ALISS Quarterly October 2012

Volume 8, No. 1 ISSN 17479258October 2012

ALISS QuarterlyAssociation of Librarians and Information professionals in the Social Sciences

Special issue: Supporting diverse student and library user

populations.

Transitions to Higher Education

University of York, University of Bradford.

Teaching and Learning

Neuro linguistic programming, online tutorials for researchers.

Research Support

Introduction to bibliometrics, Twitter.

Open Access

Open access and libraries, the Social Sciences Directory.PRO

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ALISS Quarterly Vol. 8 Number 1 October 2012 © The authors

Each article is copyrighted to its author(s) and all rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or data retrieval system without prior written permission from the author(s) and full acknowledgement to ALISS.

Editor: Heather Dawson [email protected]

Published by ALISS.

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ALISS Quarterly Volume 8 no. 1 October 2012

Special issue: Supporting diverse student and library user populations.

EditorialHeather Dawson

Transitions to Higher Education

Widening participation activities at University of York Library Tony Wilson and Martin Wilkinson, JB Morrell Library, University of York

Plagiarism Avoidance for New Students: Smoothing the transition into Higher EducationAnne Costigan and Sarah George, Subject librarians University of Bradford

Teaching and Learning

Effective Learning by using Neuro Linguistic ProgrammingLiz Almond, Educational Consultant and Coach

Collaboratively creating a reusable and repurposable online tutorial: The challenge of meeting the disparate needs of researchersJenny Coombs (University of Nottingham), Chris Bark (Coventry University), Elizabeth Martin (De Montfort University), Wendy Stanton (University of Nottingham), Ruth Stubbings (Loughborough University), Judy Thompson (Coventry University) Helen Young (Loughborough University)

Research SupportAn introduction to citation analysisRobin Stinson, Subject Librarian for the Social Sciences, University of East London

Development of a Twitter (or a Tweeter)?Megan Redmond, London Metropolitan University library

Open AccessRegulation and reality: experiences of a ‘gold’ open access social sciences publisherDan Scott, Founder and Director, Social Sciences Directory Limited

What role will academic libraries play in moving towards an open access future? SAGE publishes report following roundtable in association with the British LibraryMithu Lucraft, SAGE Publications

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ALISS Quarterly 8 (1) October 2012


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EditorialWelcome to the latest edition of ALISS Quarterly. It has been published by ALISS (Association of Librarians and Information Professionals in the Social Sciences).

This special issue is based upon our summer conference which was held at the University of Coventry in August 2012 and focussed on the topic of supporting diverse student populations. This was interpreted widely to include ‘non-traditional students’ as well as black and ethnic minorities and LGBT groups. Speakers represented a range of UK higher educational establishments. They offered insight into the issues at stake and the way in which they had faced the challenges, providing practical insight into different methods and projects.

See the main aliss website at http://www.alissnet.org.uk/Display.aspx?id=10737418259 to download the full papers. They include:

Ethnicity and study skills: active intervention in the library settingSuzanne White and Lisa LawrenceSubject Librarians, Coventry University.

https://www.slideshare.net/heatherdawson/ethnicity-and-study-skills-active-intervention-in-the-library-setting/edit?src=editall

This paper described a project using roving student helpers to support British BME students. The initiative arose out of a national concern about the underachievement of this group. A cross-university group was set up to investigate what could be done. It found the lack of progression was multi-causal and students could not be classed together in one group. The library decided to recruit roving study support assistants to provide active intervention and help. Four students were employed as an initial project in 2009. They could not recruit BME students directly due to race legislation, but candidates and their referees were told to provide statements of their commitment to the university diversity policy. Initially they were recruited for 8 weeks at the start of term for the hours 11-2, 5-7 Monday-Friday. They supplemented 3 static library enquiry desks and an IT desk in the library. They were given a handbook and training and each wore a coloured t-shirt. Positive aspects of the scheme were that, according to evaluation questionnaires, students found approaching their peers easier than library staff. They bridged the gap between the existing desks and other areas of the library and queues at desks were reduced. Challenges faced included: timescales needed for writing an appropriate job description were longer than expected. University procedures (for purchasing t-shirts from approved suppliers) needed to be followed correctly. The helpers required supervision and training.

The system is now embedded and the helpers have been used to promote the library in departmental orientation sessions. They have also been used in clips on Moodle encouraging students to use the library.


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Celebrating diversity

LGBT history month library exhibitionFebruary 2012Anne-Marie Hayes Coventry University.

http://www.slideshare.net/heatherdawson/celebrating-diversity-lgbt-history-month-library-exhibition

This presentation described how the library collaborated with the Art department to mount a student exhibition in the library. This was planned between November 2011-Jan 2012 by the subject librarian who briefed the students on what was acceptable for a public area and helped produce a catalogue for them. Students welcomed the opportunity to have a free public exhibition. It also promoted LGBT issues in a widely used area of the university.

Using Elluminate to deliver library training to distance/ part time learnersHelen Clough Learning and Teaching Librarian, The Open University.

http://www.slideshare.net/helenalex

Elluminate was originally introduced in 2006 with 2 librarians delivering web based training. Since 2008 it has been used to as a web based conferencing tool accessible for OU students (and some alumni) via the VLE Moodle. The presentation explained the challenges and successes of the implementation . It described how the staff were trained and the organisation of the sessions for students. It concluded with a summary of how it might be expanded in the future.

Library support for international students Helen Ireland, University of Warwick.

http://www.slideshare.net/heatherdawson/library-support-for-international-students

This presentation provided background on Helen’s work in supporting students at Warwick University. 30% Of all Warwick students are international students

Common problems faced by them include: culture shock, language shock, academic shock (different learning styles and previous study experience), different experiences of libraries. Many are under pressure to succeed but may need time to get up to speed. They may experience frustration as they are used to being at the top of the pile and suddenly feel they’re at the bottom. She argued that the library can help overcome these by offering: a friendly welcome, good guidance, online tutorials and videos, face-to-face and email support. However we should beware of stereotyping or making international students feel “special”. We need to help them to feel part of the whole student body. She also emphasised the need to manage expectations to have clear and realistic information on Library webpages about what is on offer, and how much help is available, ideally visible before arrival. Good items to include on webpages are links to basic information about how the library works, such as “Get Started” programmes, links to information on UK study skills and academic writing and information skills training at appropriate levels.

In order to achieve this, Warwick University has created a working group focussing on international students . It was formed in 2006 and widened in 2007. Membership is drawn from all areas of the Library. They have regular meetings and report to Library


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management. The group’s achievements include

Library Strategy for International Students•Library web page for international students •Library jargon list (List of useful words)•Cultural awareness sessions•Staff training – open days, small group training sessions•Liaison with International Office•Liaison with Centre for Applied Linguistics over library sessions for pre-sessional •

students, involving staff from all areas of the LibrarySurvey of international students carried out in 2011•

Many if these initiatives have also helped home students who are confused at first by library procedures and jargon and may need one to one support. However she emphasised that special patience does need to be shown with international students who

Are working in a second language which slows things down •Postgraduates may have been taught in a different way in their first degree and find •

it hard to adjust to UK study patternsMany are very focused on their work and may come across as impatient•We may misinterpret confusion or tension and see it as rudeness•Loneliness or disorientation may be greater than for home students•

Online learning: Can a generic tutorial meet the disparate needs of researchers? Jenny Coombs- University of Nottingham

http://www.slideshare.net/heatherdawson/online-learning-can-a-generic-tutorial-meet-the-disparate-needs-of-researchers

This paper described the creation of an online open access information skills tutorial for researchers by a consortium of East Midlands Universities based in Loughborough, Nottingham, Coventry and De Montfort. The aim was to provide a viable reusable package. It is described more fully in a paper later in this issue. See the tutorials on these websites

http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/emrsg/http://cuba.coventry.ac.uk/emrsg/

Supporting non-traditional students at the university of East London Simone Ngozi Okolo, Academic Services and Skills ManagerRobin Stinson, Subject Librarian – Social Sciences

http://www.slideshare.net/heatherdawson/library-services-for-nontraditional-students-at-uel

This presentation described work on the New Beginnings programme which was originated to address concerns about the non-take-up of HE in local east London boroughs. Mainly Newham, Barking and Dagenham. It was originally a 12 week part time course (which started in 2001) aimed at widening participation from both ethnic minority and white working class communities. It aimed to prepare students for university study. Over the years entry to the course has become more stringent due to high drop put rates


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but it is still geared towards widening participation. Library participation has expanded from a one hour session to more focused 3 one hour sessions.

