Research Portal News

I recently undertook, with Dr Dianne Bond of the Research Office, an analysis of UCT's published work over the period 2006-2010, using Elsevier's SviVal Spotlight tool.  This was presented at the May 17th Research Indaba as part of a discussion on "Internationalisation at UCT".

For those interested in the mechanics of it, we used the "Explore Collaboration" tab in Spotlight to throw up a map of global collaborations, then went to the "Table" tab to get a list of top-end collaborators.  Top UCT collaborative authors were identified by means of a Scopus analysis, using Institutional Search on UCT publications, followed by a Boolean "AND" statement, with the chosen collaborating institutions grouped together with "OR"s between them.

All else is shown below:

 

While we folk NoJS (OK, reservoir end of campus - where the helicopters come for water) tend more to use peer reviewed articles as sources of quoted info in papers and the like, we understand that (many!) others may need to use a wider variety of sources, especially in this new age of Web 2.x.

And for them we now have - EasyBib! 

The Guru Cann alerted me to this via a recent article which reports that

"...EasyBib is announcing that its just hit half a BILLION citations created through the platform. After 10 years in business, that’s an average of 50 million citations every year".

We will consider making a permanent link via the eResearch site - meantime, consider the following:

the tool allows you to correctly cite and bibliographise 59 different types of source material, including (but not limited to)

 

• Advertisements
• Bible
• Blog / Podcast
• Book
• Brochure
• Cartoon / Comic
• Chapter / Anthology»
• Collection Article
• Conference Proceedings»
• Congressional Publication»
• Court Case
• Dictionary Entry
• Digital File

 

You know, it's interesting, being an academic: a serious chunk of one's life is spent teaching, or preparing to teach, or dealing with the consequences of teaching (aka "marking"); if one is remotely successful, another major chunk is concerned with management - of research grants, of students, and of research staff.

It is even more interesting that we are taught to do neither of these things - unless one is misguided enough to be a HoD, when one gets a modicum of training at a "HoD's Workshop" before being thrust back into the cage. 

Seriously: we were not taught how to teach, and we were not taught how to manage. 

As an academic of 30+ year's standing (31-and-a-bit, since you ask), I will confess to having attended one workshop on cooperative learning, some 20 years ago - and no management courses.  Ever.

While this may be a matter for pride in certain disshevelled tweed-jacket-and-bushy-hair circles where pipes are smoked, it is not something that anyone who has survived a couple of decades at UCT should have to admit to - even if people are reasonably happy with your teaching, and your research group has managed to stagger along unaudited and still solvent.

Because things have changed: young academics at UCT are now actually instructed on how things work; about how to write research grants and papers, how to get assessed - and a myriad other things that us OFs had to learn by the seat of the pants or skirt.

I refer, of course, to the training schemes run by UCT Research Office's  Emerging Researcher Programme (ERP) and Programme for the Enhancement of Research Capacity (PERC), both of which I heard considerably more about today.

The ERP's Aim statement reads as follows: "To help staff members develop as researchers and increase their measurable research output in order to eventually obtain NRF Rating" [sic].  Eligible for this help are "Permanent and T3 contract academic staff members who recognise the need to develop their personal research profiles and would like support in doing so".

Something that is a little annoying, knowing as I do that they have a full and comprehensive programe of activities, is that their "Seminar and Workshop Programme" link does not actually TAKE you anywhere; it simply describes that they have one!  This is disappointing, as I know they have a range of activities going on right now, which include training on h-indices and impact factors, and how to write and cite scientific papers, and apply for grants.

The PERC is a different beast, and "...operates in three distinct but related areas. 

• Awarding of grants in "the Knowledge Project" and supporting successful grantees
• Assisting staff with obtaining NRF ratings
• Broadly promoting mid-career staff development in the area of research by stimulating and supporting research and publication and particularly encouraging the development of research initiatives which reflect the University’s location in Africa and in a more broadly developing context."

I note especially the assisting staff with obtaining NRF ratings: I personally have benefitted in the last year from this activity, and am profoundly grateful for the dedication and patience shown by the Research Office staff (you know who who are), who had to deal with the tantrums and petulance of a senior academic (he knows who he is) faced with the incomprehensible beast that is a NRF rating form web interface.

Interesting new developments in this regard is that UCT Libraries may be getting involved with helping researchers in these areas: senior library staff are taking an interest in bibliometrics, citation and reference management, and publication assessment, the the development of toolkits to help academics negotiate these minefields.

Meaning academics are finally getting trained for what it is that they are supposed to do.  Viva! 

