The Research and Academic Services team are part of the University Library. They include librarians and research specialists dedicated to supporting research students and staff at the University of Warwick.
The team provides research support services in the areas of literature searching, reference management, open research, research data management, and digital scholarship.
Your primary contact is your Research and Academic Support Librarian who can provide subject specialist library support for your department, and can signpost you to other research support services within the library.
Research and Academic Services also includes specialist research support teams in open research, research data and digital scholarship.
Open Research
Yvonne Budden, Open Research Manager
openaccessfund@warwick.ac.uk
Warwick Research Archive Portal (WRAP)
WRAP is Warwick's open research repository
publications@warwick.ac.uk
Research Data
To be appointed, Research Data Manager
researchdata@warwick.ac.uk
Digital Scholarship
To be appointed, Digital Scholarship Manager
Research Refresh
10:30am-12:00pm every Thursday
[REX, Floor 3, Library]
Take a break from your research, grab a coffee and chat to other researchers about PhD Life.
EndNote for Reference Management
Various dates and times
[On-campus and online]
Use the EndNote software to organise your references, insert citations and create a bibliography, in your referencing style.
Literature Searching for Researchers
11:00am Thursday 7 November
[REX, Floor 3, Library]
An advanced introduction to literature searching and specialist library databases for your discipline.
Open Research Essentials
10:00am Wednesday 13 November
[Hybid]
An introduction to 'open' practices in research, including Open Access, FAIR Data and Open Peer Review.
Investigating Research Metrics
11:00am Thursday 28 November
[REX, Floor 3, Library]
An introduction to research metrics, including citations, journal impact factors and altmetrics, and an opportunity to explore research metrics in your discipline.
Data Management Planning
2:00pm Thursday 28 November
[Hybrid]
An introduction to Research Data Management (RDM) and Data Management Plans (DPM).
Literature Searching for Researchers
12:00pm Monday 2 December
[Online]
An advanced introduction to literature searching and specialist library databases for your discipline.
Investigating Research Metrics
12:00pm Monday 9 December
[Online]
An introduction to research metrics, including citations, journal impact factors and altmetrics, and an opportunity to explore research metrics in your discipline.
The library offers a wide range of bibliographic databases to support literature searching:
Your Research and Academic Support Librarian can help you plan literature searches and use databases to find academic literature. Contact your librarian to book a 1-2-1 appointment.
Systematic Reviews are a very structured way of reviewing the research literature that is regularly used in the health and medical sciences. Systematic reviews require an in-depth literature search and can be very time-consuming.
The key elements of a systematic literature search are to:
It is recommended that you speak to your Research and Academic Support Librarian if you are thinking of undertaking a systematic review.
Systematic Literature Searches are scientific approaches to literature searching, which borrow principles from systematic reviews, without being a full systematic review. They are an increasingly popular research method in social sciences including business, criminology, education and psychology.
Resources.
Get It For Me is the library's document supply service. It allows researchers to request resources not currently available in the library. To request items, simply complete the relevant request form. The library has a digital first policy and will acquire electronic resources where possible.
If you are interested in a trial or subscription to a new journal or database, please contact your Research and Academic Support Librarian.
Researchers to keep up-to-date with new publications in their discipline. The library's journals and databases include current awareness tools which can alert you to new articles, issues of journals, and citations to articles.
Your Research and Academic Support Librarian can help you use current awareness services. Contact your librarian to book a 1-2-1 appointment.
The library provides advice and guidance on plagiarism and referencing to students and researchers.
Your Research and Academic Support Librarian can advise on the Harvard referencing style and other referencing conventions used in your discipline. Contact your librarian to ask a question or book a 1-2-1 appointment.
The library provides advice and guidance on managing literature using reference management software.
EndNote: the University provides EndNote reference management software, and the library provides EndNote user guides, training and ongoing support. Additionally, your Research and Academic Support Librarian can advise on reference management software. Contact your librarian to ask a question or book a 1-2-1 appointment. Alternatively, contact endnoteweb@warwick.ac.uk.
The library provides advice and guidance on managing your Research Data to ensure that you meet policy and funder requirements. From initial planning, during your active research phase, to archiving and sharing data at the end of your research project.
The library's Research Data Management team can advise on all aspects of RDM including planning, organising, accessing and sharing research data. Contact the RDM team researchdata@warwick.ac.uk to ask a question, book a 1-2-1 appointment or group training session.
The library provides advice and guidance on Open Access (OA) publishing to ensure that you meet policy and funder requirements, including compliance with the Research Excellence Framework (REF). The library also manages the university's subscriptions to Read and Publish journals, funds for Article Processing Charges (APCs), and the Warwick Research Archive Portal (WRAP) our open access research repository.
The library's Open Access team can advise on all aspects of open access including policy, funding, compliance and open access articles and monographs. Contact the OA team openaccessfund@warwick.ac.uk to ask a question, book a 1-2-1 appointment or group training session.
Research metrics or bibliometrics is the statistical analysis of books, articles and other publications. It is an information science used to evaluate research using quantitative methods by counting citations, but can also use alternative measures (altmetrics) to count page views, downloads and social media shares. Research metrics can be used to evaluate articles, journals and authors, as well as research groups and institutions. It can help you to identify research collaborators, where to publish your research and measure the impact of your research.
Your Research and Academic Support Librarian can help you to find research metrics on library databases. Contact your librarian to ask a question or book a 1-2-1 appointment. The library's Open Access team can advise on advanced aspects of bibliometrics including policy and implications for your research. Contact the OA team scholarlycomms@warwick.ac.uk to ask a question, book a 1-2-1 appointment or group training session.
Research metrics can be a complicated world of acronyms and numbers. If you are using research metrics, it's important to understand what is being measured, the strengths and limitations of the measure, and how research metrics should be used responsibly. The following sources of information provide useful summaries and definitions of research metrics for the beginner.
The Metrics Toolkit website provides definitions of key research metrics including calculation, use cases and limitations.
Find definitions of Altmetric (AAS), Citations, Field Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI), H-Index, Journal Impact Factor (JIF)
Lai Ma, 'Chapter 6: Research Metrics', in The Scholarly Communication Handbook (London: Facet, 2023)
Further information on Journal Impact factors (JIF), Cite Score, SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), Source Normalised Impact Per Paper (SNIP), Field Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI), Altmetric (AAS), H-Index and responsible metrics.
Rick Anderson, 'Chapter 10: Metrics and Altmetrics', in Scholarly Communication (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)
Further discussion on the limitations of Impact Factor (IF) research metrics and more depth on alterative metrics including Altmetrics, Plum Analytics and ImpactStory.
Scopus - multidisciplinary search engine for academic literature by Elsevier
Web of Science - multidisciplinary search engine for academic literature by Clarivate
Journal Citation Reports - citation metrics and rankings for academic journals by Clarivate
Dimensions - multidisciplinary search engine and analysis tool for academic research from Digital Science
Dimensions searches for academic research including research grants, clinical trials, patents and policy documents. View index and abstracts. View references and cited literature. View Dimensions citation counts and Altmetric attention scores, for both all-time and recent time periods. View author profiles, including lists of publications, grants, patents and policy documents, number of citations, affiliations and co-authors.
Google Scholar - multidisciplinary search engine for scholarly literature by Alphabet
Google Scholar searches for academic literature and counts citations to articles, books and chapters. Find cited and related literature. View author profiles, including lists of publications, number of citations, h-index and i10-index. View lists of journal titles by subject based on the h-5 index.
