DWLresearch

Image source: MikeAMorrison - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 We have had quite a few a queries from University of Leicester authors during the past few months around 'read and publish deals', transformative publishing deals, new author dashboards from publishers with which we have signed a 'Transformative agreement' (TA), and what this all means for individual authors and their publishing choice.  Jisc Collections: working with publishers to support OA Jisc Collections is supporting Higher Education (HE) with the transition to open access (OA) through the negotiation of transitional (transformative) OA agreements which allow 100% of UK output to be published OA in accordance with UK funder policies.  What is a 'transformative journal'? PlanS  implementation comes into effect in January 2021 and they have produced a really useful collection of FAQs on this and they define a transformative journal as: "A subscription/hybrid journal that is actively committed to tr...

 EThOs - e-theses online service A free database provided by the British Library which searches over 500,000 UK Doctoral Theses, including those from the University of Leicester. Conduct your search. Search results with a green open padlock symbol mean that the full text of the thesis is available for free download. Click on the result you are interested in. You should then see more details about the thesis, including an abstract. You might be given more than one option for downloading the full text PDF of the thesis - either from EThOS or from the Institution that awarded the PhD. In order to download from EThOS you need to create a free EThOS account. Not all theses included in EThOS are available as full text PDFs. Some will have restricted access and some may not have been digitised. Those with restricted access will have a brown dotted padlock symbol next to them and those that have not been digitised will have no padlock symbol. Click on a result for more details. You will cu...

The library are pleased to announce that from Wednesday 29 July we will be providing a Click & Collect service to support essential University research for University Staff and Postgraduate Research students. Current University of Leicester staff and Postgraduate Research students can request items to be retrieved from the David Wilson Library’s lending collections (excluding Archives and Special Collections). Requests should be made through  Library Search . When your book is ready for collection an email will be sent to your University email address, you can then collect your book from the designated collection point in the David Wilson Library foyer.  You will need your University ID and to have downloaded the University Safe Zone app when coming onto the campus. You will be able to collect items Monday to Friday, between 11am and 3pm. Please note that there are no toilet facilities near the collection point, and parking spaces are limited. ...

Updated 08/02/21 The removal of the statute of the Bristol merchant and slave trader Edward Colston has focused public attention on the historic connections between places in Britain and the combined histories of slavery and imperialism. Physical legacies of the past - some, but not all, memorials - have become touchstones for debating this controversial legacy. This guide is intended to document resources that may help people research these connections.  Leicester’s traditional strengths in local and urban history mean that the David Wilson Library’s collections have a strong focus on the history of places, the built environment and public heritage. Hopefully this guide will allow you to answer questions like: who does this statute represent? Or what were there links between a town and the slave trade? Note: there are a number of print books listed here. Hopefully, these will become more accessible as we come out of lockdown. For our current services, please see our...

The 2020 update to the annual Web of Science Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is now available via Web of Science . This is based on 2019 data compiled from the Web of Science Core Collection. You can read more about the highlights and construction of the JCR reports on the Clarivate News Announcement . One of the main reasons people use the Journal Citation Reports is to check the Impact Factor of a journal, which identifies the frequency with which an average article from a journal is cited in a particular year. Please remember to use publication metrics, such as Impact Factors, responsibly and never make decisions based on one metric. Also be aware that the University of Leicester is a signatory of   DORA  which has several recommendations with regards to Journal Impact Factors, including: the need to eliminate the use of journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, in funding, appointment, and promotion considerations Do not use journal-ba...

The Library research services team and its services pivoted to an online/virtual only service delivery offering in March 2020 due to COVID-19 lockdown, and we have been connecting and meeting with our users and internal and external stakeholders this way since. We regularly update our blog post , which outlines the services and support we are providing for our PhD students and researchers during this period. Source: Image by  Abdessamad Jdaia  from  Pixabay We have had to adjust and in some ways reinvent and evolve some of our services to reflect the COVID-19 restrictions and we are also doing our annual planning as well as specific COVID-19 service and scenario planning. I attended (virtually of course) some of the excellent LIBER2020 conference sessions and workshop sessions last week, and I was particularly struck by something that Dr Bertil F. Dorch, Library Director and Associate Professor, University Southern Denmark, said in his presentation, along the lin...

PubMed recently introduced a new search interface. It's pretty similar to the old interface, so should be fairly simple to pick up. If you'd like more information and tutorials on the new interface then take a look at the PubMed Online Training Page . Below are a few tips you might find useful. How does PubMed do a keyword search? Even if you use PubMed a lot you may not realise how it is searching, as it automatically adds keyword variations and maps your keywords to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). If you want to see exactly what search PubMed has conducted, based on the words you typed in, then you can now do this under the Advanced Search option.  Conduct your search: This will take you directly to the results page: From the results page click on the ADVANCED option just under the search box. Once on the Advanced page scroll down to your search history and click on the Details Arrow: Now you can see exactly what PubMed searched on when inputt...