Open access at Leicester

Open access at Leicester

International OA week

The wrap up of the International Open Access Week 2017 is a perfect occasion to give you an update on Open Access (OA) related activities at University of Leicester accompanied with fun statistics (as fun as statistics can be!).

During the Open Access week the University Open Access and Research Data Team ran a series of pop-up stalls at various locations across the main campus as well as in hospital sites (RKCSB & Glenfield), offering advice on raising the discoverability of research profiles. Also as part of the celebrations we have launched a completely redesigned OA website. Visit www.le.ac.uk/openaccess to explore the essential guidance how to make your research outputs OA.

Fig.1. Main page of new, redesigned Open Access website (www.le.ac.uk/openaccess)

The outreach campaign was in addition to routine talks and tailored training sessions that the team provides for departments across the University every year. Throughout the year 2017 we have delivered 16 of such sessions for researchers and 3 workshops in collaboration with RED, designed for our administrative staff.

Leicester Research Archive (LRA) in numbers

LRA is the University of Leicester institutional repository, showcasing all the research outputs to the members of public. LRA is growing both in case of readership (downloads per year – fig.2B) and in terms of number of items available (deposited items per year - fig.2A). One can browse the repository itself (https://lra.le.ac.uk/) or thanks to google indexing just use the google scholar to find the required items. Every new item, made available in LRA is indexed by google within 10minutes which boosts its discoverability.

Fig.2. LRA statistics – number of deposits per year (A) is over four times higher than in 2012. The number of successful downloads (B) per year shows that our readership doubled over the last two years.

Top trumps

The most read/downloaded items in LRA are PhD thesis, and while speaking of it we have to mention that thanks to digitisation project funded by Alumni all theses dating back to 1920’s were scanned and made available via LRA.

Top three downloaded theses:

1) 8722 downloads: Social and psychological factors in learning English as a foreign language in Lebanon. (1991) Yazigy, Rula Jamil, http://hdl.handle.net/2381/35692

2) 6761 downloads: Mass media and society: The six normative theories and the role of social, political and economic forces in shaping media institution and content: Saudi Arabia - a case study. (1987) Al-Ahmed, Mohammed S., http://hdl.handle.net/2381/34594

3) 4271 downloads: Physical and Chemical Investigations of Starch Based Bio-Plastics. (2015) Abolibda Tariq Ziyad Y., http://hdl.handle.net/2381/33021

How to use SNL for financial research

Following the successful demonstration of Mergent Online , we have another database for you this week: SNL . SNL is a global financial database providing news, macroeconomic data and financials and analytics of banks and insurance companies. It replaces Bankscope, the database we previously used for this area. The data in SNL would be of interest for anyone researching finance, banking or insurance. There will be two demonstrations of the new database SNL on Wednesday 22 nd February Session 1: 12.00 – 1.00 University Library IT Room 1 Session 2: 1.30 - 2.30.University Library IT Room 1 There is an opportunity to do some hands-on practice in these sessions as well receiving tailored support. If you would like to attend please contact Andrew Dunn with your details and any training requests. For more information on how to use and register for SNL follow this link: http://www2.le.ac.uk/library/fi...

You can now export multiple citations from Google Scholar

You can now export multiple citations from Google Scholar if you have a Google Account. Go to Google Scholar and sign into your Google Account. Conduct your search. Click on the Star icon (Save) under each reference you want to export. Then click on My Library in the top, right of the screen. Select all the references and click on the Export option: Click the Star/Save Icon Choose Export Option To Export into EndNote Choose the EndNote option. Open the EndNote file that is created. The references should automatically import into EndNote. To Export into RefWorks Choose the RefMan option. Save the RIS file that is created. Login to your RefWorks account. Click on the plus (+) button. Choose Import References. Add the RIS file you just saved. Set the file import option to RIS - Reference Manager. Click import and your references will be imported. --- Good Practice Tip: Always check that all the reference information you need has been...

Search Tips: Phrase Searching and Proximity Searching

Phrase searching Normally when you put two words into a database search it will find those two words anywhere in the title/abstract/keywords: It will do an AND search = diabetes AND mellitus If you want to force the database to do a phrase search then enclose it in “speech marks” “diabetes mellitus” = those words next to each other, in that order Most of the main literature databases we subscribe to at the University of Leicester support phrase searching using speech marks, as do the search engines Google and Google Scholar. However, Scopus treats phrases in "speech marks" as loose phrases, so to do an exact phrase search in Scopus use {curly brackets} around the phrase instead. Extra Tip: Make sure when typing in speech marks that you use the double speech mark symbol " rather than typing in two apostrophes. Proximity (Adjacency) Searching Finds one keyword within a specified number of words of the other, in any order: Diabetes ADJ4 “Type 2” = will find Diabetes withi...

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