00.003+01:00

BURO and the Research Excellence Framework [REF]

The data collected for the submission to the pilot project of the Research Excellence Framework [REF] is currently being added to BURO. The REF pilot project is also looking at using institutional repositories like BURO as a data collection tool for the real version of the REF.

To facilitate this aspect of the pilot project over the next few months Schools will be collating as much information as possible on publications from 2001 and feed these into the BURO data entry exercise.

Research Centres and BURO

BURO came into being just before the creation of the new University Research Centres. This means there is a legacy of records created before the Research Centres were finalised that are not attached to the relevant Centre. The Library is currently working through School by School to make sure that Research Centres are correctly credited with publications by their members. You can see the results of this by looking at the Browse Group page on BURO.

BURO Outage - 08 October 2008

2008-10-08T20:50:00.002+01:00

The Bournemouth repository was out of service this afternoon due to a technical fault. The service returned just after 17:00 this afternoon. We apologise for any inconvenience that this may have caused you.

EndNote vs Zotero

2008-10-07T22:45:00.010+01:00

EndNote vs Zotero is a version of the Open Source movement vs Corporate Commerce. Zotero is an Open Source plugin for the Firefox browser and provides a very serviceable bibliographic management tool with some unique features, and of course it is free. EndNote's owners - Thomson/Reuters - are suing the creators of Zotero on the specific issue of the ability of Zotero to use the c3,500 output styles created by EndNote and EndNote users. Links below provide a more detailed and a more informed explanation of the issues.

The owners of EndNote do have form in being aggressive with the competition. They bought and effectively killed off the University's previously preferred bibliographic software, ProCite.

The following practical points should be considered in favour of EndNote ...

EndNote is a good product, and is free to end users on University computers

EndNote Web can be used on home computers and laptops

BU computers do not support Firefox

If you do not have access to your computers C drive you can't install Firefox or Zotero on University computers

Links
Links to blog entries on EndNote vs Zotero.

Harvardbu on EndNote Web

2008-10-05T23:11:00.003+01:00

EndNote Web currently has two versions of the Bournemouth University Harvard style. Harvardbu (created by Bournemouth University Library) and Harvard(BourneU) (loaded into EndNote Web by Thomson/Reuters - based on an earlier version of harvardbu).

We cannot remove Harvard(BourneU) file so we have made both these styles identical and the most up to date versions.

Social networking for researchers

2008-09-27T09:19:00.012+01:00

Social networking software designed for researchers bundles together Web 2.0 functionality to provide directory services, resource sharing, support for group working and self archiving. It's hard to define this type of software as a category because of the diversity of the offerings. Some like ResearchGATE offer a full service, some are free to register others like MyNetResaerch charge after a free trial. A few have the backing of larger publishing concerns like ResearchID (Thomson/Reuters) and Nature Network (Nature Publishing Group). Academia.edu's graphical interface is its unique selling point and quite fun to use - although as the structure of the institution is created by contributors it can be a little misleading. Most resources appeal to scientists many explicitly, like Labmeeting and ResearchGATE, others by default seem to be mostly used by scientists. If ResearchID and PublicationsList.org, which are essentially powerful list/publication management tools, are included then perhaps we should include 2collab (Elsevier) in the list. A recent survey received by this blogger suggests that 2collab is looking to move into this area.

Links

List of social networking sites for research

Research Excellence Framework - Technical Reports

2008-09-23T19:30:00.007+01:00

HEFCE has just published two technical reports on the process for the Research Excellence Framework [REF], Appraisal of Citation Data Sources and Development of Bibliometric Indicators of Research Quality.

Appraisal of Citation Data Sources is a detailed comparison of SCOPUS and ISI Web of Knowlwdge (WOK). The main conclusion, perhaps not surprisingly, is that the two sources are broadly comparable. There are a number of differences, however,

SCOPUS has a better coverage of conference proceedings. The Web of Knowledge, however, has plans to integrate a separate database, ISI Proceedings, with the Web of Knowledge. Data on conference proceedings will for part of the REF process.

