Tagged / publications

Research Ontology or Find an Expert!

Guidance

The new publication management system will be introduced over the summer and become the single user interface for academics with their web profiles and such things as BURO.  This project is in syncs with the introduction of the new content management system within BU which will transform our web presence.  As part of both these projects we plan to introduce a ‘find an expert’ function both for internal and external use.  We need to liberate academics to collaborate openly and freely within BU.  One of the inhibitors at the moment is actually finding someone to collaborate with!  So the find an expert function will have real power to help staff find potential expertise within BU with which to work.

The problem is that any such system is only as good as the keywords used to describe each individual’s research; we all refer to ourselves and our work via a plethora of different terms.  A basic ontology of subjects and research fields provides on solution.  Staff pick the words within the ontology which best fits their expertise.  There are lots of research ontology’s we could use as the starting point.  For example the Library of Congress Subject Headings is one of the best with good coverage of all subjects but is very granular for BU.  There are 150 different types of sociology for example!  Another option is the Science-Metrix which has three levels and 176 sub-fields.  This is much more manageable and could be modified to incorporate our own terms such as the ten BU Research Themes.

I would be interested to have your thoughts on this matter.  A list of the 176 sub-fields from the Science-Metrix ontology is shown below.  How would you describe your own research via such a system?  Are there alternative ontology’s we could use?  Your comments and ideas would be very welcome, but soon please since we have to take a decision on this shortly!

Unlocking Attitudes to Open Access

Guidance

open access logo, Public Library of Science Emma Crowley and David Ball, Student and Academic Services, discuss open access publishing, and the role of the institutional repository BURO, and launch a short staff survey on open access publishing…

 

  • What do you understand by Open Access? 
  • Do you deposit your research outputs in BURO, BU’s online repository? 
  • Who owns the copyright to your research papers?
  • Would you consider publishing in an Open Access Journal? 

At BU these are exciting times for research and one of the key ways of ensuring that your work has impact is to make it available Open Access.  Most of you will be familiar with BURO, our online research repository, and are hopefully contributing your research outputs on a regular basis as per BU’s Academic Publications Policy.  As a strategic part of your personal research processes it is essential that you retain your own pre-print (pre peer review) and post-print (post peer review) copies of your journal articles as most publishers will allow you to make either of these formats available open access, but not the branded publisher PDF.  You can check copyright permissions in BURO using the Sherpa Romeo tool.    

So, how do we know how impactful our research really is?  The answer to this challenging question, discussed at length at this week’s Developing and Assessing Impact for the REF Conference, is not necessarily here, but clearly research that is being viewed and downloaded by large numbers of global web users has a greater chance of influencing policy and attracting more citations.  Below are the 3 most downloaded full text journal articles in BURO during the last quarter.  You can even see which search terms people are using to find your work. 

Buhalis, D. and Law, R., 2008. Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet – The state of eTourism research. Tourism Management, 29 (4), pp. 609-623. 517 Downloads

Edwards, J. and Hartwell, H., 2006. Hospital food service: a comparative analysis of systems and introducing the ‘Steamplicity’ concept. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, 19 (6), pp. 421-430. 506 Downloads

van Teijlingen, E. and Hundley, V., 2001. The Importance of Pilot Studies. Social Research Update (35), pp. 1-4. 405 Downloads

In addition to BURO BU recently launched its own Open Access Publication Fund that will support BU academics in publishing their research in Open Access journals, where a fee is required to publish, but everyone can view your article.

We would be very grateful if you could participate in a short survey, the results of which will help inform BU strategy on Open Access and wider developments for Open Access in UK HE.  There is only one page of questions which will take you less than 10 minutes to complete.  The survey will remain open until Monday 30th June.

Please note: if you experience any technical difficulties using the survey please contact Learning Technology