Library induction is aimed at increasing confidence amongst the students. Varied methods are used to increase interest as many students have a lower boredom threshold. It aims to give the students enough knowledge to complete specific assignments. Time is short so care is taken not to overload them with information.

Interactivity with quizzes and PRS clickers is a priority. They act as an ice breaker. They also make questions and answers anonymous and allow people to raise questions. One to one sessions are also offered. Some of the students also have the opportunity to meet McNair students (PhD students from USA who come from non-traditional backgrounds). They have also developed an online infoskills programme. http://infoskills.uelconnect.org.uk/. This features talking heads from students explaining how they use the programme. Feedback is collected via a variety of methods, evaluation, post it notes.

Challenges – classes can be large, very mixed ability. Timing of sessions is crucial and involves close collaboration with academic staff.

This issue is based upon the conference it includes a fuller paper on the East Midland online tutorial for researchers. Other sections cover the need to offer support for students managing the transition into higher education (including the description of a tutorial designed to help them cope with citing, referencing and plagiarism which has been developed in Bradford); supporting diverse teaching and learning needs through innovative methods (neuro linguistic programming, online tutorials); support for researchers (in using bibliometrics). Finally the issue concludes with two articles on the associated issue of libraries and support for open access.

We hope you enjoy the issue!

Keep up to date with our website at http://www.alissnet.org.uk

We also have a new twitter channel where you can keep up to date with our latest activities. http://twitter.com/aliss_info we are using it to highlight weekly listings of new social science websites a

Remember that you can also keep up to date with ALISS news by subscribing to our free electronic mailing list LIS_SOCIAL SCIENCE at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/LIS-SOCIALSCIENCE.html . Or consulting our website at: http://www.alissnet.org.uk

Heather Dawson.ALISS Secretary


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Widening Participation activities at University of York LibraryTony Wilson and Martin Wilkinson, JB Morrell Library, University of York [email protected] [email protected]

IntroductionWidening Participation (WP) is an integral part of the University of York’s institutional strategy and a key element in the services that the University Library provides to the wider community at both a local and a national level.

WP is a discrete Functional Area within the Library’s Academic Liaison team with increasing resource being directed to providing a coherent offering to schools and colleges. Librarians deliver face-to-face sessions, on and off-site, at varying levels either as Library-only programmes or as part of larger events organised by the University’s central WP Office.

This article explains the range and level of activities we are involved in and a look at possible future developments for our programmes.

York’s WP team: Martin Wilkinson, Clare Ackerley, Tony Wilson and Kirsty Whitehead

Developing Independent LearningThe Library at the University of York has always welcomed visitors from schools and colleges and has been happy to offer guidance to local sixth form students who wish to use the Library as a reference Library for their research. However, since 2009 the Library has developed a close working relationship with the University’s central Widening Participation and Student Admissions teams. This closer working relationship has resulted in the development of a number of different workshops and initiatives aimed at supporting students at school and college to prepare for higher education.

There have been a wide range of events that library staff have contributed to over the last four years but this article will focus on three of the main initiatives:

Developing Independent Learning Day (DIL)The Developing Independent Learning Day was the first event that library, widening participation, learning enhancement and centre for lifelong learning colleagues collaborated upon. The mission was to create an event which would help students to bridge the gap between further and higher education. The first event was targeted at schools and colleges in the University’s School and Colleges Network. The Library element of the day comprised of a one hour workshop covering sources available at university and how this may differ to sixth form libraries and study, effective Google searching but also looking beyond Google to Google Scholar and Subject Gateways. The workshop concluded with an evaluating websites activity. The workshop was followed by a Library Challenge. Students chose whether to undertake a sciences, social sciences or humanities library quiz.

This event formed the foundation for everything that has followed since both in terms of


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the content covered and also the staff involved.

Extended Project QualificationShortly after those early DIL events, the Library started to receive requests to provide training and support for students who were about to embark on their Extended Project Qualification (EPQ). Thanks to the earlier collaboration on DIL, it was a logical step to collaborate again on developing a workshop for EPQ students.

After an initial two hour pilot workshop, demand for support for EPQ students grew swiftly. The Library now handles several EPQ events a year. A few of these are organised centrally through the university but a number are also organised directly through the Library. Initially, all workshops were hosted on campus but in the last 18 months there has been an increase in the number of workshops held off campus. An example of this has been the Library sending a colleague to Brooke House Sixth Form College (BSIX) in Hackney for the last two years. There have also been numerous visits to Schools and Colleges in the Harrogate and Leeds area as well as closer to home in York. Wherever possible, Student Ambassadors have also attended these external events.

Realising OpportunitiesThe Realising Opportunities scheme is a national scheme for year 12 and 13 students. The University of York is one of 12 Universities who enable students to visit a Research Intensive University to get a taste for what it would be like to study there and to receive study skills support. Library workshops form part of Realising Opportunities days. Traditionally, these workshops have been delivered in traditional face to face teaching sessions but the Library is currently investigating the possibility of using videos and online tutorials to allow the students to access these materials whenever they wish and in a way that may find more engaging.

Engaging the studentsA great deal of the success of our WP events can be attributed to the input of student ambassadors, a key element in increasing students’ involvement.

Originally, workshops were delivered in PC classrooms but over time feedback indicated a desire for more interaction. To develop the interactive side of the sessions, vary learning styles and make the most of the expertise and experience of the student ambassadors, we decided to move the workshops from the PC classroom and into the seminar room. These changes were deemed a success with more positive feedback from the students.

Team teaching is fundamental to our success. Many recent events, especially where there are larger groups of students, have been led by two Academic Liaison Librarians. The combination of the Librarians and student ambassadors increases variety and student engagement. Participation is encouraged by seating the ambassadors amongst the students minimising any feeling of ‘them’ and ‘us’.

Workshop activities:

Developing a search strategyTo explain the importance of search planning, synonyms, truncation and Boolean logic, we show a short video which develops a search strategy based on an essay title followed by


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a practical exercise using keywords on cards and Boolean operators. The students then arrange the cards, as on the video. This has been successful to date, with one teacher commenting that it was great for kinesthetic learners. Some sessions take this further, entering keywords into both Google and Google Scholar to compare results.

Many students may not have access to databases where truncation and Boolean logic are applied but we feel this exercise is important in stressing the importance of not simply entering an essay title into Google and hoping for rich, scholarly results, rather to break down the title into concepts, using keywords.

Evaluating websitesStudents consider the homepages of six different websites (presented on A3 laminated sheets). They work in groups and evaluate the sites. They are then asked to feedback their thoughts to the rest of the room before a final summing up about the pros and cons of each site.

The Hot SeatThis activity is based on an activity described by a Librarian at LILAC. It was introduced as a fun and highly interactive way to end the workshops but is also an effective way for the facilitator to gauge how much the students have taken in during the workshop. Each group selects a member to be in the ‘hot seat’ and the rest of the team are shown five terms, such as ‘peer review’, covered during the workshop. The students then describe the term to the person in the hot seat without using that term until they guess it correctly. The winning team is awarded a prize.

ConclusionThe WP team have found that being involved with these activities has provided them with an insight into sixth form student’s information literacy skills in a way that it would be practically impossible to achieve otherwise. This has enabled them to have more of an understanding of their students know when they greet them at their Library induction. It has also helped to build confidence in presenting and to experiment with new activities that can then be modified for Information Literacy sessions for students.

There are also challenges that come with these activities. The number of requests to provide workshops and visits has risen every year, inevitably increasing demand on finite resources. In future, the Library may involve other library colleagues. Although many of our Liaison Librarians have had years of experience teaching university students, they have not necessarily had experience of teaching school and college students. This can lead to some interesting experiences!

For librarians who have been asked to deliver workshops for sixth formers or younger students in future we would strongly recommend that

Wherever possible, you establish some clear learning outcomes with the school or • college in advance.