SCOPUS does not include 100% of the contents of all journal titles, for example book reviews and editorials. The coverage of the Web of Knowledge is comprehensive for the titles it covers.

SCOPUS and Web of Knowledge have different selection criteria. SCOPUS covering a wider range of titles, WOK uses citation impact as a criteria for inclusion.

There are slight differences in the extent of subject covereage.

There are also differences in data structure. SCOPUS has worked on reducing ambiguity in identifying authors and their affiliations. SCOPUS also preserves in the citation linking all the information from cited works, WOK uses the first author, abreiviated title, volume, number and page. This makes the SCOPUS citation search easier to use even if it is not as comprehensive as WOK.

The report on Development of Bibliometric Indicators of Research Quality found a general correlation between RAE (2001) ratings and ciation impact with some subject variations. Important because the forthcoming REF will be based on citation analysis rather than peer review. It also suggests defining subjects by groups of journal titles rather that subject units.

Links

Aricle on reports in the Times Higher

British Library Higher Education e-News

2008-09-23T11:34:00.003+01:00

The September Issue is now out. The British Library are offering a number of training opportunities for postgraduate researchers - next one on Social Sciences is already booked up. There is also news of a new venture Vitae, providing support for UK researchers.

Journal Rankings - what are they good for?

2008-09-20T09:41:00.006+01:00

Journal Rankings may not be a good indicator of the quality of individual contributions. This is the conclusion of Professor Ray Paul, RAE Panel member for Business and Management Studies and Library and Information Management, in a forthcoming article for the European Journal of Information Systems (Paul 2008).

One major conclusion appears to be that journal rankings are not a good indicator of the quality of any paper published in that journal, nor necessarily of the combined quality of all the papers.

Professor Paul, makes the point that Universities who selected outputs for the RAE on the basis of Journal Rankings may be surprised by the outcomes of the RAE 2008 peer review process.

Links

Extract from forthcoming article by Professor Ray Paul.

Times Higher Education Supplement article .

References

Corbyn, Z., 2008. RAE table will be shaken by use of journal rankings. Times Higher Education Supplement, 11 September. Available from: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=403502&c=2 [Accessed 20 September 2008].

Paul, R., 2008. Measuring research quality: The United Kingdom Government’s Research Assessment Exercise. European Journal of Information Systems, 17 (4), 1-6. Available from: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ejis/ejis200831.pdf [Accessed 20 September 2008].

Articles in Press (AIP) on SCOPUS

2008-09-16T00:25:00.004+01:00

With the SCOPUS Articles-in-Press (AiP) facility you can identify articles accepted for publication in over 3000 journals from Karger Medical and Scientific Publishers, Nature Publishing Group (NPG), Elsevier and Springer. IEEE and BioMed Central are to be added in the Autumn. AiP publishes abstracts of papers upto four months ahead of full publication.

You can use this function from the normal Search in SCOPUS. However, select Articles in Press from the Document Type pull down menu to search for AiP's only.

Links

Press Release for new In Press feature.

SCOPUS Affiliation Details - for Bournemouth University

2008-09-14T14:12:00.006+01:00

SCOPUS profiles each organisation using an authors affiliation, the organisation authors work for at the time of publication. The profile gives the number of articles for each organization by subject, journal title and collaborating institution. Clearly there is room for ambiguity and error, however, SCOPUS have developed the SCOPUS Affiliation Identifier which distinguishes between affiliations that have similar names by assigning each affiliation in SCOPUS a unique number and grouping together all of the documents affiliated with an organization.

The Affiliation Details for Bournemouth University?

The best way to view this data is to search for Bournemouth University using the Affiliation search on SCOPUS (requires an ATHENS Personal Account for off campus access). Highlights are included below.

