Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Today one of my co-editors of the Journal of Asian Midwives emailed me to announce that our journal has been accepted for inclusion by Scopus.
Scopus, which is owned by the publishing house Elsevier, is the world’s largest electronic database of peer-reviewed literature. The Scopus assessors of our application made some very nice comments about the Journal of Asian Midwives, for example that it:
“consistently includes articles that are academically sound and relevant to an international academic or professional audience in the field. The journal has scholarly relevance as evidenced by citations in other journals currently covered by Scopus… The journal has clear aims and scope/journal policies that are consistent with the journal’s content. Although the scope of this journal is narrow, it addresses the need of an important niche audience.”
We are very proud of this achievement and we, as editors (Prof. Rafat Jan, Ms. Kiran Mubeen, Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, with editorial assistant Ms. Abeer Musaddique), thank all our supporters, especially the library staff at The Aga Khan University in Pakistan, our reviewers, our authors and of course, you, our readers! I personally like to thank our former CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health) PhD student Dr. Sheetal Sharma for suggesting many years ago that I might like to help this, at the time, new journal. It is a proper well-run peer-reviewed journal, and I know that from personal experience, as a few years ago one of the papers on which I am a co-author was rejected after peer review by ‘my’ journal!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)
Co-editor Journal of Asian Midwives
I wanted to share with you some interesting academic impact stats based on BU’s publications. Looking at the period 2012 to date:
Although BU is tracking below the UK average on these measures, it is not far below and BU’s performance is increasing significantly each year.
For advice on publishing you can speak with Pengpeng Hatch in RKEO or your Faculty Librarian.
The aim of these workshops is to support academic colleagues to learn more about Scopus and BRIAN, and how they can use these systems to monitor their publication impact, identify where to publish, identify potential collaborators and also to help them to ensure their Scopus and BRIAN profiles are up to date and optimised. Matthew Bennett will do an initial presentation about the two systems and this will be followed with the opportunity for participants to look through their own Scopus and BRIAN profiles together with Library and RKEDO (formerly RDU) staff.
They will take place on both the Lansdowne and Talbot Campuses on the following dates:
15 October 10am – 11am CG21 Talbot Campus
23 October 2:30pm – 3:30pm S102 Lansdowne Campus
31 October 9am – 10am S102 Lansdowne Campus
Please book a place if you would like to attend by following this link
The aim of these workshops is to support academic colleagues to learn more about Scopus and BRIAN, and how they can use these systems to monitor their publication impact, identify where to publish, identify potential collaborators and also to help them to ensure their Scopus and BRIAN profiles are up to date and optimised. Matthew Bennett will do an initial presentation about the two systems and this will be followed with the opportunity for participants to look through their own Scopus and BRIAN profiles together with Library and RKEDO (formerly RDU) staff.
They will take place on both the Lansdowne and Talbot Campuses on the following dates:
1 October 10am – 11am CG21 Talbot Campus
10 October 2:30pm – 3:30pm S102 Lansdowne Campus
15 October 10am – 11am CG21 Talbot Campus
23 October 2:30pm – 3:30pm S102 Lansdowne Campus
31 October 9am – 10am S102 Lansdowne Campus
Please book a place if you would like to attend by following this link
The aim of these workshops is to support academic colleagues to learn more about Scopus and BRIAN, and how they can use these systems to monitor their publication impact, identify where to publish, identify potential collaborators and also to help them to ensure their Scopus and BRIAN profiles are up to date and optimised. Matthew Bennett will do an initial presentation about the two systems and this will be followed with the opportunity for participants to look through their own Scopus and BRIAN profiles together with Library and RKEDO (formerly RDU) staff.
They will take place on both the Lansdowne and Talbot Campuses on the following dates:
1 October 10am – 11am CG21 Talbot Campus
10 October 2:30pm – 3:30pm S102 Lansdowne Campus
15 October 10am – 11am CG21 Talbot Campus
23 October 2:30pm – 3:30pm S102 Lansdowne Campus
31 October 9am – 10am S102 Lansdowne Campus
Please book a place if you would like to attend by following this link
Publishing in journals covered by the main external publication databases, such as Scopus and the Web of Science, will give your research greater visibility and will ensure that citations received are counted in your citation metrics (for example, in your Scopus H-index). The journals that tend to be covered by these external databases are the ones produced by the big publishing houses – Wiley-Blackwell, Elsevier, Springer, etc. These journals are likely to have larger readerships and greater institutional subscriptions than journals published by smaller publishers, which will increase the potential visibility of your research and therefore the potential citations/downloads.
I’d like to introduce you to Symplectic Elements – our soon-to-be new research management system. You might have heard colleagues talking about Symplectic Elements for a while now – the supplier (Symplectic Ltd) first visited BU to demonstrate the application in August 2009. I’m pleased to announced that we have now signed the contract with Symplectic and are in discussions with the supplier to determine the implementation plan. The aim is to have the system up and running this autumn.
Symplectic Elements is already used by lots of other UK universities, including Imperial College, Oxford, Exeter, Cambridge, UCL and Plymouth.
So what is Symplectic Elements and what benefits will it bring to BU? Symplectic Elements is a research management system. It will not replace any of our existing BU systems (such as BURO or RED) but it will link to them and join them together, sharing data between the systems. This means that BU staff will be able to add information to Symplectic Elements and it will be used in multiple systems. You will also be able to access research information from a single place. A single point of data entry will enable research information (such as publications data) to be automatically formatted and reused in other forums, such as in BU’s open access repository (BURO) and the BU staff profile webpages, without the need for duplicate or additional data entry. You will also be able to query data that appears to be missing or incorrect.
Symplectic Elements will provide academics with a simple ‘dashboard’ from which to view and manage their research information. This will also help when BU begins compiling data to meet the requirements of the REF.
How will Symplectic Elements link with the existing systems?
Timeframe for implementation: A broad steering group of representatives from across BU’s Schools and Professional Services has been formed to help feed into and guide the system’s implementation. A core project management group is currently overseeing the day-to-day tasks and will manage the initial data integration and checking. A meeting with the suppliers is scheduled for the end of the month. The system is due to go live in autumn 2011.
Further updates about Symplectic Elements will be posted on the BU Research Blog in due course!