E-visibility of environmental sciences researchers at the University of South Africa

Abstract : Research e-visibility in theory enables a researcher to establish and maintain a digital research portfolio utilising various research e-profiles on a number of research online communities and platforms. E-visibility embodies the online presence of the researcher and their research, researcher’s discoverability via research e-profiles and the accessibility of research output on online research communities. The rationale for this study has its foundation in the premise that enhancing the e-visibility of a researcher will increase the research and societal impact of the researcher. The development of an e-visibility strategy for the School of Environmental Sciences (SES) at the University of South Africa (Unisa) would be instrumental in enhancing the e-visibility of the researchers. This study aims at establishing guidelines for the development of an e-visibility strategy for SES researchers at Unisa as part of research support via the Library services. Altmetric and bibliometric data of the SES researchers, were collected during the 2-year period (December 2014 and December 2017) and e-visibility surveys were conducted at the beginning of the study (December 2014) and at the end of the study (April 2017) as part of a longitudinal e-visibility study. The data was analysed using statistical methods to ascertain: 1) the SES researchers e-visibility status, 2) the SES researchers’ perceptions about e-visibility, 3) the altmetric-bibliometric correlations (relationships) from the altmetrics sourced from the academic social networking tools and the bibliometrics derived from the citation resources, and 4) identifying e-visibility practices and actions increasing research and societal impact. The results reflected a total increase in online presence, discoverability, and accessibility therefore indicating an overall increase in the actual and perceived e-visibility of the SES researchers. The survey conducted at the end of the study, found that 73% of the SES researchers indicating that their e-visibility increased with online presence being enhanced, 69% were more discoverable and 76% of their research output was more accessible after applying what they learnt during the e-visibility awareness and training...Ph.D. (Information Management

Enhancing the e-visibility status of environmental science researchers at the University of South Africa

Abstract: Knowledge sharing in academia has become increasingly important for researchers with their research online profiles becoming the vehicle of choice to advancing their research e-visibility. The proliferation of social networking tools with a research focus have become ideal online research communities for promoting the online presence and discoverability of a researcher and enhancing the accessibility of the researcher’s research output. This paper reports on the e-visibility themes 1) online presence, 2) researcher discoverability, and 3) accessibility of research output, of the environmental science researchers (SES) at the University of South Africa as part of a longitudinal e-visibility study during the period 2014 and 2016. The investigation into research e-visibility focused on the factors contributing to the increase in research e-visibility and the promotion of knowledge sharing. The e-visibility indicators represented via the bibliometric and altmetric data were sourced and collected from the appropriate tools i.e. bibliometrics from Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar; and the altmetric data collected from academic social networking tools i.e. ResearchGate, Academia.edu and Mendeley. The results indicate that the exposure to an e-visibility awareness strategy show an overall increase in the e-visibility indicators for the SES researchers with an increase in the net research online presence of 10.3%; the net researcher discoverability indicators increasing with 28%; and the research output accessibility indicators increasing with 18.3%. Altmetrics and bibliometrics become valuable indicators for measuring the research e-visibility of researchers in academia. This study found that e-visibility awareness, as part of an e-visibility strategy, enhanced research e-visibility, thereby increasing the research online visibility, the researcher’s discoverability, and the accessibility of the research output of the SES researchers at University of South Africa. Knowledge sharing in academia is increasingly advanced as researchers embrace these online research communities and the realization of the value of their research e-visibility

Perceived e-visibility by Environmental Sciences Researchers at Unisa

Abstract: Online research tools allow researchers to embrace online research communities and establish an online presence. An online presence implies e-visibility which embodies online visibility, discoverability and accessibility. In December 2014 an e-visibility survey was conducted on environmental science researchers at Unisa to determine their perceived e-visibility. The results indicate that the majority of researchers are emerging researchers with an average age of 40; with a master’s degree and they are employed at lecturer level. The majority of participants have online research e-profiles and they prefer e-profiling, using online research social networking tools. In addition, the majority prefer free resources (Google Scholar) to fee-based citation resources (Scopus and Web of Science) in order to ascertain their online research presence and traditional research impact. The low percentage of profiling, using traditional fee-based citation resources translates into low online visibility. A low percentage of researchers participated in self-archiving their research output to repositories is reported; this has an impact on online research discoverability and accessibility and suggests low discoverability and accessibility of online research. The development of an e-visibility strategy would allow the enhancement of e-visibility by increasing online research visibility, discoverability and accessibility

ResearchGate : Investigating altmetric and bibliometric relationships for environmental science researchers at Unisa

Abstract: This paper aims to establish the relationships between the altmetrics derived from the academic social networking tool ResearchGate and bibliometrics derived from the citation resources Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar to establish which academic social networking tools gives the most advantage. The investigation forms part of a longitudinal study investigating the e-visibility of the environmental science researchers at the University of South Africa during December 2014 and December 2016. The bibliometric indicators from Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, and altmetric indicator data from ResearchGate were collected in six (6) month intervals, and analysed using SPSS to determine the Pearson’s rank correlations. The results indicated a positive correlation between the bibliometric indicators derived from Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, and the altmetric indicators derived from the academic social networking tool ResearchGate. The results show that ResearchGate altmetric indicators influence the bibliometric indicators positively. ResearchGate therefore can be recommended for academic social networking as a strategy to influence the Environmental Science researcher’s citations positively at Unisa