Total Number of Articles on SCOPUS ranked by Subject

No. of Articles / Subject

237 Engineering
232 Medicine
202 Nursing
196 Social Sciences
194 Computer Science
115 Business, Management and Accounting
101 Environmental Science
91 Materials Science
82 Agricultural and Biological Sciences
49 Earth and Planetary Sciences
48 Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
48 Mathematics
37 Psychology
29 Physics and Astronomy
23 Arts and Humanities
16 Health Professions
13 Economics, Econometrics and Finance
12 Neuroscience
11 Chemical Engineering
11 Decision Sciences
8 Chemistry
8 Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics
6 Immunology and Microbiology
3 Dentistry
3 Multidisciplinary
2 Energy

Total Number of Articles on SCOPUS ranked by Journal Title

No. of Articles / Journal Title

46 Practising Midwife
21 Journal of Clinical Nursing
21 Lecture Notes in Computer Science Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics
18 Nursing Standard Royal College of Nursing Great Britain 1987
16 IEE Colloquium Digest
15 Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing
14 Nurse Education Today
14 Wear
13 Service Industries Journal
13 Intensive and Critical Care Nursing
12 Nursing Times
12 Journal of Advanced Nursing
11 Materials Science and Technology
10 Tourism Management
10 Midwifery
10 British Journal of Nursing Mark Allen Publishing
10 Information and Software Technology

You can do this for any organisation and use the data for comparative purposes. Note that SCOPUS does not include ALL journals, so like any database of this type is only indicative of performance rather than definitive.

Using SCOPUS with 2collab

2008-09-10T22:20:00.009+01:00

2collab is the social bookmarking tool developed by Elsevier who also publish SCOPUS. Elsevier have created a unique way of allowing you to import references to your papers from SCOPUS to 2collab using the SCOPUS Author ID.

To find you Author ID login to SCOPUS (you will need an ATHENS Personal Account if you are off-campus) and search for your name using the Author search. Click on the Details link to the Author profile, which gives you the Author ID e.g. 7201661511.

If you have already registered with 2collab, Edit your Profile and add your Author ID. If you are about to register include your Author ID in the profile you create.

When you create or edit your 2collab Profile you get the option to import references from SCOPUS. Thereafter the option is availble from the Import Bookmarks menu.

Apart from being a simple way to import your refereneces - you can click from your 2collab bookmarks straight back to SCOPUS for full bibliographic details and access to full text. It also makes it easy to share your references with colleagues using the 2collab group functions.

About 2collab

2collab works by being a social bookmarking site where you can store and organize your favorite internet resources - such as research articles from any publisher, blogs, websites, and more. Then, in private or public groups you can share your bookmarks with others - your colleagues, distributed research team, or the wider pool of experts in your field. Members of groups can evaluate these resources (by adding ratings and comments) and add their own bookmarks.

Note: Bournemouth University now subscribes to SCOPUS.

The h-index in SCOPUS

2008-09-10T14:07:00.010+01:00

What is an h-index?

The definition provided by SCOPUS is ...

A scientist has index h if h of his or her number of papers
(NP) have at least h citations each and the other (NP – h)
papers have fewer than h citations each.

Or if you substitute real numbers, if Professor Blog has published 100 papers, of which 25 have more that 25 citations and 75 fewer than 25 citations he has an h index of 25.

What does it tell us?

The h-index is a performance metric which enables us to put a number to the impact and quality of an academic/researchers performance over time. The higher the number the better the performance. The h-index allows us to make comparisons between individuals and the performance of individuals within research groups or discipline areas.

How does it work in SCOPUS?

If you want to check your h-index go to the Author search form (tab on the main search page) and do the following:

Enter your name and affiliation e.g. Bournemouth University

Click Search.

Authors that meet your search criteria will display on a page headed Make Author Selection.

From the Make Author Selection page, do one of the following:

Click on the Details link next to your name. The Author Details page will display.

