DWLresearch

Why are we changing names? We've changed our name because the Graduate School is becoming the Doctoral College and so the Graduate School Reading Room will also be changing it's name. We also thought that the Graduate School Reading Room no longer reflects who posts to this blog and what we post about. Are we changing what we do? No, we'll still be blogging and tweeting about all the things we think might be useful and of interest to researchers. However, more members of the team will be contributing to the blog so there will be more posts on a wider range of subjects. Our new focus is We are the David Wilson Library Research Services Team. Helping researchers with everything from literature searching to open research to publication impact. Blogging and tweeting items of interest to PGRs, ECRs and researchers.

A long awaited report from the Academic Book of the  Future project was released last week. The Times Higher reported its findings showed there was an “ existential  crisis" of academic books. Read it here. Actually it’s a more subtle piece of work than that, and well worth reading. Its particular helpful in providing data on sales figures. The report also provides a good overview of the technical difficulties facing libraries and publishers, in a mixed economy of print and e-books. A   previous report , which examined the books submitted to the humanities panels in REF 2014, is also worth looking at. The following highlights may be of interest to academic authors:  Retail sales are declining, but more titles are being published. In the UK from 2005 to 2014, sales of academic titles fell by 13%. However, the number of individual titles rose by 45%. Sales per title were down from 100 to 60 (p.131.) So not good news if you’re expecting to...

What is a Journal Impact Factor? An impact factor is a measurement looking at the average number of citations articles in a particular journal receives.  It is calculated by: The number of times that all items published in a journal in the previous two years (e.g. 2014 & 2015) were cited by indexed publications during the year of interest (e.g. 2016) divided by The total number of "citable items" published by that journal in those two years (e.g. 2014 & 2015) Finding a Journal Impact Factor Go to Journal Citation Reports Start typing the name of the journal and choose from the list that appears: Remember - not all journals are indexed by the Journal Citation Reports, so not all journals have an impact factor. You will then see the Journal Profile, which includes the Impact Factor:  Find the highest impact journal in your area Click on Journals By Rank Click 'Select Category' and select the subject area ...

Next Wednesday 14 June will be the Focus on Publishing Day for the College of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities.  This event provides briefings on key trends in academic publishing, and advice from experts on the publishing process. We are particularly lucky to have commissioning editors from two of the major monograph publishers with us.  There are still places left if you would like to attend. Sign up here .

Tips for University of Leicester Researchers Conference papers can be tricky to find as there is no standard way of publishing or indexing them. They might be published as online conference papers, as articles within a journal or as books of conference proceedings. Databases that contain full text conference papers The databases listed below can be found by visiting our A-Z of Databases pages or the My Subject pages on the library homepage. Library All Search includes conference papers from a number of sources. You can filter your search results by conference proceeding. ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) Digital Library includes access to some of their conference proceedings. Search the ACM Digital Library site to check for access. IEEE Xplore Digital Library (IEEE/IET Electronic Library) includes the full text of all IEEE and IET conferences from 1988 onwards. ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) includ...