Paul Cannon
The Library supports scholarship in many and varied ways. Whether you are aiming to publish your scholarship or simply sharing good practice among peers, there are a variety of ways that the Library can support you throughout the scholarship lifecycle. Some of the key methods of support are discussed in this blog post.
Literature reviews
College Librarians can work with you to advise on the best search techniques for your area of research. One of the things worth remembering is that scholarship research can be published in both subject-specific databases and education databases; here multi-disciplinary databases such as the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus can be useful tools, as well as the ubiquitous internet search engines. The other factor with scholarship research is that research is often presented at conferences. Presentations and their associated data or publication do not always appear on databases and internet searches, so sometimes a manual browse of relevant conference websites and proceedings is required.
Research materials
Whilst we are fortunate to have a wealth of print and electronic resources available to us at the University of Glasgow, there will be times when we need to acquire other research materials. Contact your College Librarian for a one-to-one discussion about your individual research needs and how we can best support you. The inter-library loan facility is an effective method to borrow material from another library whenever you reach a paywall.
Publication outlets
Selecting the most appropriate journal, publisher, or conference to approach to disseminate your research depends on the subject area and the specific research topic. Mentors, line managers and colleagues from the relevant disciplinary area are best placed to offer expert advice. The guidance in Section 3.7 of the Code of Good Practice in Research on identifying the correct outlets for your research is worth reading, as is guidance on sharing your research post-publication.
There are also a number of tools to help you identified trusted journals, journals by subject and match your manuscript to a journal.
- Think. Check. Submit provides a checklist of factors to help identify trusted
journals. - Scopus sources allows you to see journals by publication and compare journals by a range of research indicators. [Log in with your GUID and password].
- Manuscript matcher from EndNote analyses your title, abstract and references to suggest potential suitable Web of Science-indexed journals for your manuscript.
Remember to speak to the Open Access and Research Data Management teams about your publications and data curation.
Sharing your research
Enlighten is the University’s system for managing a wide range of research outputs including publications, conference papers and presentations, and research data. For your research outputs to be added to Enlighten, which then feeds through to your staff profile webpage, be sure to email the Library to upon publication: research-openaccess@glasgow.ac.uk for articles and conference proceedings, research-datamanagement@glasgow.ac.uk for datasets, and research-enlighten@glasgow.ac.uk for other publications and thesis. Consider also how you strategically develop your online presence, and don’t forget to connect your research with your ORCID!
Research indicators
Indicators are quantitative measures that help to evaluate research outputs; these are often known as bibliometrics and altmetrics. Research indicators can be helpful in identifying the impact of your scholarship, but must be applied responsibly and along with a qualitative assessment. Your College Librarian can help you discover insights into your scholarship, such as who is citing your work in other academic outputs, within teaching or how people are discussing your work online.
Finally…
Don’t forget that all of these support methods are also available to your students as well as you. Similarly, there are also many ways that the Library supports you with your teaching, which may intersect with your scholarship research.