Select your published output, and then click Citation Tracker. The Citation Overview page will display.

Note: Excluding author self citations may change hirsch index scoring and Citation Overview totals for an author or a group of authors.

From the Author Details or Citation Overview page, click the h-graph icon. The Author Evaluation Tools page will display.

It may be that you don't have publications on SCOPUS or your publications haven't been cited. You could try the same exercise using Professor Paul Curran (h-index=23) as an example.

An example?

It is also possible to do the same exercise for groups or subjects. For example searching for institutions by Affiliation, and then refining by subject.

The following was generated in this way using the Business, Management and Accounting subject category** to limit searches for each institution and then generating an h-index using the Citation Tracker.

City University, London - h index = 18

De Montfort University, Leicester - h index = 17

University of Portsmouth - h index = 16

University of the West of England, Bristol - h index = 16

Bournemouth University - h index = 10

Birmingham City University - h index = 8

University of Huddersfield h index = 8

** Articles published since 1996

Links

More information about Research Performance Measurement using SCOPUS.

Go to SCOPUS

Wikipedia article on the h-index

Open Access publication does not give a Citation Advantage

2008-09-05T23:24:00.031+01:00

Recent research published in the British Medical Journal looking at the citation advantage of publishing in an Open Access format (Davis et al. 2008) concludes ...

Open access publishing may reach more readers than subscription access publishing. No evidence was found of a citation advantage for open access articles in the first year after publication.

The reason this is important, and the focus of research, is that those who support Open Access publication claim the citation advantage as one of the benefits to authors. Articles free at the point of access are more likely to be located, read and therefore cited by others.

Many of the arguments over the citation effect concern methodology, and samples are exclusively taken from the sciences. The BMJ article, however, appears to be conclusive that any effect is not due to Open Access. Possible explanations include:

The process of academic writing and peer review ensures that only relevant material is cited whatever the form of publication (Craig 2007).

Most researchers working in academic/research institutions are supported by tens of thousands if not millions of pounds of institutional subscriptions to databases and journals as well as generous Inter-Library Loan budgets. From their individual point of view all literature is free at the point of access giving Open Access publication a limited advantage.

Open Access journals are integrated into library provided interfaces that mix Open Access and paid for subscriptions journals - supported by institutional subscriptions. The distinctive nature of Open Access content is obscured by this process. Exclusively using Google Scholar or similar tools, however, has the opposite effect, finding Open Access material you can see and paid for content you can't.

Interestingly Open Access publications are downloaded more frequently, achieving a wider reach. Downloads have been suggested as an alternative to citations to measure article impacts. However, the forthcoming replacement of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), the Research Excellence Framework (REF) will use citation analysis not downloads to assess impact.

There is another way. Publishers (see Sherpa/ROMEO website) will normally allow last accepted versions to be posted on institutional repositories like BURO. If you contribute to BURO you have the option of publishing in paid for content journals and engaging with Open Access, with the additional benefit of a wider readership and the possibility of participating in any projects that develop impact metrics based on downloads.

Links

Sherpa/ROMEO

Previous post related to this topic

BURO's versions policy

References

Caldwell, T., 2008. Open access citation effect illusory. Information World Review, 03 September 2008. Available from: http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/analysis/2225248/open-access-citation-effect [Accessed 06 September 2008].

Craig, I.D., Plume, A.M., McVeigh, M.E., Pringle, J. & Amin, M., 2007. Do open access articles have greater citation impact? A critical review of the literature. Journal Informatics, 1(3), 239-248. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joi.2007.04.001. [Accessed 21 May 2008].

Davis, P.M., Lewenstein, B.V., Simon, D.H., Booth, J.G., and Connolly, M.J.L., 2008. Open access publishing, article downloads, and citations: randomised controlled trial. British Medical Journal, 337, a568. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.a568 [Accessed: 06 September 2008].

