DWLresearch

We hope all our PGRs and researchers have a good Xmas break. The Library Research Services Team will be available until 12noon on Thursday 20th December, so email librarians@le.ac.uk if you need any urgent help before then. Library Opening Over Xmas You can find the full library opening hours here . But remember... There are no staffed services between Saturday 22nd December to Tuesday 1st January, but the library building is open on most days. The library building is closed on Tuesday 25th Dec, Wednesday 26th December and Tuesday 1st January. Library Research Services will be back from Wednesday January 2nd.

This month, Research England revealed Clarivate Analytics™ as the company who will be supplying assessment panels with citation data for REF2021 . The announcement marks a change from REF2014 when the data was provided by Clarivate's rival, Elsevier. What does this mean for REF? We know from previous guidance still out for consultation ( REF 2018/01 Section 281 ) that some panels will consider the number of times an item has been cited to aid their assessment of that output for the REF.  We now know the source of that data provided will be ISI Web of Science™ (WoS), a product owned by Clarivate Analytics™. We know that one source cannot tell the whole story about a research output, which is why panels will still use expert peer review as their primary means of assessment. However, for those disciplines where citation information is considered to be well represented in WoS, (namely Main Panels A and B ) it will be in the interest of those authors to ensure data about their out...

Submission Information For all PGRs wishing to submit their thesis in time to take part in the January 2019 Graduation Ceremony. In order to be eligible for the January Graduation - the Doctoral College Office have set a deadline of 5pm on the 10th December 2018 for doctoral students to make their final thesis submission to the library. In order to qualify for the January 2019 graduation ceremony you must submit to the Library: An electronic copy of their thesis, as a PDF file This can be emailed to ethesis@le.ac.uk or sent through FileDrop A completed and signed copy of the thesis Final Submission Form This can be handed in at the library reception desk or scanned and emailed to ethesis@le.ac.uk A single hard bound copy of the thesis This can be delivered to the reception desk in person or to the library by Print Services From now until 10th December 2018 we can accept proof that the hard bound thesis has been ordered from print services to be deliv...

Information for Staff using EndNote Online and Windows 7 University of  Leicester   IT are currently moving all PCs from Windows 7 to Windows 10. This is happening in phases and not all staff PCs have been moved onto Windows 10 yet. This affects users of EndNote: when you move to Windows 10 you will be upgraded to a newer version of EndNote - X8. Those using Windows 7 will stay on EndNote X7 for now. We recommend that staff users of EndNote consider moving to Windows 10 soon. This is because from 31st December 2018 the space available in EndNote Online accounts to user of EndNote X7 will become limited. The online allocation will change from 'unlimited' to  50,000 references and 2GB of attachments.  (Note: this does not affect desktop storage).  Therefore, we recommend moving to Windows 10 and EndNote X8, as your EndNote Online unlimited storage will be maintained.  To move to Windows 10, please contact ITS to request to upgrade .

Open Access Week has traditionally focussed on Open Access to publications, which has been a catalyst to address the transformation of scholarly communication more broadly. Our OA Week celebrations included a screening of Paywall: The Business of Scholarship , a very insightful film that reminds us why so many people across the globe believe what a difference Open Access will make to knowledge, getting us closer to an equal society. Many significant figures from the OA movement are included in the film, and it struck me that some are willing the discussion to broaden out , to transform other aspects of research in need of also being open. Terms used to capture the broader need for openness beyond publications include Open Science / Open Knowledge / Open Research . In the interest of keeping this post as inter-disciplinary as possible I'm going to opt for using the phrase Open Research here. Those who have stepped one foot into a University or research environment knows tha...

by: Grant Denkinson Research Services Consultant As part of Black History Month and Open Access Week , we took a look in Leicester Research Archive (LRA)  for the research and scholarship about Black people that has been published at University of Leicester (UoL) and made available openly to the world. Let's start with some UoL theses which LRA preserves in digital form, including digitised older theses: Dhia A.H. Aljubouri’s 1972 thesis “The Medieval Idea of the Saracen as illustrated in English Literature, Spectacle and Sport” . A scholarship from the Study Leave Committee of Baghdad University helped give Dr Aljubouri the chance to write on: “Anti-Islamic Polemics and Crusade Propaganda in the Middle Ages”, “The Horrible Saracen” in “the Non-Dramatic Writings in Middle English with particular reference to the Romances” and in “Early English Religious and Folk Drama, Spectacle, and Sport”. Brian George Holder’s thesis, also from 1972, examined the “Politics of M...

Earlier this week I blogged about how Open Access broadens out readership beyond academia and recommended investigating Altmetrics, which offer a really useful insight into the conversations that take place online between audiences. Today's post delves a little deeper into a possible link between Open Access, Altmetrics and citation count. Image credit: [citation needed] by  Dan4th Nicholas CC BY 2.0 The correlation of Open Access publication and an increased citation rate has been well-established, from +36% (Biology) to +600% (Agricultural Sciences). It's been interesting since then to observe how the Open Access landscape has evolved to include Altmetrics into the citation equation. Studies have found a short-term spike in the attention received by articles that have been Tweeted by the journal publisher, others have linked Altmetrics attention to a citation count higher in Open Access (OA) articles than in Non-Open Access (NOA) articles. However, the causali...

Today's post for Open Access Week is in celebration of the Open Access E-theses available from Leicester Research Archive . University of Leicester Theses have been downloaded 514,259 times from Sep 2017-Sep 2018, making them the most popular collections in the repository by a country mile. Image credit: Table of LRA downloads by collection Sep 2017-18 courtesy of IRUS-UK http://irus.mimas.ac.uk/ The top three downloaded theses for this period were from the Depts of Media and Communication, Education and Chemistry: 9672 Downloads Al-Ahmed, Mohammed S. (1987) 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. Available at:  http://hdl.handle.net/2381/34594 8429 Downloads Yazigy, Rula Jamil. (1991) Social and psychological factors in learning English as a foreign language in Lebanon. Available at:  http://hdl.handle.net/2381/35692...

