Research Streamline!
Doing a research is not a simple process as you need all the support you can get from every corner of resources and services available especially from the library. In PSB UUM, we strive to provides useful information and support services to help you throughout your research journey. We support all level of research users and the stages of the research process; from advice on literature searching and sourcing of hard-to-find materials, streamline the research process, guidance on plagiarism issues, citation management, open access and grow your research profiles. In addition to this, we also assist you on emerging and established tools that can aid in information finding and research. In fact we’re here to help you with all of your research needs at any stage of the process, period!
In your effort to fulfill your research needs, the Library provide an extensive guidance to help you throughout your research journey.The guidance's will assist you with all you should know basis to help improve and develop your research skills. Most important thing is how you get acquainted and be proficient in manipulating the library resources for your research benefits. The research checklist below might help you to identify your research skill so far :
- Are you new to the University and Library environment?
- Do you know what are the resources that the library offered?
- Are you familiar with searching for books via the library catalogue?
- Do you know how to find theses and dissertation?
- Are you familiar with key databases in your field?
- Do you know how to get your research published?
- Are you familiar with plagiarism detection?
- Do you know how to find relevant journals databases?
- Do you know how to request materials NOT held in the Library?
- Are you familiar with our Free Resources and Repository?
- Are you familiar with In Person Consultation service?
If your answers to those checklist questions are mostly "Yes", you are on the right track because you've already mastered the skill for gathering information that could enlighten your research portfolio even more. But if the answer is the opposite, you should put more of your efforts as you might miss information that considered vital to your research field. All the resources and information provided by the library will be wasted if you ignore the important of information gathering skill.
The library offers many resources and services to support your research endeavor and you might confuse on what there are for or where it is available. The details on every services or tolls below should clarify their functionality.
- In Person Consultation - A special one to one personal consultation with our Reference librarians that can guide you in resource or materials identification, research Information, website navigation, library search tools etc.
- Subject Guides - A recommended resources tool that the library has to offer for your area of study which covers subjects area, resources available and type of materials. You can choose between subject area, resources available or types of material, or combination between either terms to specify your needs.
- Datastream - A global financial and macroeconomic data platform of over 10 million economic time series for 162 markets with comparable data so you can build insightful charts and analysis. You can access the database using library terminal at Level 2 (First Floor), New Library Building.
- Sumber Akses Terbuka - A recommended resources that free to access for all users and handled by third party organization on multi disciplines and materials.
- Plagiarism Detection - Remember to check your academic work for plagiarism detection as it is a mandatory for those who done with their Proposal, Thesis, Dissertation and Research Paper.
- UUM eTheses and Dissertation - A compilation of UUM digital eTheses and Dissertation that can be access by UUM patrons with a downloadable full text eligibility.
- Repositori UUM - A digital materials of UUM Repository which cover publication of journal articles, conference papers, research reports, book chapters and newspaper articles by UUM staff and students.
- Malaysia Open Data - The portal serves as an online one-service-center to access and download the open government data. You can get other data set globally if you use the Subject Guides tool to specify your specific need or Click Here!
- Perkhidmatan Maklumat Penyelidikan - Handled by the Reference & Information Service that help you to search and gain the articles related to you topic but at a cost which is RM30 per topic for a maximum of 10 articles. Additional articles will be charged RM5.00 per item. The search also limited to the resources available in the library only. Contact the Information Desk for any inquiries.
- eSumber - A compilation of online subscribe databases which offers current information in various subjects taught in the university especially eBooks and eJournals.
- Koleksi Perpustakaan - The core and traditional collections of various materials in different subjects such as books, reports, theses, proceedings, serials, archive etc.
- Information & Resources Workshop - From time to time the Reference & Information Service division will handle a workshop on certain topics especially on how to use or guide to topics. You can enrolled into the workshop when the event is informed through our website.
- Inter Library Loan - Books, periodicals and other library materials which are not available in our collection can be obtained from other libraries.
- Google Scholar - It provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature, whether online or in libraries; across many disciplines and sources such as articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. It indexes all these items including selected Web pages that are deemed to be 'scholarly'.