Bournemouth University subscribes to Scopus

2008-09-04T18:36:00.011+01:00

Scopus is an abstract and citation database of research literature and quality web sources in the sciences and social sciences. Updated daily, it indexes 15,000 peer-reviewed journals from more than 4,000 publishers, open access journals, conference proceedings, trade publications, book series, patent records and scientific web pages. It contains over 33 million records, of which 16 million records include references going back to 1996 and 17 million pre-1996 records going back as far as 1841.

Scopus has a number of features that allow you to analyse you own publications including calculating your H Index and citations counts.

Scopus is ATHENS Authenticated

Links

Go to Scopus
Previous entry on the Scopus Journal Analyser

BURO Top Ten Viewed Papers - August 2008

2008-09-03T23:51:00.007+01:00

Klimis, G.M., Wallace, R. and Kretschmer, M., 2001. Music in electronic markets: an empirical study. New Media & Society, 3 (4), pp. 417-441. Link

Brown, L. and Holloway, I., 2008. The initial stage of the international sojourn: excitement or culture shock? British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 36 (1), pp. 33-49. Link

Buhalis, D. and Law, R., 2008. Twenty years on and 10 years after the Internet: The state of eTourism research. Tourism Management, 29 (4), pp. 609-623. (In Press) Link

Street, S., 2008. Radio archive. Documentation. Poole: Bournemouth University. Link

Shiel, C. and Jones, D., 2003. Reflective learning and assessment: a systematic study of reflexive learning as evidenced in student Learning Journals. HEAC, pp. 1-32. Link

Hean, S. and Matthews, M., 2007. Applying work motivation theories to articulate the challenges of providing effective doctoral supervision. In: Enhancing Higher Education, Theory and Scholarship, Proceedings of the 30th HERDSA Annual Conference [CD-ROM], Adelaide, 8-11 July. Milperra, New South Wales, Australia: Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia. Link

Morgan, M., 2007. Festival Spaces and the Visitor Experience. In: Casado-Diaz, M., Everett, S. and Wilson, J., eds. Social and Cultural Change: Making Space(s) for Leisure and Tourism. Eastbourne, UK: Lesiure Studies Association, pp. 113-130. Link

Street, S., 2007. A word in your ear: radio archives and education. In: Grant, C. and McKernan, L., eds. Moving Image Knowledge and Access: The BUFVC Handbook. London: BUFVC, pp. 23-28. Link

Todres, L., 2000. Writing phenomenological-psychological description: an illustration attempting to balance texture and structure. Auto-Biography: an international & interdisciplinary journal, 3 (1 & 2), pp. 41-48. Link

Hartwell, H., Edwards, J. and Symonds, C., 2006. Foodservice in hospital: development of a theoretical model for patient experience and satisfaction using one hospital in the UK National Health Service as a case study. Journal of Foodservice, 17 (5-6), pp. 226-238. Link

Data is sourced from Google Analytics. See also entries on previous usage statistics.

Personal Bibliographies and BURO

2008-08-27T23:50:00.010+01:00

Personal bibliographies are the lists of your own publications compiled for personal web pages, CV's and to fulfil requests for publication lists from the university, funding bodies, research administrators. Many of the entries for BURO were sourced from personal bibliographies.

Compiling personal bibliographies can be a frustrating experience. Publication data is likely to exist in a number of places - major bibliographic databases (e.g. Web of Science), institutional repositories (e.g. BURO), and any number of websites for journals, conferences and professional societies. It takes time and effort to combine all these sources into a single list and reformat in the required style.

The best solution is to use bibliographic software - Bournemouth University recommends EndNote and EndNote Web - to compile and maintain your own database of publications. Using EndNote means you can output lists of publications in one of hundreds of styles as and when required. EndNote also flexible, exchanging data with most popular academic social bookmarking tools and other bibliographic management software.

