Category Archives: Research

Important News for Mendeley Users

Posted on by

mendeley

Publishers Elsevier have this week completed their acquisition of the popular online reference management software Mendeley.

Elsevier have said that this takeover should not effect current users or their data, and have in fact sweetened the deal by doubling the storage space for standard accounts from 1GB to 2GB, plus the promise of further and better integration between Mendeley and Library subscribed Elsevier products such as Scopus and Science Direct.

To find out more about the deal and its likely benefits to Mendeley users, visit the Elsevier site and read their press release and a blog entry by their Managing Director Olivier Dumon.

The Top Five Institutional Repository Downloads for February

Posted on by

institutional-repository

The bad weather may have slowed things down outside, but our Institutional Repository carried on apace. Over two hundred items were added last month, taking us close to passing the 11,000 mark.

Here are the top five most downloaded items from the last month:

1. Acoustic black holes and their applications for vibration damping and sound absorption by V. Krylov (holding firmly to no.1 with a whopping 450 downloads)

2. Discourse analysis means doing analysis: a critique of six analytic shortcomings by C. Antaki et al (up one place from last month with 121 downloads)

3. Electronic data interchange in the construction industry by T. Lewis (up from 5th place last month with 108 downloads)

4. Discourse analysis and constructionist approaches: theoretical background by J. Potter (new entry this month with 96 downloads)

5. Thy righteousness is but a menstrual clout: sanitary practices and prejudice in early modern England by S. Read (down one place with 93 downloads)

Our repository increases the visibility of Loughborough’s research and the materials within it are centrally stored and preserved. The material in the collection includes journal articles, book chapters, conference papers and theses.

To find out more about the IR, and how you can submit your research, visit the IR homepage here.

Easter Elevenses Workshops in the Library

Posted on by

easter bunny

Every Wednesday at 11AM over the Easter vacation, why not down-tools and head over to the Library for a chocolate Easter egg and a morsel of research training?

Come and network with colleagues whilst picking up a hint or tip on a wide range of research-related topics. Each slot is a manageable coffee-break-sized 30 minutes – just enough time for a breather before you return to your desk refreshed and informed!

All sessions are being run in Library Training Room 1, and they’re available on the following topics on the following dates:

Making Mendeley work for you – Wednesday 20th March.

How to manage your research data – Wednesday 27th March.

New to LUPIN? – Wednesday 3rd April.

Going for Gold open access – Wednesday 10th April.

To book your place, or for further information, please use the Staff Development Web pages here:

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/service/sd/.

Top Tips for PhD Supervisors

Posted on by

13

Uncertain of where or who to turn to when posed a tricky question by an uncertain PhD student? Look no further than the Library and these invaluable resources!

  • First and foremost: Academic Librarians. They can provide advice on key resources, keeping up-to-date, reference management software and generally about the services the Library offers researchers. They also provide the training sessions for the PhD students. Advise that they make an appointment their Academic Librarian and ideally give them their name and contact details.
  • Electronic resources. The library spends over £2million each year on information to support research. Suggest specific named databases in their area of research, and advise them on the route to find them. If you are unsure about the most appropriate databases, then you can browse through the subject categories on the ‘Select databases’ section of  Library Catalogue Plus to see to which databases the Library currently subscribes. Don’t forget that students towards the beginning of their PhD might also struggle with keywords or key authors to research and often greatly appreciate some advice in this area too.
  • Use of Library catalogues to find local resources. Suggest they visit the University Library and/or search the Library catalogue for background reading. Recommend any other local universities which are expert in the field and will have appropriately useful library collections. Online searching of COPAC (the database that contains details of the collections of all of the major research libraries in the UK) could be useful here. Researchers can also borrow books from many of these libraries, through the SCONUL Access scheme.
  • Key journals. Advise on key journal titles in the field. The Journal Citation Reports and Scimago provides details of subject rankings for journals.
  • Training courses. Recommend attendance at the PGR workshops offered by the Library, in conjunction with the Graduate School, to increase their confidence in finding resources for their literature review as well as developing other key information handling skills.
  • Managing information. Encourage them to use Refworks to store their references as they find information.  If a PhD student develops good practice in managing their references at an early stage in their PhD, it will help them all the way through their research.

To find out even more, why not come along to a training session we’re running on Monday 13th May between 11AM-12PM? You can book yourself a place via this link:

http://pdwww.lboro.ac.uk/eventdetails_single.php?cid=2759

Refreshing research skills and raising research visibility

Posted on by

Gold open access; the green route; Academia.edu; Researchgate; Google Scholar profiles; h-index; impact factors… 

Are you a member of academic staff or research staff and these terms are a mystery to you? Or would you like to know more about how to make your research more visible? Or would you simply like to discover how to find information for your own research more effectively? If so, why not take some time out of the office or lab and come along to one of the Library workshops for Academic and Research Staff in March or July. They are all designed specifically for staff and research associates, with excellent feedback from attendees in previous years.

 “Really useful to understand impact of research”

“All great!”

