Summer researcher support sessions

We've got a new block of researcher support sessions coming up this summer and we're really excited about some new workshops. You'll find the full list of workshops in the calendar on this blog, you can have a look at the picture below or be in touch to get a pdf or hard copy sent to you. Please join us if you can and share the invitation widely.

Fountains Summer Opening Hours

Summer holidays are not far off. Even if you, as an academic, may well see summer holidays as a prime time to buckle down on your research, many YSJ students will be off campus for the summer. For that reason, Fountains Learning Centre will have different opening hours starting from Monday 1 June. The most significant difference is that floors 1 and 2 will shut at 5PM on a Friday and the ground floor will remain open til 7PM on a Friday for self-service use.

Complete information on what bits of the building are open when can be found on ILS' website.

Remember, your Academic Liaison Librarian will also be around for most of the summer and it's a great time to catch up with us. Come in for a tutorial so we can tell you about new resources in your discipline, changes to search tools, reference management ideas or anything else you might need.

Do you need to just write?

ILS' researcher support sessions fit in nicely with the new Research Skills Development programme run by the Academic Development Directorate. The following guest post, about a new programme offered by the ADD to help you get writing, is by post-graduate researcher Charlotte Haines-Lyon.

Writing is often argued to be at the heart of research but it rarely comes easily, especially when there are so many other things to do.

York St John’s is trying a Just Write session. This is a quiet hour in which you can come along and get writing – it might be writing up notes after reading or fieldwork, finishing off that chapter, or getting to grips with an abstract. Whatever it is come along to Room FT113 at 12 noon with your writing implements – or just use one of the many computers provided.

If you are facing a bit of writers block, then we will also be running “Bring a Thing” sessions. Again they will last one hour, but these will include short exercises to get you writing. Bring a blank page, a pencil, typing fingers, something you are stuck on, a single word. . . just come along with some lunch and enjoy.

Hope to see you there!

Just Write

• Dates: 11^th May, 1^st June, 6^th July
• Time: 12:00 – 13:00
• Room: FT113

Bring a Thing

• Dates: 18^th May, 15^th June
• Time: 12:00 – 13:00 
• Room: FT113

For further information please contact:

• Dr. Victoria Carpenter
• Charlotte Haines Lyon (c.haineslyon@yorksj.ac.uk)

Open Library of Humanities

A consortium of libraries and academics has banded together to create a platform (or what they're called a mega-journal) to support gold open access  in the Humanities. It's called the Open Library of Humanities and there are already an array of editors and referees in place, so anything published in the library will be subject to double-blind peer review and editorial scrutiny. They plan to launch and host 5 new open access journals in September 2015 and are currently welcoming any other OA journals in the humanities that might like to join up. More about the OLH plans and model can be found here.

What's interesting about this model is that there will be no Article Processing Charge (APC) for publishing in the journals. Because the economics of the Humanities are different from other disciplines in the natural and social sciences, the OLH recognises that coming up with the requisite £600-£2000 to publish in gold OA journals isn't going to be possible for most humanities researchers. There's a major funding agreement in place with JISC, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and an institutional subscription model from universities (Leah's alma mater, Wesleyan, is one of the most recent universities to sign up).

The names and institutional affiliations of the librarians consulting on the project are impressive. Does it look like something that's going to be useful in your discipline?

OpenLibHums Twitter feed.

Elsevier's Open Access Policies

Elsevier have updated their policies on green open access and there has been some initial, critical reaction (suprised?) which you can read about on this scholarly communication blog. If you'd like to talk more about what green open access means to you at YSJ and how our research repository can help improve the reach and impact of your research, please come along to ILS' next Researcher Support session on RaY, Thursday 7 May at 9:00AM in DG 104.

More on impact factors and complementary metrics

As promised in the most recent post, here is the presentation we gave on impact factors, altmetrics, and all that jazz.

Impact factor, altmetrics etc. from Information Learning Services, York St John University

There have been various updates in this area this week, especially when it comes to altmetrics. The company that runs this service announced some changes in the way they display metrics data to users. Some researchers, having looked into this further, are worried that it will affect their ability to evaluate how their work is being used. We're going to look into this more ourselves, but it is clear that measuring research impact and influence has moved far beyond the traditional journal impact factor already.

Impact factor, altmetrics, and all that jazz

This week we will be running a support session on impact factors, altmetrics and related topics. It is likely you will hear these terms used in relation to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and on other occasions when the impact and influence of your research is assessed. If you would like to find out more about these concepts and measures (and all have their supporters and critics), come along to the library at 9am on Tuesday 28th April. Later this week, we will publish a fuller outline here. In the meantime, here is a presentation we gave to the PostGraduate Research Supervisor's Forum a few months ago along similar lines.

Measuring Research Impact from YSJ_ILS