You can't, however, import data from EndNote and similar software into is BURO. This isn't a problem unique to BURO, it is a challenge for repository administrators around the world, so much so that JISC are funding a project, EM-Loader - Extracting Metadata to Load for Open Access Deposit to improve the import of data into repository software.

One of the benefits of BURO is that you can export in a number of formats including BibText, EndNote and RIS. If you use BURO as the primary source for your personal bibliographies you can output it to other software as required. Try using web sites like Publications List to host your bibliography using the export facility from BURO to source your data.

Links

EM-Loader - Extracting Metadata to Load for Open Access Deposit

PublicationsList

Example of PublicationsList

EndNote - Cite While You Write (CWYW) - preparation of documents for publication

2008-08-20T22:54:00.010+01:00

A colleague from the School of Conservation Sciences has pointed out that:

a number of editors of Archaeological Journals specifically request that EndNote is not used in the compilation of bibliographies of submitted versions of papers submitted electronically for publication. All coding and links have to be manually stripped out before typesetting - Endnote conflicts with the majority of professional typesetting programmes - the references in text get seen as "code" so are omitted meaning that all references have to be added into text manually

This refers to Cite While You Write (CWYW) which leaves code in Word documents that is usually invisible to the user. It is important to check with the publisher for any specific requirements. The following advice is offered from the EndNote Forum ...

Other publishers specifically request that embedded field links are removed. You don't have to avoid using Endnote! You just need to eliminate the links before sumission. Routinely, I use ctrl A (select all), shift+ctrl F9 (unlink fields) ON A COPY of the manuscript for submission. Alternatively, use the Endnote "tool" to accomplish the same thing (the one with a little arrow pointing straight up.

Some publishers now actually prefer to have Endnote imbedded links, as they convert them somehow to create their html version of the online document. So it is worth while to check on their preference. Leanne

EndNote Harvardbu

2008-08-18T18:44:00.002+01:00

What is Harvardbu?

Harvardbu is an EndNote Output Style built by Bournemouth University Library to generate well formed references in the Bournemouth University Harvard Style.

How do I get Harvardbu?

The Harvardbu style is available from the BU Library's EndNote Support Page. To download the Output Style double click on the Harvardbu.ens link and Copy the file to the EndNote Styles folder. To navigate to the Styles Folder of EndNote : C Drive - Program Files - EndNote 9 OR EndNote X - Styles and the Save file into your Styles folder. You will need to have access to your 'C' Drive.

Note - occasionally we make minor changes or alterations to the Harvardbu style. The most recent version is always posted on the website - with the date it was updated. A full update history is included with the Harvardbu style.

RSS Feed for Bournemouth University Library: Research Support Blog

2008-08-13T18:52:00.003+01:00

Responding to readers comments ...

You can get regular updates from the Bournemouth University Library: Research Support Blog using RSS (Really Simple Syndication). RSS feeds post updated information from websites to a news aggregator or the RSS reader in your Web Browser (Internet Explorer - IE 7.0 or Mozilla Firefox 2.0).

News Aggregators

Two popular news aggregators are Google Reader and Bloglines. You need to register for an account. If you already have a Google Account add the Reader to your Products. Once you are set up with either Google Reader or Bloglines, click on the RSS symbol on the site you want updates from and follow the instructions. This usually requires you to copy and paste the Internet Address (ULR) of the RSS page into your news aggregator.

Browser RSS Readers

If you are using a web browser ( IE 7.0 or Firefox 2.0 ) that has an RSS reader - and you want to use it - click on the RSS link and you will be offered the option of subscribing to the link. You can then access the RSS Reader in Faviourites of Bookmarks.

