Hi everyone. I think we'll make a start now because it's 12 shop and we want to make sure we finish this on time and so that you can go off to do anything else you want. Thank you very much for coming along to this quick bytes talk. I'm cami Lee and I'm Joe Murray and we're both are from the University Library so the focus of today's session will be on giving you an overview of some of the tools that you can use when you want to look for research collaborators. So here's an outline of. What are we hope to cover in this session. We're going to look firstly at three tools provided by the university when you're looking for research collaborators the first one listed define a research database. It's a database that's created by the university's research portfolio the next two are items listed several and insights does our subscription sources are from the library so. I'll take you through a demo of all three sources just to give you an idea of how you can use them. I will then hand over the session to Michelle. Who will take you through some of the freely available sources that you can use to look for collaborators. We'll make sure that we have relief enough time at the end to answer any questions that you have but you know obviously if you have any questions as we're talking feel free to us and we will do our best to answer them for you. Okay so the first tool that. I want to show you is define a researcher database and as I mentioned before this is something that's provided by the university's research portfolio so. This is a tool you can use if you're trying to identify a risk researcher from within our University. I'm just going to go out of the powerpoints like now to take you through a live demo of this sauce so and we'll make these slides available to you if you're interested so let's see. I had got it up. Okay here it is so on this flight. I've given you a direct link to this page so on this page you can simply. If you don't know the name of a researcher you can always put in a search term related to the topic that you're interested in and you have the ability as well to filter it to the faculty that you want to or if you're simply looking for researchers across the various subjects and disciplines you can leave this box blank and you have the option as well to filter either by academic staff or if you're a HDR student you may want to connect with other students in which case you can simply select the HDR option so I'm just gonna do a very simple search for you so say.

I'm looking for potential collaborators on say the topic of climate change so I would just simply type in the word climate change but my spelling right. My screen up here is a little bit small so can quite see and I'm just gonna put that in double quotation marks so that it searches about that as a phrase I met change okay so it will then bring up for you. The various people who have a portfolio within this system so the word climate change will appear at some point in these records and as I said before if you wanted to then filter down to a specific subgroup you can do that so for example say. I want to look at who say maybe in the law faculty is researching on this topic. I can always filter that to the law faculty and then you'll get a smaller group of results for that so that's a fairly straightforward. I'll leave you to explore that in your own. I just to say if anyone here doesn't have a you know your own portfolio with this system you can get in touch with the research office for assistance in setting up. I guess the thing with looking for collaborators is that you know it's a good idea to also make yourself known so if you have a red card on the system there is also more chance of other people. Finding you as a potential collaborator. Such as something to bear in mind just going back to our dislikes now so that was the first tool. I want to just move on now to show you two products that the library has a subscription to so these are quite new subscriptions which we are excited about.

I'm not sure if any of you have had the chance to explore these tools but I'll take you through a demo of what they can do for you so the first one is called SciVal and it is a tool which takes its information from the libraries. Scopus database so Scopus is an interdisciplinary database. Though in reality it tends to have better coverage of the health and physical sciences. And if you're from the arts or humanities it will have some useful content for you but you will find it doesn't cover it as extensively as for the sciences such as something to bear in mind and I've put that up here for you as a reminder so with SciVal you can look for potential collaborators. If you already know a name of a person that you're thinking might be a good collaborator. You can search for them within the system and get an idea of how successful they have been in terms of impact who else they have published with and so on so forth on the very last point of the slide. I have given you two direct links one to the guidebook on how to use Cyril and the second link here the metrics guidebook. This is particularly useful. If you're trying to get a sense of you know the subtle metrics that you want to use whether you're going for a grant application you're applying for promotion or maybe you know just as a way to get a sense of how. Good a potential collaborator is you can look at that guidebook. And it will give you tips on which metrics to use when and why so. I'm going to take you through a live demo. Now let's drink some water so with SciVal you can either go directly from the URL of Rome Scopus and just to save time. I've already open and locked in. Oops that's not the one. I am going to save. I'll not insights sorry it's the Sun here. Okay so this is what it looks like when you log in so it gives you these three modules that you can work with are just a useful pointer for you. Even though it's got a collaboration module here this is really more suited.