Managing your research data or information is quiet complex if you unable to organized them accordingly for an easy retrieve or searching ability. A good research data management will keep your data safe, ensure verification of research outcomes, support future research and also comply with the University requirement (if applicable).
(The library does not endorsed any of the software's or platforms but give a recommendation based on their reputation or functionality. Thus we are not responsible for any incidental or consequential loss or damage (including but not limited to any loss of data and/or economic loss and/or loss of profits) arising out of it and therefore entirely at your own risk.) see Dislaimer.
- Managing References & Citation
EndNote ~ Keep track of everything you read with EndNote. EndNote is the University's preferred reference management software and lets you easily store and manage your bibliographic references. Most importantly, EndNote integrates with Word and other programs to let you insert citations and generate bibliographies in the referencing style of your choice.
Download the Software | Online Login | Guide of using EndNote
Zotero ~ Zotero is available as a Firefox plugin as well as a standalone version, providing browser extensions for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari where its integration with Firefox is considerably more efficient than with the other browsers. Zotero allows you to collect, organize, cite and share your research sources and enables the download, capture, and indexing of full text from PDFs and websites.
Muat Turun | Register | Online Login | Guide of using Zotero
Mendeley ~ Mendeley is another free standalone application, which performs largely the same functions as Zotero but behaves a little bit differently. For example, while both Zotero and Mendeley allow you to extract metadata (such as title, authors, etc.) from PDFs, Mendeley automates this process while providing the option of organizing your files directly in your hard drive in a customizable manner. Mendeley also allows for highlighting and annotations directly on the article PDF.
Muat Turun | Online Login | Guide of using Mendeley
- Managing Research Data
Mendeley Data ~ Mendeley Data offers modular research data management and collaboration solutions packages which can be tailored to best suit your research data requirements. It designed to facilitate the comprehensive utilization of data. Consisting of five modules, this open, cloud-based platform helps research institutions to manage the entire lifecycle of research data, and enables researchers to safely access and share information wherever they are.
Publish you academic work based on your research result or data can be a tricky work because you have to manage the process strategically as it will increase the likelihood of your research, making an impact and of being cited. It can only be done if you consider the WHERE concept before submitting your manuscript.
(The library does not endorsed any of the software's or platforms but give a recommendation based on their reputation or functionality. Thus we are not responsible for any incidental or consequential loss or damage (including but not limited to any loss of data and/or economic loss and/or loss of profits) arising out of it and therefore entirely at your own risk.) see Dislaimer.
- Where To Publish?
You need to think and decide where to submit your manuscript to reputable journals that will positively affected your reputation such as getting many people read and cite your research work. Some consideration to think of are the reputation or relevance of the journals, metric indicators, peer review etc. According to University of Adelaide Library, you should give a taught on 10 considerations as follow:
- Is this journal genuinely peer reviewed?
- Is this journal read by your target audience?
- Does the journal include your subject area?
- Does it publish the appropriate type of article?
- Does the journal have high impact?
- Is the journal searchable in databases?
- What are the word limit and structural requirements?
- What is the turnaround time for acceptance?
- Are there publication charges?
- Have you considered Open Access journal publication?
Rachel Ankeny, Professor is from the School of Humanities in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Adelaide give a good tips on what you should considered about finding a quality journal in a video below.
You can also consider a campaign to help researchers identify trusted journals for their research. It is a simple checklist researchers can use to assess the credentials of a journal or publisher. Access Think Check Submit website.
- Where NOT To Publish?
According to the Murdoch University Library, consideration should be made based on following tips :
Vanity Publishing
Vanity publishing usually involves:
- no peer review process
- authors paying a fee to publish
- the publisher selling the published work to readers
- offers to publish theses
These publishers often gather contacts from conferences and institutional websites. Their offers may appear tempting to early career researchers who are seeking publishing opportunities, but vanity publishing does not undergo the stringent processes of peer review and copy editing.
Predatory Publishing
Predatory publishing usually involves:
- a professional sounding book, journal or conference title and often a professional looking website
- direct approaches to potential authors
- little or no editorial support
- no peer review process or copy editing
- authors paying significant fees to publish while the publishers expend very little
- the use of unsuspecting researchers names on editorial boards - making use of their reputations and the prestige of their institutions to attract more article submissions and more authors’ fees
Tools for Journals Evaluation & Research Impact
It is important to check the validity of the journals you wish to publish your academic work. To do that you need a system to scrutinize a list of academic journals and validate the quality journals to hold on. These tools should guide you for that purpose.