The use and misuse of bibliometric indices in evaluating scholarly performance

2008-08-12T15:35:00.007+01:00

A special themed issue of the journal Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics with 14 papers on taking a range of perspectives on the bibliometric indices. Questions addressed include: peer review vs bibliomterics (Browman and Stergiou), the value of Journal Impact Factors (JIF's) against citation analysis of individual papers (Campbell), how bibliometrics influences the publication behaviour of scientists (Lawrence), the impact of error's in citation practice (Todd and Ladle), Open Access (OA) publishing versus commercial publishers (Taylor, Perakakis and Trachana), Google Scholar as a citation tool (Harzing and van der Wal), a comparative evaluation of peer review and bibliometrics using RAE data (Harnad) and a look at the Australian experience of research evaluation(Butler).

Reference

Browman, H.I. and Stergiou, K.I., 2008. The use and misuse of bibliometric indices in evaluating scholarly performance - Theme Section. Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics. 8 (1). Available from: http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/esep/v8/n1/ [Accessed 13 August 2008].

EndNote Web

2008-08-08T22:46:00.007+01:00

What is EndNote Web?

EndNote Web is a free product available to Bournemouth University staff and students as part of our subscription to Thompson Reuters ISI Web of Knowledge.

EndNote Web is a service designed to help students and researchers through the process of writing a research paper. Use EndNote Web to organise references for citing in papers, as a companion to the full desktop version of EndNote, and to store references between ISI Web of Knowledge search sessions.

EndNote Web has fewer features than the full desktop version of EndNote, but allows you to transfer references between the two versions and to share references with other researchers.

How do I get an EndNote Web Account?

To create an EndNote Web account you first need to have an ATHENS Personal Account. Click on Sign-up for an Account and complete the registration form. Register for EndNote Web by going to ISI Web of Knowledge and clicking on the EndNote Web Link or going direct to www.myendnoteweb.com. Depending on whether you are on or off campus, you may be asked to enter your ATHENS Personal Account.

Once you have registered you can access EndNote Web directly or via the Web of Knowledge. You may be asked for your ATHENS Personal Account.

Why would I use EndNote Web?

Use EndNote Web when you cannot access a university computer. Please note that the Bournemouth University Site Licence for the full desktop version of EndNote software does not entitle you to a free copy for your personal laptop or desktop computer.

Organise EndNote Web references into Groups for easier management and share EndNote Groups over the web with other EndNote Web users.

Use the Cite While You Write Plug-in to insert references, and format citations and bibliographies automatically while you write your papers in Microsoft Word. The plug-in also allows you to save online references to your library in Internet Explorer. EndNote Web also offers a plug-in to install a toolbar for Firefox. Please note that you will not be able to load the Plug-in if you do not have Administrative access to your computer.

EndNote Web does allow Importing, Exporting and Formating references - including the Bournemouth University Harvard Style, and Remote Searching of catalogues and some databases.

EndNote Web works with ISI Web of Knowledge [WOK] to allow you to Export references directly to EndNote Web and link back directly to individual records in WOK.

Are there any disadvantages?

EndNote Web can be slow to use compared to the desktop version, search facilities are limited and to be effective its important to synchronise databases in both versions to have access to your references at all times. For more information and help contact Matt Holland or Emma Crowley.

Links

EndNote Web Help

Quick Reference Guide

Online Tutorials

More about transferring databases from EndNote to EndNote Web

Thompson Reuters publish White Paper on Using Bibliometrics

2008-08-08T16:37:00.002+01:00

The White Paper Using Bibliometrics: a Guide to Evaluating Research Performance with Citation Data is published by Thompson Reuters. To receive a copy you have to register on their website and it is sent to you by e-mail as a .pdf

It's a marketing exercise to promote Thomson Reuters products, but that accepted, presents a clear, well structured and short - 12 pages - guide to bibliometrics. The White Paper covers why we might want to evaluate research, who are the key stakeholders, types of data and a description of each measure. For those familiar with the field this is nothing new. For those who aren't this is a quick introduction.

The paper concludes with a short discussion on the misuse of Journal Impact Factors JIF's - produced by Thompson Reuters Journal Citation Reports - principly their use as "a surrogate for a more carefully derived direct measure of citation impact".