Dissemination
Introduction
The Library is able to help researchers disseminate their research findings and improve their research impact.
Publication channels
Ulrichs
For information on over 300,000 journals world-wide, including, where appropriate, their impact factor, use Ulrichs Global Serials Directory. This is a great place to start when looking for relevant journals in your field.
Impact factors & Journal rankings
To find out which journals have the highest ‘impact’ in your field, there are a number of tools you can use.
- Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports provides impact factors for about 10,000 scholarly journals. An impact factor is the number of times a journal has been cited in the last two years, divided by the number of articles it published during that period.
- Elsevier’s SCOPUS (and freely available Scimago Journal & Country Rank) provide similar rankings for about 17,000 scholarly journals. Their principle measure is the Scimago Journal Rank (SJR). This is similar to the impact factor, but with greater weight being assigned to citations from journals that are themselves more highly cited.
- Ann Wil-Harzing’s Publish or Perish is a freely available tool that provides citation data for all journals based on Google Scholar citation information. If the journal you are interested in is not covered by the Journal Citation Reports or SCOPUS, this database is for you.
What is Open Access?
The Open Access movement is based upon the key principle that publicly funded research should be made publicly available and as widely accessible as possible. Open Access material is free at point of access, without barriers of subscription or registration.
Why should I bother?
Research has shown that when comparing open access articles and non-open access articles in the same journal/year open access articles have substantially better citation rates. To view this research in detail please see: The effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact: a bibliography of studies
The Research Information Network (RIN) have produced a booklet "Getting your feet wet: an introduction to Open Access" which provides a good overview of Open Access and its benefits.
What do research funders say?
Many research funders now have Open Access (OA) policies which make funding subject to the condition that outputs are made open access in some way. All seven of the Research Councils in the RCUK have some form of self-archiving mandate.
See the Juliet Directory for a list of funders which have such policies can be found at: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/index.php
If your research is funded by a funder with an OA policy, it is very important that you read their policy carefully. Not complying with funding conditions could potentially affect future grants and many research funders have begun to monitor this issue more closely.
What are my options?
- Publish in an Open Access Journal. The Directory of Open Access Journals will reveal titles in your field.
- Publish in a closed access journal and then deposit your paper in the Institutional Repository. You may wish to check the RoMEO database to ensure that the publisher has a ‘Repository-friendly’ policy.
Still not sure?
There are still many misunderstandings and concerns about Open Access and BioMed Central have produced a useful web page, (Mis)Leading Open Access Myths, which helps address these.
Don't under-estimate the power of social media as a 'publication' channel. There are many scholarly versions of popular social networking sites. These can help you:
- Seek opportunities for collaboration
- Solve a problem
- Improve your visibility and therefore your career prospects
Which social media networking tools should I consider?
The tool(s) you use will depend on your workflow and to some extent your discipline. Find out where other researchers in your field hang out and join the appropriate network. Start by looking in the following networks:
- LinkedIn groups
- Community of Science or Researchgate
- ‘social’ networks e.g. Google Plus, Twitter or Facebook
Bibliometrics for choosing where to publish
To help you decide where to publish your research findings, you may wish to use bibliometric tools. There are various measures that can help assess which are the best journals to publish in including citation counts (how often a journal is cited), Journal Impact Factors (average cites per paper), and Immediacy Index (how quickly a journal is cited). There are also a number of tools that can provide these calculations including Journal Citation Reports, SCOPUS, Scimago Journal and Country Rank and Publish or Perish.
We offer workshops for both staff and research students to enable you to decide which are the best measures for you and to learn more. You can also make an appointment with your Academic Librarian to discuss bibliometrics individually.
Workshops for StaffWorkshops for PGR studentsBibliometrics for assessing your own research impact
You can use citation analysis tools to help you demonstrate the impact your research has made. Web of Science, SCOPUS and Publish or Perish all show the number of times individual papers have been cited.
The same three tools can be used to evaluate the impact of an individual author's work. An increasingly common measure in this regard is the h-index. Your h-index is the number of papers you have published (h) that have at least h citations.
Thus, you have an h-index of 10 if you have 10 papers that have been cited at least 10 times, but not yet 11 papers that have been cited 11 times.
For more information about bibliometrics, see the online tutorial provided by MYRi or follow the easy step-by-step instructions for calculating your h-index.
All research-active Loughborough University staff are now asked to generate themselves a Google Scholar Citation Profile.
Steps for Calculating Your H-IndexInstructions for setting up your Google Scholar Citation ProfileInstitutional Repository
Loughborough’s Institutional Repository is an online collection of its research output. It includes over 9000 full-text journal papers, book chapters, conference papers, theses and even audiovisual material.
View our Institional RepositoryCopyright advice for researchers
All researchers are both users and creators of copyright works.
As users, you will need to ensure you have the right to reproduce copyright material in the publications you produce. For more information see the University Copyright pages.
As creators, you should think carefully about the rights you need to retain (for example to make your paper available on the Institutional Repository) and those you can either licence or transfer away. For more information, see the Institutional Repository's Copyright Advice.
The Library offers a Copyright and your thesis course for Postgraduate researchers.
Avoiding plagiarism
Whilst plagiarism is often seen as a student issue, researchers at all levels have to guard against accusations of plagiarising another's work. We offer workshops to develop greater understanding of the issue of plagiarism, as well as how to develop strategies to avoid accidentally passing off another's work as your own. You can also discuss the matter with you Academic Librarian.
Describing your work for greater visibility
One way of increasing your citation counts for research outputs, such as journal articles, is by describing them with the most appropriate keywords. Library staff are used to choosing subject headings for books, as well as advising users on the best keywords to use to find articles in databases. If you would like us to help you to assign keywords to your research outputs to raise their ranking in search engines and databases, please contact your Academic Librarian.