Wednesday 25 February 2015

What kinds of support do you need?

We've got an eye on what kinds of drop-in workshop support ILS can offer to researchers in 2015-2016. Do you have any ideas on how we could enhance the workshops we already provide? We're thinking about:

  1. Using NVivo to write your literature review
  2. Successful dissertation writing using Microsoft Word
  3. Using maps and geographical data in your research
  4. Tools for doing market research
  5. Using newspapers and the popular press in your research
  6. The challenges of using goverment documents, policy reports and other grey literature in your research
  7. Which technology do you need for your research? Test driving different hardware and software.
  8. Tools for managing reflective practice in research (NVivo, Mahara, blogs)
Currently, we offer workshop support on:
  1. Open access
  2. Impact factor, altmetrics, influence and all that jazz
  3. Introducing RaY
  4. Discover Discover for researchers
  5. Publishing your research with social media
  6. Keeping track of your reading for researchers

Please use the comments field to share your ideas on what you'd like to see: either what would have helped you when you first started your research, or what kinds of support you still need. If you have feedback on workshop format, timing, communication or anything else, please speak up. Thanks!

Monday 23 February 2015

This week's research support session - impact factors, influence and social media

This week's research support session will cover the different ways in which you can publish your research, along with their advantages and possible pitfalls.  Have you ever considered whether putting something on a blog could affect your ability to publish research in a journal?  Or how it could improve the visibility of your research in comparison to a more traditional publication?  This is the sort of debate this session will introduce.  If you are interested, pop along to De Grey 119 on Wednesday 25th February at 9am.

Monday 16 February 2015

Open Access research: how to find it

We've posted a few times on the Open Access debate and the merits of making your research more easily accessible to those without membership of organisations, such as university libraries, with subscriptions to paid journals.  So we thought it would be useful to point out a few key places to find research that you can access without a paywall.

CORE (COnnecting REpositories) is a service which combines the content of existing digital repositories (e.g. university research archives such as RaY).  We have found this very useful in obtaining research from colleagues across the country and beyond.

OAIster is another service which harvests records of open access items from across the world.

DOAJ is the Directory of Open Access Journals, providing a search tool to access open access, peer-reviewed journals.

Why not have a look and see what is available?



 Open Access promomateriaal by biblioteekje. Available from https://flic.kr/p/75LVJi Used under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Wednesday 11 February 2015

Workshop: Keeping Track of Your Reading

Despite a coy wireless signal, there was a researcher support session Thursday morning on Keeping Track of your Reading, a guide to staying on top of relevant news, research topics and authors. You can find the links, slides and some of the content here. 

Please join us for the next session on using social media to improve the reach and impact of your research and shape your scholarly digital footprint. 25 February at 9:00AM.

Tuesday 10 February 2015

New Database of Psychological Experiments

Are you incorporating psychological experiment results into your research? You might find some interesting results in Psychological Experiments Online. YSJ recently began a subscription to this database, which describes itself as
"a multimedia collection of over thirty important psychological experiments of the 20th and 21st centuries, including the Stanford Prison Experiment, Pavlov's dogs, Halo effect and the Bystander effect. The database includes video clips, website links, interviews with psychologists, suggestions for classroom activities and access to supporting theories and literature."
The Bobo Doll  Experiment. Image taken from Psychological Experments Online.
I find the database fascinating, even if it has (as yet) has no bearing on my own research. Beware, you may start clicking on the collection relating to Albert Bandura's Bobo Doll Experiment of 1961 (which 'demonstrated that children will model their behaviors on those they have seen even without any reinforcement or encouragement') and find you've spent an hour unexpectedly exploring the study of aggression in humans. Ooops. Enjoy.

Monday 2 February 2015

Discover Discover

This week sees the return of our ILS researcher support sessions. The first one in the programme is Discover Discover, a guide to getting the most out of our main search tool.  Would you like to know how to save searches, personalise the settings or export your results?  This is the session for you.  We will be on the ground floor of Fountains at 9am on Wednesday 4th February, so pop along if you would like to find out more.