If you're looking at collaboration at an institutional level so if you want to see for example how well this university has collaborated with. I don't know have it university. You can look at it from this module if as an individual researcher if you're looking for you know other individual researchers to collaborate with it's actually easier to find the information you need using this overview module so. I'm going to take you through a demo. Search on how you can do that. So the easiest thing particularly if you know you want to look for collaborators and you don't have any specific person in mind or maybe if you're trying to look for collaborators from a different discipline to your own in which case you may not be familiar with the names of people in the other discipline. What you can do is to click on this tab here my. Cyril so the my cycle tab effectively. What's as your own account so anything that you're interested in in terms of defining your own research area. You can do it through my. Sai will create a particular topic and then run the search across the rest of these modules so on my Cyril I'm going to click on research areas and then I'm going to click just to show you an example of what I had previously done. So these are five are topics that I had previously created topics that I'm interested in and that I want to find collaborators for so I'm going to do a live demo for you in terms of creating your own research area so when you're trying to find define a new research area you simply click on define new and then specify your research area so this is what is good about. Cyril it gives you that ability to specify your research level at the granular level that you want so for example say. I'm doing a topic on cyber bullying so I simply click on the word cyber bullying and what the system will do is it will search for the records from the database Scopus. It will look for the word cyber bullying from the title the abstract as well as the keywords of the the articles that are published in cyber and say for example.

I want to look for collaborators working on the topic of cyber bullying within the field of psychology so I can always just filter it to psychology. You don't appear that's sorry this is what I should have done. We need to specify your limit and then. I'm just going to give my new group a name that means something to me and I just put today's date so that I know when I created this group then I click. Save and finish ok so you can see at the top. It tells me that this group that I have created it's now available for use within cycle so now that I have this group I can simply just. I'm just going to click on it. Add to the selection panel and now. I'm going to come over to the rest of these modules to have a look at who the people are who have been publishing in this field so when I click on overview you can see it appears at the top of my defined research areas. Ok now by default when you bring it into overview it will show you what has been done by well within this university so if there have been people that have published in this area you will see by default. You'll bring this in now if you're looking for collaborators beyond this university maybe you want to see globally. You know who's published in this field and how effective they have been you can simply click on this link here authors and well it's got University of Sydney as the default. I'm going to change that to worldwide. Okay so it will list for you. The top 100 people who have published in this area based on the records that it's retrieving from the Scopus database so over here. You can do a range of things you can look at the different metrics so this one here the field weighted citation impact. This is quite a good one to use because it takes into account that different disciplines will have different citation behavior so the sciences for example may have more citation activity than people working in the arts and humanities so this calculates um the impact based on the discipline that you're in so that if you're actually searching for different potential collaborators across different disciplines this will take that into account for you so it's one of the really useful metrics to use so when you've got the names of the people in here you can then go in to have a quick look at their record just to see what their past.

Collaboration activity has been over here. I'm just going to click on researchers and groups so using the example of the person that is listed at the top here so Heidi van der Bosch if I click on researchers and groups I can simply just add her in as a researcher. Okay so she's appearing here okay so now that. I've listed her as as an individual entity I can then go on to look at her collaboration activity. Okay so this will give you an idea of you know your potential collaborators past collaboration activity. It gives you a breakdown of you. Know what sort of collaboration they have done at the institutional national as well as institutional level and then you can have a look at how successful these have been have the international collaborations for example received a high number of citations. Have they been published in you know the prestigious journals and so on so forth okay so I will leave you to explore that in your own time as I mentioned before in the slides that I have done. I have given you a link to these two sources and they are pretty comprehensive so you know if you're interested in using SciVal I do recommend that you have a look at both of these. I want to just wrap and I've just done for you some screenshots replicating the search that I have done oh and I forgot to mention you can also benchmark if potential collaborators against each other so this is a pretty cool tool that we have and the library is quite excited about this so that SciVal I want to just very quickly show you another sauce that we have so this is called insights and it's a product from Thomson Reuters.

