Graduate Junction's first ever online international poster competition

July 2009

Poster Competition Update
Greetings!

Graduate Junction's first ever online international poster competition is now well underway and posters are beginning to flood in from across the world. But don't worry there is still plenty of time to get your entry in.
The closing date is 15th October 2009 and all you have to do to enter is create an A1 poster of your research, aimed at a non-subject specific audience and then submit your poster online. The winners will be chosen by a combination of academic and non-academic judges' scores from around the world as well as votes from the members of Graduate Junction. There is the chance to win an iPod as well as a selection of fantastic cash prizes. For MORE INFORMATION please visit www.graduatejunction.org/posters

Summary of responses to query about research impact factor tools and tips

Summary of responses to query about research impact factor tools and tips - from JISC MAIL

Treat with caution – different institutions and subject areas recognise different metrics differently and some don’t recognise them as reliable measure of impact. Advise them about the tools but advise them about possible limitations too. The Sciences and Health Sciences seem to have more reliable data so tend to be able to rely on these more.

ISI suite of products is market leader. Thomson ISI is a key player and the most long-standing founded in 1960.

Web of Knowledge and SCOPUS seem to be the two main competitors for this market. Several institutions are looking at SCOPUS but it is expensive (no price given). SCOPUS enables you to see the number of citations for journal titles. SCOPUS has a better range of citations than ISI for some subjects.
Web of Knowledge is the source of all ISI citations used in other product lines. It allows you to do a citation search or to find an author’s h-index rather than just looking at the impact of a journal. The h-index is an index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output put forward in 2005 by the American physicist, Jorge Hirsch. Use the Author Finder tool in Web of Knowledge for this. The Journal Citation Reports product in Web of Knowledge includes a number of indicators including the Journal Impact Factor. You pay extra on top of your WOK sub to access JCR. JCR is published annually and comes out 6-7 months after the end of the year. In-cites can be used for looking at an institution. http://isiwebofknowledge.com/incites/.

Other tools people mentioned were:
http://www.scimagojr.com/ - developed from rankings in Scopus
Sci-Bytes http://sciencewatch.com/dr/sci/ - gives small snapshots of the statistics from Journal Citation Reports, e.g. the "Top 10 journals in education", in the latest issue.
Essential Science Indicators
ScienceWatch.com
SciImago - a free website based on the Scopus dataset.
Google scholar plus Publish or Perish software which you can download offers better range of citations for SOME disciplines
Eigenfactor.org – free website
The Washington and Lee University School of Law http://lawlib.wlu.edu/LJ/index.aspx - a useful tool for law researchers.

Some very kind people sent lists of useful reading and further information, including introductions to the topic:
Eugene Garfield "The Agony and the Ecstasy — The History and Meaning of the Journal Impact Factor", 2005 http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/jifchicago2005.pdf - good background information and discussion of pros and cons
From DLIST: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1030/ - a useful article with further reading listed
Thomson Reuters’ website - useful information, discussion and links to articles: http://science.thomsonreuters.com/citationimpactcenter/
http://isiwebofknowledge.com/media/pdf/UsingBibliometricsinEval_WP.pdf - introduction to bibliometrics
http://libraryconnect.elsevier.com/lcp/0901/LCP0901.pdf - introduction to bibliometrics
http://www.inria.fr/inria/organigramme/documents/ce_indicateurs_en.pdf - includes the negative aspects
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~jacso/savvy-mcb.htm - Prof Peter Jasco, University of Hawaii. He has written extensively on the subject of citation metrics and different info resources that provide these metrics
http://www.pnas.org/content/102/46/16569.full.pdf
PLoS Medicine Editors, & McKenna, H. (2006). Impact factor game. PLoS Medicine, 3(6), e291.

Excellent overview of the current discussions on the use of metrics compiled by Alison Robson
Alison Robson BA PGDip PGCHE
Academic Librarian (Law, Accounting and Finance)

New bloggers at Read Around Research

If you've had a look at my profile, you will have seen that I am the Research Support Librarian at the University of Limerick.

In the Irish Universities you'll find my fellow research support librarians in NUIG, TCD and DCU. I've asked those librarians to join me on this blog, and as you will see, Jessica Eustace from TCD has arrived, posting video introductions to blogs, wikis and RSS feeds. The videos were created by a great group called Common Craft.

Way back in pre-blog days I had arranged for some creative (i.e. pen and paper) writing time off this summer, so I've been remiss in posting here. I will remain largely offline and with family (it being summer!) until the end of August while my fellow bloggers settle in here. I look forward to posting on Read Around Research issues when I return.

Welcome:
Jessica Eustace, TCD
Jack Hyland, DCU
Rosarie Coughlan and Gwen Ryan, NUIG

Utube - Easy Explanation for what Blogs are for

Final one, utube video on how to use Blogs and what they are for: A video for people who wonder why blogs are such a big deal.

UTube Video on how to use WIKIS

Hi This is a great video explaining how to use wikis for collaboration:

A great UTube Video explaining staying upto date with RSS Feeds

Check out this great little utube video which explains RSS feeds in simple english - a great option to embed into training!

Introducing the Espresso Book Machine – book printing on demand

In a 29 June Boston Globe article, journalist D.C. Denison visits a traditional Vermont book shop which has invested in an ‘Espresso Book Machine’, and asks ‘Is this the future bookstore?’.

The machine, which allows staff to download books from a database while the customer waits, is from New York company, On Demand Books.

Denison suggests that such a machine might be the saving of the small book shop, that the days of ‘We don’t have it but we can order it for you’ may be on the way out. And it’s been a big hit with authors wishing to self-publish.

It’s worth having a look at the video, available at the Boston Globe link, to see the machine in operation.

For those who like the physical format of the book, and would rather not read online or from printed, loose-leaf A4 pages, this could be a perfect complement to projects like Project Gutenberg and Google Books, and to the growing e-book industry.

It will complement bookshops and libraries well, allowing users to browse through books on shelves and display stands as before, but negating the frustration when a specific book isn’t available.

And much of the guesswork will be taken out of the publishing industry’s need to calculate how many copies of a book to print at a time.

A reader commenting on the Boston Globe article guesses that the repairman will be the only one to benefit. However, the machine is probably less 'clunky' than it first appears. The video, after all, is showing us the inner workings. If the surface reality is somewhat smoother, it will be interesting to see how this develops.

Link to full article.