Something that is fast becoming very obvious in the eResearch space is that provision of some sort of facility for storing digital "stuff" related to research is becoming more and more urgent.

Stuff like:

 

• Data files - which could be text- or numbers-only or mixed, pictures, sound files, video....
• PDF versions of papers or last-version-before-acceptance drafts 
• PhD theses and MSc dissertations (yes, there is a difference!) and even Honours write-ups
• Formal reports 
• Lab notebooks that have been scanned 
• Presentations related to research

 

 You will notice that the types of things needing storage overlap significantly with what the UCT Libraries are storing - specifically, theses and dissertations, and also Collections which may be very relevant to research.

It may not be so obvious, but there is also another very wide overlap - with the Open UCT initiative, and its Open Educational Resources and Open Scholarship material, given that we ARE supposed to be "research led" in our teaching, and teaching materials may be derived directly from research material.

What this means is that we have a burning need at UCT to store a LOT of things digitally, from a wide spectrum of constituencies - and that these needs have to be addressed at a high level, not only so that policy can be set for exactly what / how / where, but also because this storage requires quite considerable funding as well as people to manage it.

Accordingly, eResearch is talking to Libraries is talking to Open UCT is talking to Enterprise Content Management, so as to harmonise requirements and the plan(s) of attack - so that we have a good solid tree growing out of this, rather than a hundred different flowers which will wither and die.

Or so we hope! 

 

I am indebted to Alan J Cann, University of Leicester, for the following slideshow.  And the reminder that doing the same with the new media as you did in print is not that good an idea.

 

You could have been excused for missing it in the Monday Paper, but we went live today:

 "eResearch site launched at UCT

UCT's Information and Communication Technology Services has launched an eResearch website that offers staff and postgraduate students a central point from which to access research support, management tools and information that is currently spread across various web pages at UCT.

The site has a host of valuable information that has been sorted into easy-to-navigate sections. Each section has links to a number of portals, external databases and services available for researchers. These links make it easier for researchers to find the information that they need. One such link provides access to the Research Professional Africa website, where numerous research funding opportunities can be found and applied for through UCT's Research Office. The Research Africa news and UCT research news, Research Portal News blog and news archives have also been added to the site, so researchers can read the latest research news from one central place.

One of the highlights of the site includes access to various self-help tools. For example, the four Reference Management Tools listed on the site can help researchers to collect and manage references from various online databases, or help them to construct and manage bibliographies and publication citations in their reports and manuscripts. Then there is the searchable Research Facilities Database, which lists equipment and research facilities that are already available on campus. The database includes contact information to make it easier to access these expensive resources.

The site also lists various support services available to researchers, such as the data capture service for multiple choice questionnaire papers or survey responses. The video conferencing consultation support service is available to help researchers set up a video conference at UCT. The High Performance Computing service and systems provide multiple processors to enable the solving of advanced computation problems. Researchers are invited to give their input on the eResearch Discussion Board topics; to suggest more links; and to use the Feedback tool to submit suggestions and comments.

UCT staff members and postgraduate students (master's level and above) can access the site using their UCT username@wf and network password. The site can also be accessed off-campus through the Virtual Private Network.

The eResearch site is a step closer to the Research Portal that has been on the cards for many years. Putting together the Research Portal is a complex task that requires extensive planning, integration and consultation. The initial version of this portal will go live later this year.

In the interim, the eResearch site provides a solid foundation from which researchers can find researcher-specific information and resources. For progress updates on the development of the Research Portal, see the Research Portal News blog."

I still think the fonts are too small, and us over-50s will suffer - but we welcome your comments.  Via the feedback page, obviously!

Here is a useful post comparing what you get back from Google Citations vs ISI Web of Science: all of 41% higher citation count for this author.  Thanks AJC!

Most useful link for Humanities folk:

http://blogs.uct.ac.za/blog/celias/2012/02/13/how-do-researchers-in-the-humanities-use-information-resources

Peter Dunsby of Maths & Applied Maths here at UCT has shared his experiences of coping with only an iPad while on the international visit road - and it makes very interesting reading, simply from an "I didn't know you could do that!" perspective.

"Have a look at a few posts I wrote while on the road with the iPad last year. Plan to update them soon. 

• Post 1
• Post 2
• Post 3
• Post 4"

Now - if only ICTS could stop the constant demands for authentication, that make it painful to use an iPad on the UCT wireless network...!

 

 

A new tool in SciVal's Spotlight (ask the Research Office - Dr Dianne Bond - if you want a login) is under the "Explore Collaboration" tab.   

This brings up a world map with an overlay showing how many institutions in any given country UCT has collaborations with.  The following slideshow will illustrate what happens on a drilldown - taking Australia as a starting point.

