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!”
In the next of our series introducing members of staff, #DULibIntroducing welcomes James Bisset from our Library Research Services team.
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”
Working in the Open Access Team it is clear to us that opinions on publishing open access can vary quite considerably from department to department and from researcher to researcher. As part of the work of the Open Access Team we strive to develop our understanding of these opinions by speaking directly with our researchers.
We interviewed Kislon Voitchovsky and asked him to share his own thoughts and experiences on publishing generally and more specifically on publishing open access. The aim was to provide information and guidance for early career researchers and doctoral students but it should be interesting reading for all.
It may make it clear to you just how different the publishing environment is for researchers in a field other than your own or it may convince you of the potential benefits of publishing your research open access.
If you would like to share your opinions on and experiences with open access we would love to hear from you – openaccess.publishing@durham.ac.uk
* (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]
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?)
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*!””
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.
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:
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