It takes its records from web of science so those of you are looking in this science this area. You're probably familiar with this database. It's uh you know a multidisciplinary database as well but like Scopus. The coverage is much better for the health and physical sciences and again less so for the Arts and Humanities. That's it you will still find some useful information even if you're not from the scientists area. Yeah sorry are you will find them to some extent in some of the free freely available sources that we have in insights as well as Cyril the product that I have just shown you can actually find you know myth material there as well so if for example your research area was on. I don't know something gender or culture or something when you define your research area incisal you could put the wet gender culture and then limit it to apps and social science and it will bring up for you the researchers but just bear in mind that anything that it brings up for you. It's pulling the records directly from. Scopus or in the case of insights from web of science so the data is only as good as you know the original source becomes from but Michelle will take you through some of the other sources that you know may be useful for the arts and humanities okay so with insights. I'm just mindful I don't want to eat into Michelle's time so I'll show you just a very quick demo of how this works so it's pretty much the same as Scopus and that. It gives you the ability to look for potential collaborators but after two databases insights is probably more difficult to use. It doesn't have as much flexibility as Scopus but I'll show you a way that you can track potential collaborators so I'll sign up into insights so when you're looking for individual collaborators click on the people module one thing about this is that you have to at least know the name of a person working in the field in order to to find additional records so unlike SciVal where you could just put in your research area and it'll do the work for you.

There is no capability to do that within within insights so. I'm just going to use the example of that we had previously so had looked at someone can't hide Evander Bosch which we got from scoffers so over here because I know that she's working in the field of cyber bullying I can simply put her name in here and see what concept so under our searching by research network. I'm just going to put in her name and it shouldn't come up. Heidi and you can do other filtering options here so for example your time period so say I want to look at what she has been publishing in the last few years. Update my results. Okay so this will give you the researcher that you had put in with the names of people she has collaborated with and you can increase the number of so as assuming she's been very prolific and has published with a lot of people you will see the fill up. They're continually populating and each of the our collaborators that she has had dealings with you can then explore your individual records so it means that even if you don't know a lot of people in the field if you have just the one call name you can put that in look at who else they have collaborated with and then expand your search from there so as with our cyber insights we'll give you metrics that you can assess the person on so you know what sort of citations they have received from which journals and so forth and in the slides that are we have prepared for you yeah the insights indicators handbook that will again explain for you the useful metrics to use for whatever purpose. It is that you are wanting to do this collaboration on so. I will. I'll leave it here so I've just again done for you. Some step-by-step screenshots. On how are you. You can replicate that stitch. But that's now. Michelle's yeah so are the tree sources that I've covered so far are the ones that are provided by this university but as I mentioned before there's a lot of other freely available sources some of which may be more suited to the arts and humanities and Michelle will take you through some of these sources now.

Who had the question about was it. You had okay both. Tammy was talking about if you're looking at people based on their previous publications and if they won't necessarily turn up in scopus or web of science. I'm just an idea you could have a look at Google Scholar if see if they've got a profile there because a lot of people who sit without outside of those sounder basis might be listed there and you might get an idea of their previous publications and citations and collaborations looking at Google Scholar so anyway a quick aside but what I would like to talk to you about is other ways that you might find potential collaborators using social media and networking platforms that have been especially developed for academics so. I'm sure that you're all aware and familiar using social media but I think that it's worth a quick mention in this context the popularity of various social media platforms is a really great place to start in engaging with potential collaborators in 2014 University of Canberra did a study and they surveyed researchers who incorporate social media into their academic work and 83% of those people found that Twitter was the most useful social media platform. So how would you use Twitter to reach potential collaborators. Well firstly obviously follow colleagues known researchers in your field key industry players the people that you want to engage with be part of the conversation respond and engage and keep following those relevant individuals as you discover them and in turn they'll start following you in kind secondly use. Twitter to promote your research it allows you that immediate sense of reaching a relevant audience and the power of retweets will extend your research and expand your networks and thirdly make use of Twitter hashtags hashtags are really useful for following tweets on a particular subject for targeting specific audiences and for community building.