If you have the opportunity to use student ambassadors then use them, they are a • fantastic asset and the visiting students will get a great deal from them.

If you are planning a session with lots of activities, keep the groups as small as you • can.


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Plagiarism Avoidance for New Students: Smoothing the transition into Higher EducationAnne Costigan and Sarah George, Subject Librarians University of Bradford

Plagiarism and referencing are areas in which the transition into Higher Education can be a particularly severe leap. University expectations regarding referencing are often wildly different from those previously encountered, not just for international students but for UK school leavers and mature students (Hardy and Clughen 2012). These expectations are often implicit rather than clearly expressed, hidden in little-read departmental handbooks or pre-enrolment information at a time when the student is more concerned with immediate issues of where they will live and whether they will make any friends. Lillis (2001 p14) calls referencing “an ideologically inscribed institutional practice of mystery”. This paper reports on an initiative from the University of Bradford library which attempts to smooth the transition into HE by introducing students to ideas of referencing and plagiarism in a timely and non-threatening manner.

Background

In 2008, the University of Bradford revised its process for breaches of plagiarism regulations. An increasing number of cases appeared to be due to ignorance of plagiarism and referencing rather than deliberate cheating, and education rather than punishment was seen as the appropriate response. The Plagiarism Awareness Programme (PAP), devised and delivered by subject librarians, is now a compulsory part of the formal disciplinary process.

By 2011, over 700 students had been through the PAP. Feedback from students referred (Fig. 1) shows a high level of approval, but suggests that students felt they would have benefited from having this information earlier in their courses. Subject librarians and Learner Development Unit staff had been offering workshops and embedded teaching but coverage was piecemeal. 38% of students referred to the PAP said they had not received any previous instruction on plagiarism. In addition the University Learning and Teaching Committee were concerned about the number of appeals from students against breach convictions on the grounds that they had not been adequately informed about good practice in advance. A further concern was the workload that the breach procedure imposed on staff from the academic schools, the library and the Academic Quality Unit.

Fig. 1

Comments from PAP feedback forms


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A final driver was a 2010 survey on plagiarism, to which 703 students responded. Plagiarism was both an area of concern and of serious misunderstandings. Many students believed quoting a well known fact without attribution to be plagiarism. A surprisingly small proportion considered collaborating with classmates on an individual assignment to be problematic.

The Plagiarism Avoidance for New Students Course

In May 2011 the University Learning and Teaching Committee decided that an induction course on plagiarism should be delivered to all new students at the start of the 2011-12 academic year. It was variously suggested that the course be restricted to either undergraduate or international students, but statistics on referral to the PAP showed that the problem of plagiarism was not restricted to specific groups.

The library was tasked with designing the course, which we named the Plagiarism Avoidance for New Students course or PANS. Completion of the course had to be monitored, so our only choice for delivery route was through our Virtual Learning Environment, Blackboard.

The programme consists of 5 learning objects and a 10 question test. We used the adaptive release function of Blackboard to allow the objects to appear one by one, hoping to force the students to work at a more reflective pace instead of diving straight for the quiz. The programme was supported by a new web page, plagiarism explained (University of Bradford 2012), so that if a student wants further information on any aspect of the lessons they can follow links to that specific area on the website.

We had hoped that all students would be able to take the same course but found that we could not create a course on plagiarism without mentioning referencing. We decided to create versions for Harvard and Numeric styles. We also had to ensure the course was relevant and comprehensible to all of our new students, whatever their age, subject

Data from 2010 plagiarism survey (n=703)


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background or country of origin. Finding examples of common knowledge that would be obvious to both 70 year old archaeologists from Yorkshire and 18 year old engineers from Singapore was quite a challenge!

The method of delivery was decided in negotiation with each school. Most chose to release the course and require students to complete it in their own time, others decided to run it in scheduled sessions run by subject librarians.

As the aim of the course was to ensure that students had a good understanding of plagiarism the pass mark was set high at 70%. However, the course was designed to be formative rather than punitive, so any students who failed were referred to their personal tutors for further guidance. Completion was monitored by the schools, with varying penalties for non-completion. Some schools would not mark work until the course was completed, in others the students had to make a personal appointment with the Associate Dean!

Constraints and challenges

We faced a number of technical challenges in rolling out the course in such a short timescale.

The programme was to be released to over 2000 students to complete in an uncontrolled environment so we reluctantly decided that, in the interests of security, students would not be able to see the answers to the quiz once they had completed it.

There was no single area in Blackboard in which we could place the programme and reach all relevant students, so subject librarians identified core first year modules in which to embed the course, which was deployed in nearly 50 areas of Blackboard! This brought with it challenges of tracking students who should be taking the course and of fixing any problems that arose.

We initially designed the learning objects with Glomaker, but found that these were difficult to migrate between Blackboard areas. Our next choice was Powerpoint, but these would not launch as shows from Blackboard when run in Internet Explorer. We experimented with animated PDFs but these would not run on Macbooks. So eventually we removed all interaction and sound from the learning objects and linked them to Blackboard as “flat” PDF files.

Development

Over 2000 students took the programme between October and December 2012. We found that the course was more successful when delivered in session and completion rates were better. At the end of the first semester, we reflected on results and decided on some major revisions to the programme.

The biggest complaint received was that students were unable to see the answers to the quiz. This was addressed by creating a pool of 50 questions in 10 subject categories, which provide a different test for each student. They now receive the correct answers and detailed feedback.

We also looked at the breakdown of results by question to see which questions had


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proved most problematic. In some cases, the questions were badly worded so were revised. In others, subject librarians who had delivered the course considered that the problem lay with students’ understanding of the issue rather than with the wording of the question. In these cases more information was added to the lessons.

In the next academic year we hope to develop the programme further. We aim to adapt the course into individual objects for use by school librarians, and to gather more feedback as to its usefulness.

Conclusion

The most important indicator of the success or failure of the course is the number of referrals to the PAP as a result of student plagiarism. Since the PAP began in 2007-8 we have had over 200 referrals every year. However, this year we have had only 120. The biggest drop is amongst first year students, who have taken the PANS. Whilst we cannot prove a causal link it is still heartening to see the fall!

1st 2nd 3rd 4th and above

2008-09 106 50 36 46

2009-10 92 68 31 34

2010-11 63 93 44 49

2011-12* 30 40 27 13

Table 1: Referrals to the plagiarism awareness programme by year of study, 2008-2012

*Years run from September to August. For the 2011-12 year we have not yet had the September referrals. In previous years September has seen 12-16 referrals so we do not expect the figures to increase significantly by the end of the year

Reference List

Hardy C and Clughen L (2012). Writing at University: Student and Staff Expectations and Experiences. In: Clughen L and Hardy C (Eds) Writing in the Disciplines: Building Supportive Cultures for Student Writing. Bingley: Emerald pp25-54.

Lillis T (2001) Student Writing: Access, Regulation, Desire. London: Routledge

University of Bradford (2012) Plagiarism Explained. Bradford: University of Bradford. Available from http://www.bradford.ac.uk/library/help/plagiarism/ Accessed 7th September 2012.


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Effective Learning by using Neuro Linguistic ProgrammingLiz Almond, Educational Consultant and Coach

Have you noticed that the teaching methods you are currently using are not working as well as they used to? Do you feel that the learners you are teaching are less engaged? Are you getting more and more frustrated with learners who are failing to respond well to your teaching sessions? If yes, you may wish to learn some Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) to use with your learners and to inject some more life into your teaching sessions.

Go back 30 years and the life of the teacher was very different. There was no technology, the learners were respectful and the teaching standards were perceived to be much higher. So what has changed? Society has changed, there is more freedom of choice, technology is taking over and this affecting the communication of the young people of today. The move towards Equality and Diversity for all is a positive one, however it does bring with it, the need for personalisation. There is the need to personalise the learning for every individual that you teach, which is easier said than done, unless you start to use some different techniques and tools to get even better results. Using some NLP could make a real difference to your learner engagement, achievement and retention, whether you are the teacher or just supporting the learning process.

What is NLP?