“Practical session and useful advice.”

“Good pace and nice to try things straight after being introduced rather than all at end.  This was a very good session introducing a range of different resources.”

This year’s workshops are:

  • Finding research information;
  • Assessing your research impact with bibliometrics;
  • Increasing the visibility of your research;
  • Improving your research impact through open access.

To find out more about the sessions and book, please visit the Library’s Staff Workshops page.

The Top Five Institutional Repository Downloads for January

Posted on by

institutional-repository

The New Year has been a busy time for our Institutional Repository. A further 309 items were added in January making a total in excess of 10,750.

Visitors to the IR were busy too – here are the top five most downloaded items from the last month:

1. Acoustic black holes and their applications for vibration damping and sound absorption by V. Krylov (202 downloads).

2. Techniques for achieving dynamic stabilisation of a sonar array platform by P. Lepper & B. Woodward (156 downloads)

3. Discourse analysis means doing analysis: a critique of six analytic shortcomings by C. Antaki et al (136 downloads)

4. Thy righteousness is but a menstrual clout: sanitary practices and prejudice in early modern England by S. Read (132 downloads)

5. Electronic data interchange in the construction industry by T. Lewis (121 downloads)

Our repository increases the visibility of Loughborough’s research and the materials within it are centrally stored and preserved. The material in the collection includes journal articles, book chapters, conference papers and theses.

To find out more about the IR, and how you can submit your research, visit the IR homepage here.

The Top Five Institutional Repository Downloads for December

Posted on by

institutional-repository

Santa was more than generous with our Institutional Repository over the festive season as the Academic Schools began to send in their REF Papers for processing by our highly trained team of IR elves, who added over 230 new items to the database over December before retiring for a well-earned rest at the North Pole.

Visitors to the IR were busy too – here are the top five most downloaded items from the last month:

1. Propagation of localised flexural vibrations along plate edges described by a power law by V. Krylov & A. Shuvalov (148 downloads)

2. Protectionism to liberalisation : Ireland and the EEC, 1957 to 1966 by M. Fitzgerald (122 downloads)

3. Anthropometric study to update minimum aircraft seating standards by C. Quigley et al (91 downloads)

4. Thy righteousness is but a menstrual clout: sanitary practices and prejudice in early modern England by S. Read (88 downloads)

5. Discourse analysis means doing analysis: a critique of six analytic shortcomings by C. Antaki et al (84 downloads)

Our repository increases the visibility of Loughborough’s research and the materials within it are centrally stored and preserved. The material in the collection includes journal articles, book chapters, conference papers and theses. Last month we added our 10,000th item and we expect to match this number over the coming year! 

To find out more about the IR, and how you can submit your research, visit the IR homepage here.

10,000th item added to Loughborough’s University’s Institutional Repository

Posted on by

We are delighted to announce that the 10,000th item has been added to Loughborough University’s Institutional Repository. The submitter of the 10,000th item was Vadim Silberschmidt, Professor of Mechanics of Materials in the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering.

Vadim is pictured above receiving his prize – a festive hamper – from the University Librarian, Ruth Jenkins.

Professor Silberschmidt has over thirty journal articles and conference papers in the Institutional Repository. The winning submission, co-authored with PhD student Xianan Hou and Memis Acar, Professor of Mechanics, is available on the Repository at: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/handle/2134/10846

As one of the largest full-text university repositories in the UK, Loughborough’s Institutional Repository reflects a successful partnership between the Library and Academic Schools and Departments across the entire University. In 2012 the Repository was fully integrated with the University’s new publication information database, LUPIN, resulting in a 47% increase in submissions. Containing a range of items including full-text journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, official reports, PhD theses and audio-visual material, the Repository is an impressive online collection of the University’s research output. With the majority of items available on open access, centrally stored and preserved, the Repository ensures that Loughborough University’s research output is freely available to the wider research community, thus increasing its impact and citation rates.

For further information on the Institutional Repository and how to submit your publications via LUPIN, please see our web pages at:

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/services/library/online/repository/

Or contact us in the Library at 01509 222338 / 222363 or email repository@lboro.ac.uk

PhD workshop on Copyright and your thesis

Posted on by

PhD students must comply with UK copyright law when writing or submitting their thesis. This session will explain some of the basics of UK copyright law including how to apply for copyright permission. It will also explain how you can retain your copyright when you start publishing your own work.

This course will be held on Tuesday 6th Novemkber, 10.00-11.30am.

Please register via http://pdwww.lboro.ac.uk/index.php?cpid=GS

 

 

Open access publishers: separating the wheat from the chaff

Posted on by

With the increased push to publish in open access (OA) journals, academics are often asking how to rate the quality of an open access journal – especially as many such publications are new and have no impact factors yet.  Unfortunately, many organisations are jumping on the OA bandwagon and are trying to cash in on academics’ need to publish by setting up low-quality OA journals.  We came across this list of “suspect” OA Publishers, and thought it might be a useful starting point.  If you want any further advice on choosing where to publish, please speak to your Academic Librarian.