The centuries-old tradition of writing for advocacy is continued into the digital era by blogging. But what should you be writing about? As part of a series previewing their new book Communicating Your Research with Social Media, Amy Mollett, Cheryl Brumley, Chris Gilson and Sierra Williams consider the various different types of blog posts and how each might be used by academics. Blogging has become ubiquitous […]
Category: digital scholarship
A number of freely available tools can help you improve your literature review routine and stay on top of published research
The sheer proliferation of newly published research articles can make staying on top of the literature a daunting, time-consuming task. Moreover, not being a deadline-driven activity, it can also fall down lists of priorities and be difficult to integrate into the everyday routine. Erzsébet Czifra-Tóth and Jon Tennant have put together a short sequence of steps and flagged a number […]
Advancing to the next level: the quantified self and the gamification of academic research through social networks
Measurement of performance using digital tools is now commonplace, even in institutional activities such as academic research. The phenomenon of the “quantified self” is particularly evident in academic social networks. Björn Hammarfelt, Sarah de Rijcke, Alex Rushforth, Iris Wallenburg and Roland Bal argue that ResearchGate and similar services represent a “gamification” of research, drawing on features usually associated with online games, […]
Science is a social process: facilitating community interactions across the research lifecycle
Modern day research practice is incredibly collaborative, increasingly interdisciplinary and a very social process. Sierra Williams underlines the importance of researchers and publishers alike recognising publication as one aspect of a much wider social process. By way of introduction to her role at peer-reviewed open access publisher PeerJ, she reflects on the purpose of community in science communication. Where do […]
Announcing Unpaywall: unlocking #openaccess versions of paywalled research articles as you browse
Today marks the official launch of Unpaywall, a web browser extension that links users directly to free full-text versions of research articles. Heather Piwowar and Jason Priem of Impactstory, the team behind Unpaywall, report on the successful pre-release phase, and explain how two decades of investment, a slew of new tools, and a flurry of new government mandates have helped […]
Following the success of the learning technologist, is it time for a research equivalent?
With so many scholarly communications tools and technologies now available, how do academics decide which are most appropriate for their research? Andy Tattersall suggests it might be time for a research equivalent of the learning technologist, a role that has helped drive innovations in teaching underpinned by technologies. The research technologist would be embedded within the university department, make recommendations […]
Google Scholar is a serious alternative to Web of Science
Many bibliometricians and university administrators remain wary of Google Scholar citation data, preferring “the gold standard” of Web of Science instead. Anne-Wil Harzing, who developed the Publish or Perish software that uses Google Scholar data, here sets out to challenge some of the misconceptions about this data source and explain why it offers a serious alternative to Web of Science. […]
Recommendations for Enabling Digital Scholarship
Mass digitization — coupled with new media, technology and distribution networks — has transformed what’s possible for libraries and their users. The Library of Congress makes millions of items freely available on loc.gov and other public sites like HathiTrust and DPLA. Incredible resources — like digitized historic newspapers from across the United States, the personal papers […]
Women’s History Month Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
This is a guest post from Sarah Osborne Bender, Director of the Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. I graduated from library school in 2001, just months after Wikipedia was launched. So as a freshly minted information professional, it is no surprise that I fell […]
Reimagining the role of the library in the digital age: changing the use of space and navigating the information landscape
Yesterday Carnegie Mellon University announced a new partnership with technology company Digital Science. CMU’s Keith Webster describes the mutual commitment to research discovery and smarter workflows that underpins this collaboration, and also outlines some of the ways in which academic libraries have changed; from their more dynamic use of space to the redeveloped tools and services made available to students […]