In simple terms, it is possible to see - very quickly - just who UCT researchers collaborate with, where they are - and possible collaborative partners we may have missed.

I can actually see my car, too - good job, shows I was at work that day.

 

Seriously, and although UCT does supply a set of maps of campus, these are hard to find.

It is a whole lot simpler to simply use Google Maps directly - and the depth of coverage, and extent of naming, is incredible.  For Upper Campus.  Pity about the rest...B-)

 And yes, it did help me find the Menzies Building

The coverage goes right down to street views - where you can almost see people smoking weed in the bushes you know, walking about.  Great tool for nostalgic alumni to retrace their footsteps.

UCT has recently acquired the Scival Spotlight institutional evaluation tool from Elsevier, via a grant from the Carnegie Foundation: this allows graphical analysis of an institution's output in terms of "co-citation analysis", which allows the creation of "Competencies".  The tool allows one to drill down via graphics or tables, from a "whole of UCT" level, down to individual researchers - and to individual publications, h-index calculations and much, much more, given that we now also have Elsevier's Scopus - thank you , UCT Libraries!!!

IF the researchers are represented in a competency...which is not a given!  

However, what it does do at the institutional level is allow very quick identification of emerging vs established vs declining areas of scholarship, and what is most attractive is that it does it without regard to the kinds of straightjacket that makes such a nonsense of cross-, inter- and transdisciplinary research.

We will have fun in the years ahead.  It will also be available via the Research portal.  Meanwhile, here's a slideshow for your amusement!

Given that these days a fair bit of the business of academics here at UCT seems to consist of trying to find out how good we are, at least in terms of rating of our publications, it is useful to know that there are an increasing number of good ways of doing just this.

Thomson-Reuters' ISI Web of Science:
This is available via the Libraries site (and right here), is a tried and trusted means of seeing just who has published what, how often, and what their Hirsch, or h-index is.

Elsevier's Scopus database:
This is also newly available, via UCT Libraries' generosity, and can be accessed here.  It won't give you as high an h-index if you were publishing before 1996, because it doesn't do citations from before that - however, it has a wider coverage than WoS, so may find more papers.  It also has a MUCH better way of identifying papers by the same authors.

Google Scholar:
This is becoming increasingly useful these days - and, which will please all those software libertarians, is FREE! There is a useful Mozilla add-on for Scholar, which calculates h-indices for you.  Better still, there is

Google Scholar Citations:
With a little training, this will find ALL your publications, and immediately give you lifelong and 5-year h-indices - as well as an "i10 index", which is NOT another Hyundai, but "... is the number of publications with at least 10 citations". 

Incidentally, you will almost certainly get a significantly higher h-index via GS Citations than with the other two proprietary systems.

Another, far more Humanities- and even Computer Science-friendly option is 

Harzing's Publish or Perish:
This is "...a software program that retrieves and analyzes academic citations. It uses Google Scholar to obtain the raw citations, then analyzes these and presents the following statistics..."

And then, for those those who don't like the "pay for" options AND are in disciplines not well covered by the above offerings (Scopus is NOT good for Humanities, it turns out), AND who want alternative sorts of evaluations, there's...

AltMetrics! 
I played with this during Open Web 2.0 guru Cameron Neylon's very interesting talk at UCT recently under the auspices of SCAP, when I was able to determine during the talk (via iPad) that a certain story which shall not be mentioned in polite company, had garnered some 1560 mentions in Twitter and Facebook in just two months. A very good tool for assessing blog or other Web posting impact, it would appear - and here's a great blog on the subject, courtesy of my guru, AJ Cann, via Google+.

Cameron also mentioned Total-impact.org, dedicated to uncovering the "invisible impact of research", but I haven't played with that.

Celia's Blog here at UCT has a very useful list of AltMetrics as well. 

Article describing the AltMetrics movement:

The altmetrics movement is "...a sprawling constellation of projects and like-minded people working at research institutions, libraries, and publishers" - an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

SO there you are: a catalogue of means of tracking yourself (although auto-AltMetricking doesn't have same vaguely sinister ring that Auto-Googling does) and improving NRF rating assessments - and possibly your promotional prospects.  If you care.  And they'll all be available via the Research Portal.

 

 

 

After a good deal of crystallisation of ideas with the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) team in ICTS, I came up with the following concept slideshow:

Of course, there are several things wrong with it:first, that's not what it will actually LOOK like; second, various of the modules will probably end up being called something else; third, aspects of it willprobably change without notice, and new things will be added as great ideas occur to people - like "My Contracts", this very afternoon.