Those who advocate Open Access recognise that a scholarly work has the potential to interest a broader audience, academic and non-academic. It may come as a surprise who takes an interest outside of the author's immediate network, but consider the amount of primary research taking place outside of academia and it may not be such a surprise after all. For example, a reader with access to articles and data working in a  business' research and development department could accelerate innovation and discovery at pace, much faster than the time it could take to accrue one citation. Open Access is about not putting a barrier between the person who might want to access it and the research itself. (Dr Suzanne MacLeod, University of Leicester)  Non-academic audiences could unlock the potential for real-life impact by pushing and promoting literature to different communication channels. Other examples of non-academic audiences are journalists, citizen scientists, medical patients ...

International Open Access Week 2018 celebrates 10 years of promoting open scholarship worldwide. Let’s go back to basics and see how the publishing landscape has changed over the last decade. Open Access was defined in the Finch Report (2012) stating that ‘research outputs arising from publicly funded research should be freely accessible at the point of use with minimal if any limitations on how they can be used’. In fact, Open Access is all about reaching wider audience and increasing the impact of your research. According to Universities UK Report on transition to Open Access (2017) the proportion of UK-authored, open access articles increased from 12% in 2012 to 30% in 2016. Currently 37% of research outputs in UK and 25% worldwide are freely available at the publication date. The movement supporting discoverability and accessibility of research outputs sparked a change in policies of the HEI, funders and most scholarly publishers. Two options for making publicatio...

International Open Access Week International Open Access Week (22nd-28th October) is a time for researchers to share experiences and best practice in making their research freely available. Now in its tenth year the #OAWeek  campaign encourages everyone in scholarly communications to reflect on how close we are getting to living in a world where knowledge is truly open and free for all. The Research Services Team in the Library will be marking International Open Access Week in a variety of ways over the next two weeks. ·           Come and chat to us at Glenfield Hospital Café Cardiologique on Thursday 25th October 12:30-14:00 - any question on Open Access is welcome! ·          Bring your lunch down for a free film screening of Paywall: The Business of Scholarship. Tuesday 30th October, from 12:00 at the David Wilson Library Digital Reading Room (film starts 12:30). ·     ...

We provide several services for distance learners doing PhDs at Leicester. The Library website and catalogue can be accessed off-campus, as can our ebooks and online journal articles. We also have further support for distance learners: Digitising book chapters and journal articles  You can ask for the Library to scan print journal articles or book chapters, and send them to you. Find our more here . Postal loan services We offer a postal loan service too. We will send books from the main library collection to you by post (you bear the cost of sending them back to Leicester). Find out more here   or  in the short video below: Skype appointments  We offer 1-2-1 appointments for all PhD students to discus questions you may have in more depth.  For those of you who can't come onto campus, we are happy to talk via Skype. Please email us on librarians@le.ac.uk to arrange a time.  Webinars Th...

The University of Leicester Figshare powered institutional data repository web-based platform is now available. The University of Leicester Figshare research data platform serves any academic discipline, and researchers can upload the processed data that either directly supports their research, or that constitutes a research output in its own right. The University of Leicester’s Figshare solution enables staff, PhD students and researchers to meet the growing demands by research funding agencies and journal publishers for open access (or appropriate access) to data underpinning published research.   The new data repository provides a secure, long-term space for a wide range of content; all on one platform that encourages collaboration. The solution will also allow for the easy citation and re-use of their digital research data by making it discoverable, citable and shareable from anywhere. Figshare for data is accessible anywhere on the Web and is a simple, easy ...

New PGR? Join us for one of our  Researcher@Library: tools and services to support your research sessions in October. Researcher@Library: tools and services to support your research Find out about the tools and services the library provides to support your research. Including information resources, reference management software and research data management. Come along in person or join us online via the webinar. Key Learning Outcomes ·          How to use the library search to find articles and books. ·          Discover the specialist academic databases available in your research area. ·          How to request items for your research. ·          Look at the reference management tools the University provides (EndNote & RefWorks). ·          Learn about the fundamenta...

The 2018/19 academic year begins in the next few week. With it comes new PGR and staff training run by the Library Research Services team. We run workshops on a range of topics about finding, managing and using information in research.  Some of our core sessions and dates for the Autumn term have been announced. Further sessions, including those on research data , will be announced later in the term. 'Online sessions' are webinars, intended for those of you who can't make it onto campus.  Title  Date Planning your literature search 16 October 2018 Conducting your literature search 18 October 2018 Planning literature search (online) 23 October 2018 Conducting literature search (online) 25 October 2018 Introduction to EndNote  26 October 2018 Introduction to RefWorks   30 October 2018 Mapping data with Google Fusion Tables 31 October 2018 Advanced literature ...

Selection of recent print theses. Here at the David Wilson Library, University of Leicester we still have a print collection of theses. However, we don't expect people to access the print copy in this day and age. We make the PDF copy of a thesis openly available to download (where possible) via our Leicester Research Archive , alongside other research publications from the University. We have also digitised and made available the majority of our theses back to the 1920s. In fact theses are the most popular and most downloaded items in the Leicester Research Archive! You would never get this many people looking at, or reading, a printed thesis! Here's Our Top 25 Most Downloaded Theses (For the period 01/07/2012 to 31/07/2018) Dept/School Title Author No. Downloads 1 School of Education Social and psychological factors in learning English as a foreign language in Lebanon. Yazigy, Rula Jamil. 15776 ...