According to http://www.nlpu.com, NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a name that encompasses the three most influential components involved in producing human experience: neurology, language and programming. The neurological system regulates how our bodies function, language determines how we interface and communicate with other people and our programming determines the kinds of models of the world we create. Neuro-Linguistic Programming describes the fundamental dynamics between mind (neuro) and language (linguistic) and how their interplay affects our body and behaviour (programming).

NLP provides tools and skills for the development of states of individual excellence, but it also establishes a system of empowering beliefs and presuppositions about what human beings are, what communication is and what the process of change is all about. At another level, NLP is about self-discovery, exploring identity and mission. It also provides a framework for understanding and relating to the ‘spiritual’ part of human experience that reaches beyond us as individuals to our family, community and global systems. NLP is not only about competence and excellence, it is about wisdom and vision.

Communicating using NLP

So how do you change your style by using NLP, well there are a few things that you can do. Firstly, you can take on board the NLP presuppositions as new beliefs which will enable you to take a different attitude to everyone around you. This is helpful, as it allows you to be less judgmental of those around you and allows you to become more aware of how your values, attitudes and beliefs affect those around us when we are communicating/teaching. A selection of presuppostitions are mentioned here:


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1. The meaning the communication is the response you get.

In communication, it is important what the other person thinks you say and how they respond. This requires that the person pays attention to the response they are getting. If it is not the response they want, then they need to vary their own communication until they get the desired response.

2. The map is not the territory.

Every individual creates a unique model of the world and thus lives in a somewhat different reality from everyone else. You do not operate directly on the world but on your experience of it. Therefore if a student is not understanding what you are saying, it may be due to the student’s cultural background or previous experience.

3. People have all the resources they need to make the changes they want.

People have all they need to make changes they want to make. The task is to locate or access those resources and to make them available in the appropriate context. NLP provides techniques to accomplish this task. Coaching individuals to use their inner resources and to think for themselves is incredibly powerful.

4. There is no such thing as failure; there is only feedback.

It is more valuable for a person to view their experience in terms of a learning frame than in terms of a failure frame. If a person doesn’t succeed in something, that doesn’t mean they have failed. It just means that they have discovered one way not to do that particular thing. The person then needs to vary their behaviour until they find a way to succeed. Hold this as true for you and teach it to your learners.

The full list of presuppositions can be found at: http://nlp-mentor.com/whatisnlp/presuppositions

Supporting Learners in a Different Way

Most teachers when asked say that they teach in an interactive way, but do they really? Unconsciously, we often teach the way that we have been taught, which if the most recent study was at a University, lecturing (an auditory method) may have been the main teaching method used. In NLP, we believe that there are four different ways that the mind represents information – Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic and Auditory Digital. Every individual will use all four ways, however there will be a lead type which if you pay attention to this, you can build rapport with the student by talking to them in their language e.g. ‘I see that you are finding this difficult’ or ‘It sounds to me that you could have tried…’ or ‘Did you manage to grasp what I said?’ or ‘I understand fully what you said, and…’. Interestingly, an individual’s mind style is not always the same as their learning style – Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic.

To take this one step further, if you choose to develop your sensory vocabulary, you will start to talk naturally in multi-sensory language, rather than your own ‘lead’ which will help your communication with others immensely. If you choose to, you can then consciously recognise the ‘lead’ of a student and talk specifically in their language.


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To take this even further, now start to think about the teaching methods that you are using. Are you really teaching in a multi-sensory way? Think about a session that you are due to run - how many visual, auditory and kinaesthetic methods are you using? Are you ensuring that the learner interaction is 80% learner focussed and 20% tutor focussed? Are you still using the methods you have used for years, or are you using new ones every time you work with learners. Are you challenging yourself outside of your comfort zone to try something new? Reflect on the methods you are using and be truly honest with yourself about how many different methods you are using. Often we are not using the full range of methods which ensures that effective teaching and learning is taking place which allow for differentiation, equality and diversity, group work, independent thinking and multi-sensory learning.

Visualisation and Modelling

Work with learners to visualise successful completion of their study/learning. If an exam is coming up fast you can get them to visualise in their minds, preparing successfully for the exam, arriving at the exam hall calmly and effortlessly filling in the exam paper, and feeling confident that they have answered every question effectively. They can then visualise the certificate in their hand having found out that they passed the qualification. Visualisation is an underutilised skill in teaching, yet it is massively effective and free. Don’t worry if the student says that they can’t see pictures in their mind. It is still working. They may just feel themselves walking towards the hall rather than seeing themselves walking. Bring in as much multi-sensory language as possible if you are doing this for a group of learners. Olympic athletes all visualise success with their coaches on a regular basis, and they get their minds focussed on winning.

Modelling is another NLP technique. It is possible to reduce the learning process by 50%, if a learner applies the same values, beliefs and physiology of a person who has a skill that they would like to learn. For example, if a learner reads a book by Richard Branston, and they take on as true his values/beliefs/physiology, the learner will be more successful at the skill that they are trying to replicate.


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Collaboratively creating a reusable and repurposable online tutorial: The challenge of meeting the disparate needs of researchersJenny Coombs (University of Nottingham), Chris Bark (Coventry University), Elizabeth Martin (De Montfort University), Wendy Stanton (University of Nottingham), Ruth Stubbings (Loughborough University), Judy Thompson (Coventry University) Helen Young (Loughborough University)

Background

In 2009, an Emalink event1 was held at the University of Warwick to discuss library support for researchers. The difficulties of connecting with researchers, many of whom are not campus based, were discussed and there was a general wish to produce some online content that could be used to support these library users. However, delegates raised the challenges of finding the time to create such content and the inefficiencies of each institution re-inventing the wheel. Consequently, an idea to produce content collaboratively in a format that could be re-used and re-purposed was proposed, followed up by a kick-off meeting of interested parties.

A number of East Midlands Institutions were initially interested, but various organisational and existing priorities resulted in four institutions taking the project forward, each signing a consortium agreement to produce content collaboratively. Loughborough University was the lead project partner, supported by Coventry University, DeMontfort University and the University of Nottingham.

Each institution was able to secure some funding for the project and this enabled the group to employ a Research Associate, Sarah McNicol, who carried out a survey and follow-up interviews with researchers to discover their attitudes to learning, particularly online learning. Later in the project, Michael Norris was employed as a Research Associate to carry out a focus group and observations on the pilot units produced by the group.

Creating the content

The project group, with help from other colleagues in the East Midlands, initially carried out an audit of existing products on the market, both those freely available as open source, and commercial tutorials. However, none of the products quite fitted the bill for the required content and the need for the tutorials to be re-purposable. Hence, the group decided to create their own content.

To enable the content to be created, an authoring tool was required, and the group investigated a number of tools available on the market, finally deciding upon Xerte Toolkits, an open source product created at the University of Nottingham and supported by JISC TechDis2. Toolkits allow e-learning content to be created through forms and

1 Emalink is a network of East Midlands Institutions that share best practice and provide training events2 More information about Xerte Toolkits can be found at: http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/techdis/technologymatters/contentcreation/creatinginclusivecontent/Xerte


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templates, enabling non-programmers to easily create both text content and interactive activities. The advantage of the software is the ability for other institutions to download the created content into their own versions of Xerte Toolkits and re-purpose it to meet the specific requirements of their institutions. All units have been created under a creative commons licence, allowing for re-purposing with appropriate acknowledgements.3

Content

The next task for the group was to decide on the actual content to be created and it soon became clear that initial ideas for content to cover all the information needs of researchers were too ambitious. To keep the project manageable, the group decided on ‘Dissemination of Research’, a particularly topical subject with the imminent REF (Research Exercise Framework).

The final module consists of five separate units:Journals and journal articles•Other forms of publishing•Author bibliometrics•Journal bibliometrics•Networking•

Pilot units

Five pilot units were evaluated with researchers through focus groups carried out at Loughborough, De Montfort and Nottingham; while researchers at Coventry were observed using a special observation unit, which sought to capture how the researchers navigated around the units, how long they spent on particular pages and what they found challenging. The feedback provided areas for the group to revisit within the units and changes were made based on the evaluations.

