Category Archives: Library
Free trial: new resources from Web of Knowledge
Until 31 August Thomson Reuters are offering free access to additional databases on Web of Knowledge. They say:
“In addition to active subscriptions to Web of Science, BIOSIS, and Medline, member institutions now have access to:
- Comprehensive research data from international data repositories
- Bibliographic and table of contents information from world-leading scholarly journals and books
- Authoritative research information in all applied life sciences fields like biomedical, animal studies, agriculture and more
- Coverage of applied research in food science, technology, and nutrition
- Bibliographic and citations information from 1,200 core science and engineering journals published in the People’s Republic of China
- A comprehensive index to the global journal and proceedings literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities
- Patent and patent citation information”.
Quiz: What type of digital researcher are you?
Rachel Maxwell, one of my Learning Technology colleagues, has just drawn my attention to this quiz from the University of Exeter: What type of digital researcher are you?
Intended for research students, the quiz comprises a series of short questions, designed to establish the areas of digital scholarship you already find valuable and to identify areas you might like to think of developing further.
Outputs include your rating on a series of axes: media savvy; infomation junkie (that’s me!); research networker; career builder; digital specialist; and digital sceptic.
Why not give it a go? – it is Friday afternoon after all!
Accessing electronic theses
FAQ: How can I get hold of a PhD thesis on my chosen topic?
Other people’s theses can be useful for both content and framework. Not only are they useful models for new PhD students, but also they contain comprehensive literature reviews, detailed methodologies and interesting findings which can be compared with one’s own.
There are a couple of key sources of UK theses: EThOS and Index to Theses. Printed copies of Northampton theses are also available in the two university libraries and indexed in NECTAR.
Finding an open access journal for your article
FAQ: How can I find a suitable open access journal in which to publish my work?
Perhaps your funder expects you to publish your work in an open access journal, or you’d like to enjoy the citation advantage of making your work open access, but you’re not sure where to start. Here are a few things to think about.
Workshop report: Research data management for librarians
Yesterday’s event for Library and Learning Services staff was the third in the series of research data management (RDM) workshops being run by Digital Curation Centre (DCC) staff for the University of Northampton. Our ‘institutional engagement’ with the DCC is part of a sector-wide initiative to enhance the skills of researchers, and those who support them, in RDM.
As a basic introduction, the session started by clarifying what research data are, then covered data management planning, data sharing and the skills required to support these tasks. It concluded with a round-up of progress in RDM activity at Northampton.
Interestingly, some of the most energetic debate focused on the challenges of sharing data.
Mendeley bought by Elsevier
Are you a Mendeley user?
If so, you may be interested to see what happens now that Mendeley has been bought out by Elsevier.
At £65m the benefits to the creators of Mendeley are clear to see, but how will its user community fare under the new ownership? There seem to be some concerns among academics that Mendeley will lose some of its independence and openness – you can follow the discussion here.
Update 16/4/2013: Further discussion from Research Information here.
Thanks to Ray Kent from De Montfort University for sharing this news on the JISCmail MORE list.
SAGE permits authors to deposit full text in NECTAR
As of today, if you have an article published by SAGE Publications you can upload the accepted version of your full text to NECTAR immediately. With no embargo.
SAGE has just announced a review of its author archiving policy and now permits immediate deposit of the post-peer-review, accepted copy of an article in the author’s own institutional repository.
(See details of SAGE’s publishing policies here.)
This represents a very positive response to recent developments in the sector (such as the Finch report and the revised RCUK policy on open access) and means that SAGE can now promote itself as a SHERPA RoMEO ‘Green‘ publisher, along with 349 other publishers including Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, Intellect, John Wiley and Sons, Kluwer, and Public Library of Science.
Launch of the UK Data Service
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has just announced the launch of a new national service that will consolidate and incorporate four established data services and websites:
- Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS)
- Census.ac.uk
- Secure Data Service (SDS)
- Survey Question Bank (SQB)
The UK Data Service offers a a single point of access to a wide range of secondary data including large-scale government surveys, international macrodata, business microdata, qualitative studies and census data from 1971 to 2011. Read the rest of this entry
University response to HEFCE consultation on open access and the REF post 2014
The university has responded to HEFCE’s first consultation on open access and research assessment post 2014.
In support of their objective of increasing the proportion of research outputs that are made available in open access form, HEFCE’s proposals centred on the requirement that all research outputs submitted to future assessment exercises should be made open access as soon as possible after publication:
“To support and encourage the further implementation of open access we intend to introduce a requirement that all outputs submitted to the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise are published on an open-access basis, where this is reasonably achievable and where, given the medium in which the output is presented, the concept of ‘open access’ applies.” (HEFCE, 2013, para 8)
HEFCE requested responses focused on several key issues, as follows: Read the rest of this entry
Free trials of resources from Palgrave and Taylor & Francis
Two trials are on offer. Make the most of them while you can! 
Taylor and Francis
- This 30 day trial has been arranged by the library and provides access to two complete collections of Taylor & Francis journals: Social Science and Humanities and Science and Technology
- The extra content is accessed via the A-Z list of databases in NELSON or go directly to Taylor and Francis Online
- Use your University single sign-on credentials to log in
- Navigation is as standard but you’ll have access to many more journals than usual
- Available until 22 April
Palgrave Macmillan
- The ‘Access All Areas‘ promotion offers free online access to Palgrave Macmillan’s full portfolio of journals spanning the Humanities, the Social Sciences and Business
- Browse journals from the list of subject areas on this page: http://www.palgrave.com/accessallareas
- Available from 1-30 April
UON Graduate School Blog 