Earlier this year saw the publication of the CWTS Leiden Rankings. This ranking provides indicators of citation impact, collaboration, gender diversity… and open access publishing. And we thought we’d take a moment during open access week to highlight Durham University’s achievement in the latter.
Continue reading “#OpenAccessWeek2020: Thank you – we’re in the Top 10!”#OpenAccessWeek2020: Year in review
Open Access publishing is taking the world by storm, partly thanks to initiatives such as Plan S, and this year, Durham academics have published a huge amount of articles that are gold open access – often with a Creative Commons attribution licence – which means they are free to read, download, share and adapt as long as you give appropriate credit.
Continue reading “#OpenAccessWeek2020: Year in review”(Open Access Week) Telling the story of your research
Publishing research open access offers numerous potential benefits for researchers, for the University, and also for wider society. It opens up research outputs and makes them accessible to anyone anywhere with an internet connection. By opening up research in this way it could be argued that it is more important than ever that we try to understand the impact and reach of papers beyond citation counts limited to just academic and other research-specific publications.
Continue reading “(Open Access Week) Telling the story of your research”
Open Access Week, 21st – 27th October 2019
Celebrating, discussing, and promoting open access publishing needs to be done throughout the year but it is helpful to have a designated “Open Access Week” and use this as an opportunity to channel our thoughts and to put an extra spring in our steps.
As the blurb on the official website states:
“Open Access Week, a global event now entering its tenth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.”
Continue reading “Open Access Week, 21st – 27th October 2019”
“I am not a number. I am a Free Man*!”
* (Please note – this title is a quote from the 1967 British TV Series, The Prisoner. There are recognised issues of gender bias in citation and authorship across academia – this title was not intended to reflect that (and yes, the author was male). Please consider yourself equally free to be treated as a number rather than a person – whatever your gender identity – but recognise that those numbers may reflect bias in the practice of authors and reviewers) [ed: 17th July 2019]
Who is citing who?
We often (well, sometimes) get asked by students:-
– How do I know who has cited this work? (How do I do this?)
We more frequently get asked a similar question by our academic colleagues:-
– How do I know who has cited MY work? (How do I do this?)
Is BIGGER always BETTER?
Why would you not want to know who has been citing your research? It may just be to massage your ego, or it might offer an opportunity to re-evaluate your own work in the new light shed by others. It could offer an opportunity for a future collaboration, or a conversation starter with a citing author at an upcoming conference. Sometimes it is just nice to have that (often fleeting) sensation of finally having your value recognised by someone. Or often, sadly, being able to show how often you have been cited is the game you are forced to play for that next academic job application or promotion review.
When it comes to that last reason, the assumption is often that “bigger is better”. Whilst this may often be true, there is a lot of nuance to that question.. not least what might be understood to be “big” from one discipline to another. But, casting your eyes back to the title of this post, do you want ‘quality’ to be measured by a number? The answer to that question might be influenced by whether you’re a STEM or humanities scholar… or just whether you’re the person sitting on an interview panel with a long-list of over 500 applications to get through in far too little time. Continue reading ““I am not a number. I am a Free Man*!””
PGR Part-time & Distance Learning week
The annual DCAD “Part-time and Distance Doctoral Student” training event took place this week, with doctoral researchers from Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside universities coming together to meet, discuss experiences and participate in a range of workshops delivered by academic and professional support colleagues from across Durham University.
2019 Journal Citation Reports published
Today sees the publication of the 2019 edition of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), which you can access via Durham University Library’s Web of Science subscription.
The JCRs are published annually, and provide an overview of citation and publication metrics for 11,877 journals across primarily STEM and social sciences, including the most recent Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and Eigenfactor scores.
For more information on publication and citation metrics, why not have a look at our web pages:
- Responsible use of Metrics
- Overview of metrics (including JIF)
- Citations: How do i? (various guides and tutorials for authors and researchers)
- Web of Science Tutorials: Journal Citation Reports