One of the key challenges raised during the evaluations was the difficulty of a generic resource being able to meet the disparate needs of researchers. Some of the challenges are outlined below:

Differing levels of experience

Although aimed mainly at early career researchers, the group had hoped that some of the content would also be relevant to more established researchers and had included particular aspects geared at a higher audience. Where higher level content had been added, there were differing opinions as to how relevant this was. An example was the inclusion of material on creating your own journal, which the group felt would appeal to more experienced researchers. However, few of the focus group attendees felt that this was relevant and commented that it was of too high content even for established researchers.

3 Units can be downloaded from the project website at: http://www.emrsg.org.uk or via JORUM at: http://www.jorum.ac.uk


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Variety of disciplines

When creating a generic resource, ensuring that it has applicability across all disciplines is always difficult and some comments from the focus groups suggested there was too much bias towards STM (Science, Technical and Medicine) areas, although it was acknowledged that certain units were of most interest to these disciplines, such as bibliometrics. The group therefore revised the content to include more examples to the arts, humanities and social sciences; for example, including creative works content as a form of publishing, and including talking head videos from researchers from a range of different disciplines to present a more balanced view.

Approach

Feedback on the approach taken in presenting the content was interesting and highlighted the different learning styles inherent within researchers. The group felt that a balanced viewpoint was the best approach, providing both sides of the topic and allowing researchers to decide on their best way forward. However, some researchers took a more ‘strategic’ view to the content, wanting only to see success stories and to know how to “advance my career in three giant leaps by doing this [unit]”. To counteract this feedback, additional talking head videos were integrated to provide ‘success stories’ from researchers.

Expectations of online material

Some of the feedback from the focus groups suggested that researchers were looking for a polished commercial product, which was never going to be feasible from a small project group, working with limited time and resources. What was most interesting was the reaction to the inclusion of talking head videos. Two approaches were taken to producing videos for the units; utilizing a (paid for) video unit at Coventry University and undertaking the work ourselves using a borrowed video camera. Given the growing popularity of YouTube and the ability for anyone to create a homemade video, of varying quality, the group was interested to see the reactions to the more ‘home made’ videos. It was interesting to note elements that were distracting to the focus groups; cluttered background, insufficient lighting; and even comments on the attire of one of the talking heads which suggests that the aesthetics of the videos are as important as the actual content.

Balancing activities

The initial survey which investigated researchers’ attitudes to online learning, unsurprisingly suggested that researchers wanted tutorials that included interactivity. Finding the right balance of text and activity was problematic. Xerte Toolkits provide the opportunity to create a number of activities, such as drag and drop, quizzes, filling in the blanks etc. but many of these were used sparingly, as deemed more relevant to an undergraduate than researcher audience. The group felt it was important that the content was not seen to be condescending to the audience. Activities instead focused on talking head videos, simple reflective activities and recorded demonstrations. The reflective activities were in the main felt to be useful, whereas the demonstrations and videos received mixed results. A few focus group members suggested that they wouldn’t


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have time to watch the demonstrations or videos and just wanted to get the required information from the text, whereas others felt that these activities enhanced the textual information. Again, these differing viewpoints probably point to the different learning styles of the individuals.

Conclusions

Working collaboratively enabled the workload for the project to be spread more widely. Extra funding was available and the members could bring different experiences and networks to the project. Xerte Toolkits allowed us as non-programmers to produce online content in a re-usable and re-purposable way and we hope that other institutions will be able to gain from the work that has been achieved.

The feedback from the focus groups allowed the project members to improve the tutorials but inevitably some challenges remain, principally how to produce online content that can meet researchers’ expectations, as well as their different learning styles. However, all members of the focus groups suggested that they would use the tutorials again and that they would recommend colleagues to use them. The project group hopes to continue with similar work in the future, to produce units on reference management.


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An introduction to citation analysisRobin Stinson, Subject Librarian for the Social Sciences, University of East London

This article aims to provide an introduction to citation analysis. It is in two parts. The first part discusses the concept of citation analysis with an explanation of some of the terms involved. It then goes on to look at four of the tools for citation analysis ISI (Thomson Reuters) Journal Citation Reports (JCR), Eigenfactor, SCImago and Publish or Perish, highlighting any limitations.

The second part presents in tabular form an analysis of journals within the area of Sociology using these tools as well as journal-ranking.com and Microsoft Academic Search. This appendix is available online from the ALISS website http://www.alissnet.org.uk/AlissQuarterly.aspx

Journal articles play an important role in the dissemination of knowledge. Academics need to know which journals are considered the prestigious ones when they submit their articles. Editors and publishers can use the rankings to boast about the reputation of their journal and to search for changes in status relative to other journals. In these days of financial stringency there is an increased pressure on individual academics and departments to justify their research productivity. The ranking of journals can assist in the process of assessing this productivity. For librarians journal rankings can be useful in deciding on subscription renewals and cancellations. Cameron (2005, cited in Levine-Clark and Gil, 2009, p. 33) highlights the fact that rankings can be used to compare databases based on an analysis of the journals on those databases.

Harzing and van der Wal (2007, p. 41) distinguish two approaches to ranking journals: stated preference and revealed preference. Stated preference involves members of the academic community ranking journals on the basis of their own expert judgement. This will always have some degree of subjectivity. Revealed preference rankings are based on actual publication behaviour. If an author cites a journal, he or she has found it useful, and, therefore, the more frequently a journal is cited, the greater its role in the scholarly communication process (Nisonger, 1994, cited in Romano and Ratnatunga, 1996, p. 8).

It is with revealed preference which citation analysis deals. It is based on the assumption that most research discoveries are sooner or later published in international scholarly journals and will be read by other researchers who, in their turn, will cite the original articles. The more citations an article gets, the greater impact it will have. There are, however, some caveats that should be expressed.

A large number of citations does not automatically mean that a work is of high quality. It may be heavily cited because lots of other authors are refuting the research findings it contains. There is the problem as well with self-citations. There are citation circles or cabals: friends citing friends. Restrictions on the length of the list of citations imposed by editors could result in an author culling the number of references they provide. A citation could be a superficial reference to a review article.

One should also note that not being cited does not invalidate a work. A work does not have to be cited to have influenced someone else’s work. There is also ‘delayed


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recognition’. Although, work is cited most in the ten years after its publication, some work is not picked up on a considerable time which affects its citation ratings, eg work on retro-viruses before AIDS.

If an author is cited on numerous occasions, it is probably the case that they have made a significant impact on the field of research. Whereas, if an author is cited infrequently, they could have made a minimal impact on their field of research. At the same time, however, their low citation count could be attributed to working in a small field or in a language other than English or publishing mainly in books.

For several years the Thomson Reuters citations databases have been used as a starting-point and often the only tools for locating citations for conducting citation analyses. In the 2011 JCR an alphabetical list of 137 journals is available. It is possible to sort the results by various metrics, such as impact factor, immediacy index, cited half-life etc.

Let us now look more closely at the Impact Factor (IF). The IF is the mean number of articles received in a particular year to articles published in the preceding two years. An IF of 1.0 means that, on average, the articles published one or two year ago have been cited one time. An IF of 2.5 means that, on average, the articles published one or two year ago have been cited two and a half times.

IF has certain advantages as a citation measure. It is easy to calculate and easy to explain. At the same time, however, this simplicity does bring drawbacks with it.

Seglen (1992, cited in Cameron, 2005, p. 110) argued

The distribution of citations is extremely skewed [...] the most cited 15 percent of the articles account for 50 percent of the citations, and the most cited 50 percent of the articles account for 90 percent of the citations. In other words, the most cited half of the articles are cited, on average, 10 times as often as the least cited half.

Nightingale and Marshall (2012, p. 63) confirm Seglen’s findings and argue that the ‘skewed distribution of citations across all papers in a journal means that the impact factor is not a reflection of the average citation of any given paper within the journal’.

Saper (1999, cited in Cameron, 2005, p. 111) raises another problem with the IF. He observes that some research has made such an indelible impact that ‘it is immediately incorporated into the conceptual basis of a field and its origin is quickly lost in the mists of time’. So, journals that specialize in review articles (ie articles that publish summaries of past research) have much higher impact factors because they act as surrogates for previously published research. For example, six of the top ten neuroscience journals publish exclusively review articles.

