The variety in Researcher information services

I crossed a nice list of Researcher information services @ the REPINF wiki this week:

Research Crossroads

http://www.researchcrossroads.org

Self-registering searchable service that collects data on researchers in science and medicine: their research, grant funding, publications, affiliation, biography, etc. Also provides searchable databases on funders, grants awarded and clinical trials. Also acts as a networking tool.

Academia.edu

http://www.academia.edu

Authors self-register themselves, their departments and universities/institutions. Authors add details of their papers. Currently has around 24K people and 87K papers.

ResearcherID

http://www.researcherid.com/

Thomson Reuters’ author profiling service. Searchable researcher/research database with the benefit of Thomson Reuters’ unique author identifier system (see Author Identifiers topic).

ResearchGate

https://www.researchgate.net/

Scientists’ network with over 180,000 members to date (November 2009). Scientists add details about themselves and their work, upload full-texts of their papers, and discuss relevant topics. Has just introduced a ‘micro-article’ idea, which is to encourage scientists to write and upload brief versions of their latest work for rapid communication and discussion. There is also an embryonic job advertising facility. Free to join and use. It is not clear how this initiative is supported fiancially, though it claims to be bulit ‘by scientists for scientists’.

bibapp

http://bibapp.org/

For use as an institutional ‘campus gateway’. Database of researchers, their publications and their institutional affiliations (group/department/school, etc), enabling a search for ‘campus experts’. Accepts deposits in popular formats (e.g. Refworks) and provides automatic rights-checking using SHERPA RoMEO. Makes SWORD-compliant deposits to the institutional repository or other locations.

VIVO

http://vivo.cornell.edu/

Developed at Cornell University Library. A campus research discovery tool. Researchers can manage their own page/profile, which usually links to their personal web page and departmental or other affiliation web pages.

Scholar Universe (ProQuest)

http://www.scholaruniverse.com/productinfo.jsp

2 million scholar profiles generated from ProQuest’s databases.

Selected Works (Berkeley Electronic Press)

http://works.bepress.com/

Authors create their own profiles for a campus profiling service.

Aim initiative for academic careers: Learning to Think like an Expert Management Researcher

Learning to Think like an Expert Management Researcher
AIM’s online learning resource is intended for postgraduate and research students, but it will also be useful for academics just starting out on a career in the management field. The website is designed to support researchers with developing your critical frame of mind. A constructively critical way of thinking is characteristic of expert researchers, who have gradually built-up their critical thinking capability as a product of their accumulating research experience. Acquiring this capability can be a slow process if it just occurs incidentally: a side-effect of being a student or an academic. But researchers can accelerate their learning as they go along by consciously developing their ability to think critically and to make informed decisions in their research.
Key aspects of studying management are to find things out and then to demonstrate what has been found and why it is significant. This kind of work follows the ‘logic of enquiry’, or detective-work. Finding things out involves asking well-informed questions and designing literature-based and empirical investigations to answer them. Demonstrating what has been found out typically includes writing an account that will convince other people (as with your assignments, dissertation, thesis, or academic articles for publication). Expert researchers have learned the habit of following the logic of enquiry by applying their critical frame of mind. This resource is intended to help you to develop your habit of thinking like an expert.
Researchers can do this here in two ways. First, they can visit the link at the top of this page – Introduction. - to learn more about the approach to detective-work reflected in other sections of the resource. The introduction offers both an ‘advance organizer’, or mental framework, and self-assessment exercises to support learning.
Second, researchers can go to the Key Topics link and choose one of these topics to study by clinking on its link. Each key topic contains a series of learning activities focused on common tasks that postgraduate and research students are expected to undertake. These activities include information for raising awareness and reflective exercises and ideas for integrating learning into academic work. Researchers can click on Additional Resources for some suggested further reading. Whether the researcher is a student interested in personal learning, or an academic who is interested in using the materials in teaching of postgraduate or research students, researchers may wish to visit the Using this Resource link for ideas and information on how to make effective use of the materials.

Link here for all the information: http://www.aimexpertresearcher.org/

Leiden Professors and their fascination; a good example for others

Leiden University has created a wonderful website about the work and fascination of it’s immense intellectual capital over the centuries. All profs in one place. Well done!

This is what I call a valuable nurturing of your intellectual heritage.