Blacklisted Journals by the Ministry - As the top authorization in education in this country, Ministry of Education has listed out a list of journals around the globe that being blacklisted and did not recommended any of the academic patrons in Malaysia to submit their academic works to the journal listed.
Publon's Journal List - The system look for a strong review history, an established publisher or society, endorsements by reputable researchers, and a formal integration with Publons which can help you decide which journal has a good reputation and recognized by other academic colleagues.
Scopus - Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. Delivering a comprehensive overview of the world's research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Scopus features smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research and you can also use CiteScoreMetrics or Scopus Compare Sources to measure journal impact in their platform.
Find the Right Journal : Wiley - A guide to for your publication needs and recommendation on how to pick the right journal.
Springer Journal Suggester - It uses semantic technology to help you quickly choose the Springer journal that is right for your paper.
Elsevier® Journal Finder - Helps you find journals that could be best suited for publishing your scientific article. It uses smart search technology and field-of-research specific vocabularies to match your article to Elsevier journals.
Scival - It allows you to compare the research performance of individuals and groups to Australian and global benchmarks as well as identify and evaluate collaboration partners.
Web of Science - An online citation database that covers sciences including agriculture, biology, environmental sciences, engineering, chemistry, physics and health sciences. It allows you to measure your h-index using the WOS data as well as creating a citation analysis report for authors.
Open Access
Open access research is a free accessible resource and can potentially increase readership and researchers who cite your research.You can collaborate will other researcher in the same subjects area and garner interest on your topic.
SPARC - SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) works to enable the open sharing of research outputs and educational materials in order to democratize access to knowledge, accelerate discovery, and increase the return on our investment in research and education.
ResearchGate - It is the professional network for scientists and researchers. Over 15 million members from all over the world use it to share, discover, and discuss research.
DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a community-curated list of open access journals and aims to be the starting point for all information searches for quality, peer reviewed open access material.
Quality Open Access Market- It is a market place for scientific and scholarly journals which publish articles in open access. Quality scoring of the journals in QOAM is based on academic crowd sourcing; price information includes institutional licensed pricing.
In order to maintain a very quality academic work and publications, the University has implement a strict procedure for academic staffs and post graduates student to provide their Articles, Proposal, Thesis, Dissertation dan Research Paper for plagiarism detection. This effort was taken to ensure all academic publication by UUM academic patrons were free of plagiarism deeds which may affect the university rank or rating if not taken seriously. For that purpose, the Library provide the plagiarism detection tool called Turnitin which can be access through our website.
In order to showcase your research activities or profile as well as your personal biography, a researcher profile platform should be considered as a must to have. In fact it is important to project your research activities such as publications, collaborative projects, fieldwork, data collection, personal biography etc to the academic or scholar community so that other colleagues can have a relationship with you to expand the field or sharing information.
What are the advantages?
- Easily manage your publications list in good orders
- Distinguishes you from other researchers with similar names
- Track citation counts
- Promote your research locally, nationally and globally
- Be identified by potential collaborators or other potential funders organization
You can easily manage your profile by using this recommended platforms :
ORCID - It provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognized.
Researcher - It provides a solution to the author ambiguity problem within the scholarly research community. Each member is assigned a unique identifier to enable researchers to manage their publication lists, track their times cited counts and h-index, identify potential collaborators and avoid author misidentification. In addition, your ResearcherID information integrates with the Web of Science and is ORCID compliant, allowing you to claim and showcase your publications from a single one account. Search the registry to find collaborators, review publication lists and explore how research is used around the world!
Scopus Author - It assigns a unique number to each author in the Scopus database and groups together all their publications. It accounts for variant versions of names by matching affiliations, addresses, subject areas, co-authors and dates of publication. It automatically calculates citation counts and the h-index.
Google Scholar Citations - It provide a simple way for authors to keep track of citations to their articles. You can check who is citing your publications, graph citations over time, and compute several citation metrics. You can also make your profile public, so that it may appear in Google Scholar results when people search for your name.
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