For Jacobs (2010, p. 5) among the problems with the IF is the ‘short time frame’ highlighting the fact that in Sociology ‘it is not uncommon for papers to grow in influence for a decade or more after publication’. He does, however, welcome the ‘cited half-life statistic’. This indicates how many years it takes for half of the cumulative citations to papers to be registered. It should be noted that in Sociology it is common for journals to have a cited half-life of a decade or more (48 of the journals in the 2011 JCR have a


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cited half-life of more than ten years). He considers the very short frames employed in the natural-science fields inappropriate for the Sociology journals and advocates a ‘ten year time horizon for assessing the visibility or impact of research’ published in them. He acknowledges that the introduction of the 5-year IF (from 2007) is beneficial. He advocates the use of the 5-year IF in any journal comparison.

In its Cited Reference function Web of Science does include citations from non-ISI journals. Unfortunately, it only includes citations from journals that are ISI-listed. Moreover, ISI covers only a segment of the journals published in each discipline. ISI argues that it indexes in the Web of Science journals that are known to be of high quality. By this measure new journals would have little hope of being included.

A further drawback of the JCR is that many foreign language journals are excluded. As a result English language journals have much higher impact factors. Moreover, the journals in the ISI indexes are limited in scope geographically. Onyancha (2009, p. 102) highlights the fact most journals published in Africa are not indexed in them. He quotes an earlier study that he made which found that ISI only indexed 28 African journals in 2006.

It should be noted that Sociology is a field in which both books and journal articles matter. Unfortunately, citations appearing in books are not captured in the ISI JCRs.

Nightingale and Marshall (2012, p. 63) highlight the fact that there is no acknowledgement in the ISI ranking of the influence of the journal from which the journal comes. A citation in The Lancet is perhaps valued more highly than one in a lower ranked journal with a limited readership. The same point is made by West, Bergstrom and Bergstrom (2010, p. 237) when they argue that a ‘citation from a top-tier journal such as The American Economic Review is weighted the same as a citation from a journal that is rarely cited’. Accounting for the source of each citation requires a more complicated computation than is required for calculating the impact factor, but the result gives a better measure of quality. The Eigenfactor metric which is a free service available at http://www.eigenfactor.org/ takes into consideration journal quality. In the next section we will look more closely at this.

The Eigenfactor Score and its companion indicator the Article Influence Score were launched in Spring 2007 and included in the JCR for 2007 and later. They were created by Dr Carl Bergstron. These two indicators, as Craig (2009, p. 2976) points out ‘relied on the structure of the entire citation network of scholarly communication to measure the prestige of a journal, rather than simply relying on the numbers of citations received’. Bergstron (2007, pp. 314-317) outlines the approach adopted. Their aim is to rank journals much as Google ranks Web pages. While Google uses the network of hyperlinks on the Web, they use citations in the literature as tallied by the JCR. They aim to identify the most influential journals where a journal is considered to be influential, if it is cited often by other influential journals. The iterative ranking scheme, accounts for the fact that a single citation from a high-quality journal may be more valuable than multiple citations from peripheral publications.

The Eigenfactor team measures the importance of a citation by the influence of the citing


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journal divided by the total number of citations appearing in that journal. For example, a citation from a review article that has cursory references to large numbers of papers counts for less than a citation from a research article that cites only papers that are essentially related to its own argument.

Another resource which offers more coverage than the ISI JCR is the free resource SCImago which can be accessed at http://www.scimagojr.com/. The SCImago Journal Rank Indicator (SJR) is based on data from the Scopus database and provides information on more journals published in a wider range of languages than does the JCR. ‘The SJR indicator measures the scientific influence of the average article in a journal, it expresses how central to the global scientific discussion an average article of the journal is’ (SCImago, 2012). The SJRs may be considered as being similar to the Eigenfactor score. The major difference is that the SJRs are based on data obtained from Elsevier’s Scopus database which includes more than 17,000 titles from 5,000 publishers. Because of the broader coverage provided by Scopus, SCImago provides scholars with more information about more titles than is provided by either the JCR or Eigenfactor.

As with the JCR it divides citations to a journal by articles of the journal, during a specific time period. The citation time window is set to three years. Contrary to the journal IF, the SJR indicator attributes different weight to citations depending on the ‘prestige’ of the citing journal without the influence of journal self-citations; prestige is estimated with the application of the PageRank algorithm developed by the creators of Google in the network of journals.

So far we have looked at the conventional citation systems like Web of Science, Eigenfactor and SCImago which take their data from databases. Their limitations need to be kept in mind by social scientists, as they cover only around 30 to 40 per cent of journals and books in social sciences published worldwide. Most bibliometric experts acknowledge that the usefulness of these systems declines sharply if they include fewer than three quarters to two thirds of all journal articles world-wide. The conventional systems also have a heavy bias in coverage towards American and English-language journals and tends to deliver rankings and statistics that are weighted heavily towards success in the US ‘market’, compared with the rest of the world. The ISI system does not cover references in books, which poses serious difficulties for accurately measuring citations within ‘softer’ social science fields and humanities where books remain very important. The older systems completely exclude references in working papers or conference papers, which are important for social scientists as publishing a journal articles can take several years.

We will now look at the free citation software package Publish or Perish which draws its raw data from Google Scholar. Google and Google Scholar automatically record all citations. They include journals and books as well as ‘grey’ literature such as working papers, conference papers, seminar discussions or teaching materials that has been issued in a less formal or definitive form – often, of course, including versions of material that is later formally published. As a result of this Publish or Perish offers a wider coverage than is provided by the other citation analysis tools which we have discussed and can be considered as a viable alternative. It provides a detailed analysis both of individual authors


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and of journal titles. Through it one can find the average number of citations per author and per journal title and also the average number of citations per year. Publish or perish also gives the author’s and the journal title’s h-index. As can be seen from the table in section two it provides a further metric, that of Egghe’s g-index, which aims to improve on the h-index by giving more weight to highly-cited articles.

It is hoped that this article has given a basic introduction to citation analysis, indicating as it does some of the terms involved and the caveats about the use of citations. It also provides an analysis of four of the main tools which can be used for citation analysis. In section two the theory is put into practice with a comparative analysis in tabular form of the top fifty journals ranked by the ISI JCR 5-year Impact Factor. In its footnotes the table also provides explanations of the calculations used for the various statistics.

Bergstrom, C. (2007) ‘Eigenfactor: measuring the value and prestige of scholarly journals’, College & Research Libraries News’, 68(5), pp. 314-316.

Cameron, Brian D., “Trends in the Usage of ISI Bibliometric Data: Uses, Abuses, and Implications” (2005). Librarian and Staff Publications. Paper 3.http://digitalcommons.ryerson.ca/library_pubs/3

Craig, I.D. (2009) ‘Impact factor redux- new indicators, new challenges’, Journal of Sexual Medicine’, 6(11), pp. 2976-2978.

Davis, P.M. (2008) ‘Eigenfactor: does the principle of repeated improvement result in better journal impact estimates than raw citation counts’, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(13), pp. 2186-2188.

Falagas, M.E., Kouranos, V.D., Arencibia-Jorge, R. and Karageropoulos, D.E. (2008) ‘Comparison of SCImago journal rank indicator’, FASEB Journal, 22(8), pp.2623-2628.

González-Pereiraa, B., Guerrero-Boteb, V. P. and Moya-Anegónc, F. (2009) The SJR indicator: a new indicator of journals’ scientific prestige. Available at: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0912/0912.4141.pdf (Accessed: 9 August 2012).

Harzing, A-W. (2007) ‘A Google Scholar h-index for journals: a better metric to measure journal impact in economics and business?’, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(1), pp. 41-46,

Harzing, A-W and Van der Wal, R. (2007) Google Scholar: the democratization of citation analysis. Available at: http://www.harzing.com/download/gsdemo.pdf (Accessed: 31 July 2012).

Jacobs, J.A. (2010) A new approach to journal rankings in Sociology: using the h-index with Google Scholar. Available at: https://sociology.sas.upenn.edu/.../sociology.../. (Accessed 8 August 2012).

Levine-Clark, M. and Gil, E.L. (2006) ‘A comparative analysis of ‘Web of Science’, Scopus and Google Scholar’, Journal of Business and Finance Librarianship, 14, 23-46.