There are a couple of set examples up here you can search for and use general academic hashtags for example. ECR chat is up there and another example that I found specific to a field for any historians here is Twitter story ins but you can just go into directories and find Twitter hashtags that might be relevant to your field. The other thing that's useful that Twitter hashtags is that most conferences will also have their own hashtag. So make use of those when you attend just to join in discussions and make connections with your peers that can go beyond the scope of the conference okay. So it's social media out of the way. I just like to introduce you to a few platforms that are available. They've being developed specifically for academics so the first platform. I'd like to show you is called. Pyrus Pyrus is an initiative of the University of Warwick here and it was purpose-built for connecting researchers. Who are looking for collaborators. So basically you can see here you create a profile include your research areas your methodologies and you list your collaboration interests the pyrrha system will then match your profile to relevant collaborators and you can also do your own searches and find people that you think might be of interest and basically then it's up to you to get in contact with those individuals and connect over research or any collaboration opportunities that you think might be relevant so who's using. Pyrus it's open to all researchers but the bulk of the users seem to be research students and early career researchers the Pyrus website tells us that 60% of users are in field of humanities and 40% are science and technology related researchers. And they mainly seem to be from the UK US and Europe okay so the next platform is ResearchGate. ResearchGate was started in 2008 by choose science researchers with the intention of helping scientists connect share the results and knowledge.

Today it's used by researchers across many fields but again the highest numbers still use seem to be in science technology when you join. ResearchGate just like these other online systems you set up a profile list your research areas but with ResearchGate. It also can ask you to upload and share your publications you can search for fellow researchers and also explore their publications they have other interactive elements in this including group discussions and also there's a Q&A session section. You can see up there where researchers can post questions so you can go there if you have any burning questions or help out. Fellow researchers with answers another platform is academia and it's incredibly similar to research gates but it has a high proportion of users who are in the arts and humanities. Social Sciences areas again you can search for and follow researchers and topics. You'll then get automated suggestions of people to follow and like research gates this. The main focus of this is for you. To upload or share publications academia also has a feature where you can post draft papers and request feedback from users an auntie one. That's slightly different. Mendeley web this is mainly a bibliographic manager just like EndNote that you're probably familiar with however it does have an interactive component. That might assist you in identifying potential collaborators. You can search the people directory and follow those of interests you can join or create groups joining public discussions and share papers you can also create invitation-only groups for any collaborative work. Okay so as you probably noticed many of those platforms encourage users to upload and share publications so. I just thought it was worth a quick word of caution about that before you do start uploading or sharing. Please check your publishers policy relating to archiving your work on the wave and open access repository one example of a this sort of policy is a publisher.

Might you to share or upload a preprint of your work but not the post print or the publishers PDF version and also different publishers have wildly different policies on this and also the policies might vary according to the journal even by the same publisher. So please check this before you start. Engaging in this activity obviously you'll find that information. In your publisher agreement document there's also an online database called sherpa/romeo that collects and summarizes all of those publisher policies. And of course you can get in touch with the academic liaison librarian if you can't find it or you just want some guidance on that ok so we hope this session has given you some ideas on ways that you can find and interact with potential collaborators. So it's now up to you to decide which of those tools you think might be useful for you and go away and explore and I guess even if those efforts don't result in direct research. Collaboration just remember that you will be collaborating in that. Broadest sense of the word through ideas sharing and resource sharing and networking and. I hope you like the this site as well. Now go academics. You can always join this so kami and I will post these slides up with a list of everything that we've talked about.