Building Information Modelling adoption in the European Union: An overview

Building information modelling (BIM) is one of the most promising recent developments in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operation (AECO) industry. However, its adoption remains a challenge for the AECO industry because it requires a shift to a new way of working, leading to a current discrepancy in the adoption of BIM in the EU. The paper aims at assessing the gaps in the BIM adoption between the 28 EU countries and the barriers related to its implementation. The methodology adopted here is twofold: first, secondary data are given by a systematic literature review, completed with the review of current projects funded by the European Commission, and dealing with fostering the BIM adoption. Second, primary data are provided by a questionnaire survey to classify BIM initiatives regarding policies, the level of adoption and the barriers encountered in the 28 EU countries. In order to grade the heterogeneity of BIM adoption in the EU, we have classified the countries into four categories with different levels of awareness, from early adopters (BIM already mandated) to countries without any plan. The survey has enabled the analysis of twenty barriers to BIM adoption using the four grades in relation to the respondent country. We found barriers that are acknowledged by all countries irrespective of their level of BIM adoption. Other barriers have been already tackled by the early adopters but not by the newcomers who have yet to experience some of these issues. Finally, the assessment of the disparities of BIM adoption within the EU can help the European Commission towards unifying European standard on BIM

A comparison of the fee-based citation resources Web of science and Scopus with the free citation resource Google scholar

M.PhilCiting is the process by which scholars give recognition to research used by another academic researcher. Citation resources are tools used by academic scholars for keeping track of who did what research and the impact of the research within the discipline. Citation analysis is therefore an attempt to measure the impact and contribution of a study to the body of knowledge and research. Citation tracking and citation analysis is facilitated by making use of information resources which specialize in citations and tools for conducting citation analysis. The citation resource by The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Web of Science (WOS), was traditionally the citation tool of choice of academics for more than 40 years. The arrival in 2004 of Scopus, a fee-based citation resource, and Google Scholar (GS), a citation resource available for free and accessible via the Web, presented WOS with competition. The prolific growth of the citation resources created new opportunities for academics in citation tracking and citation analysis. The question of which citation resource to use in the process of tracking citations and conducting citation analysis posed a challenge to librarians and information professionals at academic institutions. It became essential to establish which citation resource was not only most relevant to use for which subject discipline, but which was the most cost-effective with the advent of shrinking library budgets. Therefore the need arose for citation resources to be compared with the aim of establishing whether the newcomers Scopus and GS are substitutes for or complementary to the traditional WOS. The objectives of this study included comparing WOS, Scopus and GS in order to determine whether evaluation criteria existed for citation resources, to define scholarly environmental sciences journals within a South African context, to determine which citation resource presented the most comprehensive citation coverage of the South African scholarly environmental sciences journals, to determine whether GS could be considered a substitute for the fee-based citation resources WOS and Scopus, and to determine how the content of the exported data for the journal sample population compared in terms of content completeness and quality. The research study consisted of a detailed literature review, followed by an empirical component using a comparative research design and the technique of purposive non-probability sampling in order to define the sample population for the study. The South African scholarly environmental sciences journals internationally accredited during the period 2004-2008 were chosen as the sample target population. The study consisted of a pilot study and three measuring instruments that were compiled based on the literature review. The results of the macro-level evaluation established that Scopus surpasses both WOS and GS. On the other hand, the micro-level evaluation concluded that WOS surpasses Scopus and GS. The content verification process conducted determined that Scopus and WOS both surpass GS. These findings were presented at the 12th Annual World Wide Web Applications conference in September 2010. The study was able to establish that GS is not a substitute for WOS and/or Scopus for the South African scholarly environmental sciences journals. In addition, it was concluded that GS can be used as a supplementary citation resource to the fee-based citation resources WOS and Scopus. It was further determined that the citation resource Scopus can be considered a substitute for WOS, which was traditionally the citation resource of choice of academic researchers

Comparing Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar from an Environmental Sciences perspective

This paper presents a macro- and micro-level comparison of the citation resources Web of Science (WOS), Scopus and Google Scholar (GS) for the environmental sciences scholarly journals in South Africa during 2004-2008. The macro-level measuring instruments consisted of 26 evaluation criteria with the following broad categories: content, access, services, interface, searching, search results, cost, citation and analytical tools, and linking abilities. The micro-level measuring instrument’s evaluation criteria represented the data fields of the journal records to establish comprehensivity. The macro-level evaluation results indicated that Scopus surpassed both WOS and GS whereas the micro-level evaluation results indicated that WOS surpassed both Scopus and GS. Based on the macro- and micro-level evaluation results the study was able to establish that GS is not yet a substitute but rather a supplementary citation resource for the fee-based WOS and/or Scopus for the South African international accredited scholarly environmental sciences journals during the period 2004-2008

ResearchGate: Investigating Altmetric Bibliometric Relationships for Environmental Science Researchers at Unisa

<div><p><b>Abstract</b></p> <p>The purpose of this paper is to establish the relationships between the altmetrics derived from ResearchGate and bibliometrics derived from Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar in order to establish whether the altmetrics indicators influence bibliometric indicators. The investigation forms part of a longitudinal e-visibility study investigating the e-visibility of the Environmental Science researchers at the University of South Africa during December 2014 and December 2016. Using SPSS software, the bibliometric indicator data sourced from Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar, and altmetric indicator data sourced from ResearchGate, were analysed to determine the Spearman’s rank correlations between for the Environmental Science researchers. The results indicated a strong positive correlation between the bibliometric indicators and the altmetric indicators. This study finds that ResearchGate altmetric indicators influence the bibliometric indicators positively and the findings recommend ResearchGate to be utilised as an academic social networking tool to influence the Environmental Science researcher’s citations positively at Unisa.</p><br></div

Open Educational Resources (OERs) and the Role of the Library

The purpose of this presentation is to: create an awareness of OERs how the librarians may assist you the various resources and formats of OERs how to find and evaluate OERs copyright and licensingUnisa Librar