LSE (2011) Why ‘Publish or Perish’ has the edge over Google Scholar and Scopus when it comes to finding out how your work is used by other academics. Available at: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/ (Accessed: 9 August 2012).

Meho, L.I. and Yang, K. (2007) ‘Impact of data sources on citation counts and rankings of LIS faculty: Web of Science versus Scopus and Google Scholar’, Journal of the American Society for Information


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Science and Technology, 58(3), pp. 2105-2125.

Nightingale, J.M. and Marshall, G. (2012) ‘Citation analysis as a measure of article quality, journal influence and individual researcher performance’, Radiography, 18, pp. 60-67.

Onyancha, O. B. (2009) ‘A citation analysis of Sub-Saharan African library and information science journals using Google Scholar’, African Journal of Library, Archives and Information Science, 19(2), pp. 101-116.

Romano, C. and Ratnatunga, J. (1996) ‘A citation analysis of the impact of journals on contemporary small enterprise research’, Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, 20(3), pp. 7-21.

Smith, G. and Krogstad, J.L. (2006) Analysis of citation frequencies to ‘Auditing: a Journal of Practice and Theory’: 1985-2005. Available at: http://aaahq.org/audit/midyear/07midyear/papers/Smith_AnalysisOfCitationFrequencies.pdf (Accessed: 31 July 2012).

Steers, W.D. (2011) ‘Impact Factor vs Eigenfactor’, AUA News, 16(10), pp. 16-17.

Straub, D. (2010) ‘Journal quality and citations: common metrics’, MIS Quarterly, 34(1), pp. Iii-xii.

Purnell, P. (2011) Using bibliometrics. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/events/2011/03/jisc11goodybag/workshops/1bibliometrics.pdf

Thelwall, M. (2008) ‘Bibliometrics to webometrics’, Journal of Information Science, 34, pp. 605-621.

University of Leicester (no date) Journal Citation Reports. Available at: http://www2.le.ac.uk/library/for/researchers/bibliometrics/journals (Accessed: 7 August 2012).

University of Southampton (2011) Eigenfactor metrics- Eigenfactor score and score and article influence score. Available at: http://www.southampton.ac.uk

West, J.D., Bergstrom, T.C. and Bergstrom, C.T. (2010) ‘The Eigenfactor Metrics: a network approach to assessing scholarly journals’, College & Research Libraries, pp. 236-244.


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Development of a Twitter (or a Tweeter)?Megan Redmond, London Metropolitan University library

Warning: This is not meant to be an expert account of using social media, just relating the journey I went on.

I initially investigated Twitter through curiosity because it had attracted so much media coverage much of which seemed adverse. Not knowing where to find it, I did what one automatically does when wondering about anything these days - Googled Twitter and there it was ranked at the top of the results. It was a strong and seductive brand; soft shades of blue, cute logos of a bird and ‘fail whale’ for when it frequently crashed and jargon to create a sense of community – Tweeps, Twittersphere, retweeting. ‘Following’ or ‘being followed’ sounded a bit like being stalked but blocking spammers was simple enough and effective. Setting up an account was quick and easy and the extent to which a page may be customised was an added attraction.

I first set up a personal account as a test. Once created, how Twitter actually worked was a mystery for a while. Getting started is frequently a stumbling block I’ve noticed. I am also a very private person and the thought of tweeting to the world what I was doing at any given time was anathema to me, as was puzzling over pithy 140 character messages. There had to be a more pointed use for it. I sat on it for a while and watched what others did. Once you follow others and gather followers of your account it begins to make sense. The revelation was discovering you could tweet links to web pages as part of your message and shorten the URL via tinyurl.com or similar pages to maximise your use of the 140 characters. There are problems with shortening URLs and it is worth making yourself aware of them but I haven’t knowingly encountered pernicious behaviour as a result.

At the time I was subject librarian for Human Rights and Social Justice and Law. Many key organisations and practices in those fields advertised Twitter accounts, belying the frivolous image. With so much rich and topical content on the web to share with students and staff - at short notice and without clogging up their mailboxes or having to edit library web pages, such as live streaming of cases heard at the International Criminal Court or important case determinations, I decided to add a Twitter link to the library subject page. I advertised the account in my workplace but was not as successful in reaching students and staff as I had hoped and didn’t push it too much as I didn’t want to come across as a Twitter evangelist.

I was asked to use Twitter in classes with Journalism students and discovered that not all students want to engage with social media. Ethically I didn’t think it appropriate to require anyone to create an account with a private product unconnected to their place of learning if they didn’t want to. They could still view the links as a web page but it prevented using Twitter for discussions.

I realised that as you use an application such as this it helps to be exploratory rather than prescriptive and it proved to be a more useful tool for communicating with the wider world. Sending reliable and relevant messages within a defined subject scope steadily built up a dependable following without having to be entrepreneurial about attracting followers. I felt happier about gathering followers slowly, though as followers grow in number things start to snowball.


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As with Facebook, an application that is really a product has been used creatively by different people. You could say subverted at times. Aid workers were experimenting in sending messages from conflict zones to give an idea of conditions in for instance, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. People in remote locations without access to a computer would more likely have access to a reliable mobile phone. Frontline Defenders (@FrontLineHRD), an organisation working to protect the lives of human rights activists around the world, use Twitter very effectively with updates on human rights defenders who have been arrested and are at risk of being tortured. Twitter was also used extensively in Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake and Fukushima, though language can obviously be a barrier to communication. You can tweet in any language but many choose to tweet in English to reach a wider audience. I do also enjoy using Twitter to practise other languages and the brevity of the message is helpful in that.

The use of the hashtag, such as #LGBT, enables quick updates on news from around the world on an issue. There is sometimes confusion on which hashtag to use and hence more than one is often used for a topic. Twitter has spawned a number of spin offs, such as hashtag.org for checking hashtag usage, and Tweetdeck.com. I rarely use any of them except Twitpics for posting photos, though I found the Google Twitter stream entertaining and useful, particularly at election time, until Google lost the access rights. This brings to mind the perils of being too dependent on a technology over which one has little influence.

I am possibly missing the point of Twitter entirely. It is above all a mobile application and my phone is practically steam-driven. I am very basic and perhaps stuck a little in my usage but it is adequate for the purpose at present. There is plenty of help in using Twitter in more sophisticated ways provided by the company and also on the web by countless people who use the application on a regular basis for reasons the company probably never dreamt of. As with learning of any kind, you coast along until need propels you to stretch what you do a little and learn something new.

I’ve only been using Twitter for 3 years but that seems like aeons ago and the software has moved on considerably since then. The cuddly image has evolved to something more obviously business-like and the usage capacity has increased to the point where it doesn’t crash as frequently. With hindsight, I regret not keeping a log of my experience of using Twitter because it would have been a source of information on my more general use of social media. Though still cautious, I have noticed along the way that I’ve become less worried about what I write on the web. In situations or on topics where I might not speak, I do dare to Tweet.

The @humanrightslaw account has developed a sizeable following and taken on a life of its own so I now keep it going in my spare time. Since doing that I have been a little broader in topics covered and include a lot more social justice issues. I’ve always monitored the account by regularly checking to see who follows and the slight shift in focus means that it now attracts a lot more ordinary individuals as opposed to legal firms, NGOs or academic staff. I’ve also become more interested in the potential for using social media as a public educational tool, particularly since I’ve learnt so much by being guided in what I read on the web by my twitterfeed and comments about messages I’ve posted that made me think, thanks particularly to academics Aoife Nolan (@commentator01) and Garry Slapper (@garyslapper).


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Regulation and Reality: experiences of a ‘gold’ open access social sciences publisherDan Scott, Founder and Director, Social Sciences Directory Limited

When the British government took the brave decision to implement all of the recommendations of Dame Janet Finch’s Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings, in July 2012, I for one gave a little jump for joy. I worked for six years in traditional subscription publishing and became increasingly disillusioned with the flagrant abuse of taxpayers’ money, as well as the many flaws within the publishing system itself – loss of copyright, time-to-publication, the subjectivity of much peer review, the funding systems etc. There is, in my opinion, a great deal wrong with the system and I wanted to do something about it. ‘Gold’ open access publishing is, also in my opinion, the solution – a model that will bring market forces of price comparison and genuine choice to bear; which preserves all of the quality thresholds associated with scholarly publishing whilst embracing innovation; and which offers a private sector solution, rather than heaping extra expense on the shoulders of taxpayers. Many people disagree with this interpretation, but to me this makes sense and there is the strong precedent of successful publications in the Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) sphere, such as PLoS ONE and BioMed Central. Scholars, students and librarians in social sciences and humanities have the same needs for up-to-date, quality research that is freely available. If it has worked in STM, why should ‘gold’ not work in these?

