Academia.edu for Reserchers

This is a message from Dr. Richard Price:

With a team of people from Stanford and Cambridge, I've just launched a website Academia.edu, which does two things:

- It shows academics around the world structured in a 'tree' format, displayed according to their departmental and institutional affiliations.

- It enables academics to see news on the latest research in their area - the latest people, papers and talks.

We are hoping that Academia.edu will eventually list every academic in the world:

- Faculty Members, Post-Docs, Graduate Students, and Independent Researchers.

Academics can add their departments, and themselves, to the tree by clicking on the boxes.

Academics are joining the tree rapidly. More than 15,000 academics have added themselves in the last two months.

Some professors on the site include:

- Richard Dawkins (Zoology)

- Stephen Hawking (Mathematics & Physics)

- Paul Krugman

- Noam Chomsky

- Steven Pinker

We're trying to spread the word about Academia.edu as much as possible. It would be terrific if you could visit the site, and add yourself to your department on the tree.

If your university is not there, you can add it by clicking on the arrows coming out of the university boxes.

Independent researchers - if you are a researcher that is not associated with university, I encourage you to add yourself to the "Independent Researchers"portion of the tree at http://independent.academia.edu/.

And do spread the word to your friends and colleagues if you can.

This information was distributed through list-serve by: Ingrid Thomson, UCT Library

ScienceDirect Top 25 Hottest Articles: July - September 2008

All UJ users can access the latest Top 25 Hottest Articles July-September 2008 on Science Direct. Select your subject of interest and read the articles' full-text.

View this LINK if you are non UJ user.

Research Tools

These are some useful links to explore in your free time during the holiday:

"100 Useful Tips and Tools to Research the Deep Web" (thanks to Kelly Sonora, for letting me know. I’m using at least 1/3 of these 100 tools)
- Meta-Search Engines
- Semantic Search Tools and Databases
- General Search Engines and Databases
- Academic Search Engines and Databases
- Scientific Search Engines and Databases
- Custom Search Engines
- Collaborative Information and Databases
- Tips and Strategies
- Helpful Articles and Resources for Deep Searching

Some old blog posts as a reminder:
Chemspider: Chemical Search engine
Lumifi: Research Search Engine
Golonka: E-Math, E-Physics, E-Chemistry for Africa

Faculty Acknowledge: Blogs contribute to Scholarly Communication

Faculty Acknowledge Blogs Contribute to Scholarly Communication
By noreply@blogger.com (Eric Schnell) on communications

One of my more recent hot topics is the need for librarians to expand how we define our own scholarly communications to keep up with changes in the practice of librarianship. A new report by the Ithaka Group being distributed by ARL explores how (non-librarian) faculty / scholars are making use of digital scholarly resources in the course of research. In the report entitled Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication, authors Nancy Maron and Kirby Smith detail the various digital resources that expands the definition of what is a scholarly resource. Such resources include electronic-only data, e-journals, and blogs.

The report states that blogs are “being put to interesting use by scholars” and contribute to scholarship by providing a forum for discussion. Faculty acknowledge that blog postings allow scholars to share research findings and open up a dialog that can help to further shape and refine their ideas. Blogs can add a layer of commentary to published literature and can give frequent updates of researchers’ opinions rather than just facts and can also attract well established, well known writers in specific disciplines.