In January 2012, I set out to put my beliefs into action and set up an open access website, Social Sciences Directory (and subsequently a sister site Humanities Directory). Aiming to address the issues, these would:

be online only, thus dispensing with the print legacy of limited pagination and • unnecessarily high rejection rates

respond to changing user behaviour by providing a multi-disciplinary and multi- • content type platform – the entry point for most research is a keyword search on a search engine, rather than looking up individual titles

make content freely available and allow copyright ownership retention by authors • under a Creative Commons CC-BY licence

concentrate peer reviewing on technical soundness. Has sufficient academic rigour • been applied to produce results and conclusions that are robust? If the answer is ‘Yes’, it will be deemed suitable for publication. This method of review is designed to remove the subjectivity from the process and rely much more on an objective opinion

Having set my face against the status quo, I am now encountering at first hand many of the obstacles that are in-built in the system, particularly in the UK with the Research Excellence Framework. Hence my joy at the Finch Report mandate.

After reaching an agreement with Eduserv to offer a low-cost institutional membership to British universities, the information was widely disseminated to academic librarians throughout the UK. Despite good level of support in principle six main, recurring objections were encountered:


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1. No budget. Learning the lessons from other publishers that have set up as OA but then set article processing charges (APCs) in the £000s and institutional memberships in the £00,000s, Social Sciences Directory has set APCs at £100 and institutional memberships at £2,000 (discounted to £1,800 through Eduserv). If the objection about price is genuine then it shows how tight budgets are in many cases. Which only goes to show how unsustainable the present model is, because there is no sign that publishers are slowing their rate of output, designed to relentlessly increase their share of wallet. Library budgets could not keep pace before and, since the Global Financial Crisis and the imposition of austerity measures, they certainly cannot now.

2. Lack of ownership for OA funds. This is, I think, a separate point to the one above. The notion of OA publishing, particularly outside STM in areas such as social sciences and arts & humanities, is still not established. Several librarians that I have spoken to have said that they simply don’t know who would pay the APCs or memberships. Effectively, they are falling down a crack between the library and faculty departments, neither of whom is taking a leadership role in putting in place effective systems and examples of best practice.

3. Lack of interest by faculty. Perhaps naively, I thought that if alternatives were offered that could be shown to be fair, viable and address the issues, there would be strong support. I have certainly had many expressions of support, but also several examples of a dismissive attitude to any notion of change. I can’t help thinking that this is mainly because most academics operate within a cosy system that rewards them well and insulates them from basic practices such as P&L. Again, as a taxpayer I think this is unacceptable and needs reforming.

4. Wait and see. The upshot of these is that most universities that have replied to the institutional membership offer have said that they are interested in principle, but will not be an early adopter. The problem with this, of course, for an operation that is self-funded and operating on small margins, is that prevarication suits the status quo but works against alternatives and stifles new entrants (it will be the traditional publishers, who latch on to OA and begin to offer their own variants, that will benefit). I am currently soliciting papers from other parts of the world and submissions are coming in, but it is a great shame to me as a British citizen if the UK drags its feet and fails to take a global lead in this area.

5. Institutional repositories. Several universities have said that they have established IRs and are encouraging their faculty to deposit papers there, although in some cases they were having problems of their own to make them work. Naturally, I support IRs but wonder if they are an effective solution – many subscription publishers allow authors to publish papers in their IRs, which suggests they do not see them as a threat ie, the work will not be effectively disseminated and therefore not pose a threat to their subscription sales.

6. Untested service and unknown editorial board. The natural conclusion to that logic is that existing subscription publishers figure out how much they need to supplement the revenue in their existing journals – a tested service and with known editorial boards – from article fees and start charging thousands of pounds per article.

In early July, the findings of a survey on librarians’ attitudes and awareness of open


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access models was published by InTech. The report generally echoed the experience I was having, with a telling summary line: “The greatest concern librarians have with OA center on the article processing charges being set too high. There is generally less concern with the quality of peer review”. This is telling because librarians pay the bills and want a change to a more cost-effective model; academics want to be published in the best journals and don’t give a damn about the cost (a huge generalisation, I know, but certainly my overall experience). There is a disconnect between the motives of librarians and researchers and if librarians are going to become - as the report summary again said, “more closely integrated with their research communities as a partner, educator and innovator” - they need to be more concerted, more coherent and more assertive in bringing change about. To the librarians reading this, I would ask:

What are you doing to build awareness about open access amongst your research communities?

Are you creating information support materials?

Are you creating frameworks and processes for the central management of OA funds?

Do you understand how OA funds are managed within your institution?

Have you established what are fair and acceptable article processing charges and institutional memberships?

Are you highlighting what OASPA is doing to maintain quality thresholds in open access publishing, in order to overcome the arguments that the ‘tried and tested’ subscription model maintains standards and open access dilutes them?

There is a big opportunity here for somebody in the library and academic community to take the initiative and formulate policies. It could be advocates like OASPA, SPARC and OKFN, or it could be library consortia or groups such as IFLA or JISC. Again, the Finch Report has now made finding answers to these questions an imperative.

My experience of scholarly publishing over several years led me to the conclusion that change was desperately needed, but also contentious and difficult to implement in an environment that is very traditional and slow to adapt. Change has now been made inevitable, starting in the UK and likely to be followed in many other countries. Perhaps Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ ‘change curve’ needs to be used to recognize the pain of the transition that is underway, because I hope that we move rapidly from a position of shock, denial and anger to one of acceptance and integration.

Reference:

Author unknown (2012), Assessing the role of librarians in an Open Access world, prepared by TBI Communications on behalf of InTech


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What role will academic libraries play in moving towards an open access future?SAGE publishes report following roundtable in association with the British LibraryMithu Lucraft

In April, leading independent academic and professional publisher SAGE convened a roundtable in association with the British Library into the role of the academic library in an open access (OA) future. Chaired by publishing consultant Simon Inger and attended by an international panel of 14 senior librarians and other industry experts, the conclusions of this discussion have today been published in a report, “Moving towards an open access future: the role of academic libraries”.

The report is a summary of the discussion around what support and skills librarians will require in an OA future, and how institutions, publishers, funders and other parties should be supporting their library partners, including variation by discipline and geographic region. Representing librarians from the UK, Europe, USA and the Middle East, attendees indicated that the concept of the individual library is changing. Panellists highlighted an important shift, recognizing that attention will shift from the library to the librarian: the information professional will be the library of the future. Academic libraries and research communication will have to evolve as open access grows in importance, but while traditional roles may change, librarians will still play an important role in managing and advising on information and information-related budgets.

Key discussions include:

Addressing the culture of mistrust and misunderstanding regarding OA amongst • researchers

The varying uptake of OA and the subsequent impacts •

The key roles that librarians will play in:•

Sharing discovery and support services amongst libraries and institutions °

Managing services such as institutional repositories °

Providing licensing and related advice to researchers °

Supporting preservation and managing metadata and recognising the ° importance of recommender services

Explaining open access to researchers. °

Open access calls for a greater move towards communication and working together. The report concluded that to remain an important part of the research process in institutions and beyond, the librarian has to be creative and support users in new ways through communication, collaboration and tools.

The report, “Moving towards an open access future: the role of academic libraries”, forms part of a suite of research-led resources commissioned by SAGE for the librarian community. Others include: “Working Together: evolving value for academic libraries” and “Improving Discoverability of Content in the Twenty-First Century ”. To download it visit http://www.uk.sagepub.com/repository/binaries/pdf/Library-OAReport.pdf

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ALISS Quarterly October 2012

Documents

Transcript of ALISS Quarterly October 2012