Discovering theses & dissertations

Theses and dissertations are unpublished submissions at either doctoral or masters level. There are a number of tools and platforms available to discover these.  Some will provide access to the full text or previews while others will provide bibliographic details only.


Internationally

Proquest Dissertations & Theses : UK & Ireland - the library subscribes to this database. It is a comprehensive database of doctoral theses from Ireland and UK.  

There are basic and advanced keyword searches and content may also be browsed by subject or location. Users may create a personal account (My Research) for saving your searches, organising your documents, creating search alerts. 

EthOS - e-theses online service - searches over 450,000 UK doctoral theses.  Many theses are available for free immediate download.  Using this website you may search and read theses on your topic.  This will provide examples of how to structure and approach a thesis.

DART-Europe E-theses portal - Access to 724,769 open access research theses from 606 Universities in 28 European countries


Nationally

Rian provides a path to open access research publications including doctoral and masters submissions.  The advanced search allows you to select these items only.


Locally

ITT Tallaght Library Catalogue - You may search local theses deposited at IT Tallaght Library here

Arrow - This is the Institutional Repository incorporating DIT, ITT and ITB publications. You may browse the theses collection here.

Accessing print collections of theses

You will not always be able to access digital versions of theses.  If there are print collections available in libraries then you may be able to visit the library.  Details for IT Tallaght staff and students about visiting libraries in Ireland may be found here.  

Two new Sports Journals - full text now available through the library website:

International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport from 2001-present

The journal provides analysis of actual performance in sport and exercise. Studies using observational methods, biomechanical analysis, self-report emanating from actual sports performance, qualitative observation and measurements such as heart rate response during actual sports performance are all within the scope of the journal.

 

Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research from 2004

The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research is the scientific journal of the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Published quarterly, it features original research that addresses optimal physical performance through applied exercise science. Research published in JSCR addresses many topics including: conditioning, sport and exercise demands, the effects of training programs on physical performance, and underlying biological basis for exercise performance.

Both journals have been added to the library discovery search FIND IT

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06 October 2017

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Publishing with IEEE Workshop –This practical workshop discusses option for publishing with the IEEE, how to identify the best fit for your paper, paper structure, submission process, review process, open access, tips and tools to help authors.  Register at Eventbrite

Boost your Career with IEEE – This talk will cover the role IEEE and IEEE Xplore can play in an engineering/computing student/researcher’s education and career. It will provide career fair tips, effective networking techniques, job search tools, awards and competitions, ways to strengthen a CV, how to stand out from the crowd, and much more. Register at Eventbrite 

What are altmetrics?

Definition

"Altmetrics are new metrics proposed as an alternative to the widely used journal impact factor and personal citation indices like the h-index. The term altmetrics was proposed in 2010,[1][2] as a generalization of article level metrics,[3] and has its roots in the twitter #altmetrics hashtag. Although altmetrics are often thought of as metrics about articles, they can be applied to people, journals, books, data sets, presentations, videos, source code repositories, web pages, etc.[4] Altmetrics cover not just citation counts, but also other aspects of the impact of a work, such as how many data and knowledge bases refer to it, article views, downloads, or mentions in social media and news media."

From & See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altmetrics

The concept has been around for 5+ years now, and is slowly gaining ground, especially with those who want to trace the impact of their writings on the social web. (Twitter, Mendeley, blogs etc. - shares basically). The argument is that online sharing does not invoke the same behaviours as traditional methods and consequently needs its own set of metrics. There are different characteristics to the behaviours and these generate different data that that traditionally collated by impact factor generators, therefore creating the need for a new approach to measuring impact > Altmetrics.

For example Elsevier clusters like kinds of activity for this type of reporting, rather than compressing all activities into one.



Image from: http://altmetrics.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/four-ways-to-measure-impact-copy.png

Leaders in the field include

• Altmetrics
• Plum
• PLOS (code)
• http://impactstory.org - free (plugs into Google Scholar My Citations)

Some of these interact with other services such as Vivo, Profiles, SciVal, Experts, and Figshare.

• Altmetrics are starting to appear in subscription resources as sub products or reports.
• Altmetrics are a way for crowd sourced / funded projects. to measure their success in reaching their targets. They enable researchers to be able to assess whether they are reaching the right market / population with outreach and gives context to the research / paper.
• Recent trends include tweetable abstract submissions

Spaces to watch

• growkudos.com
• ORCID
• Counter (use in Institutional Repositories).
• Altmetric explorer - a web application that helps you see the attention your publications are getting.

Read more at: http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/


Related blog posts - Keep track of citations to your articles - enhance your online reputation

Journal of Forensic Sciences in full text now available @Library IT Tallaght

Students and staff at ITT Dublin may now access the Journal of Forensic Sciences from Wiley.

Full text is available for the current year and previous 4 years.  Please log in using your library PIN.

This peer-reviewed journal from the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) provides the latest information on the many disciplines represented in forensic sciences.   The journal's comprehensive coverage includes: 

• pathology and biology
• toxicology
• psychiatry and behavioral sciences
• odontology
• physical anthropology
• jurisprudence
• criminalistics
• questioned documents
• engineering sciences
• digital and multimedia sciences

Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1556-4029/homepage/ProductInformation.html

Access to full text of 800+ journals via Sage Premier Collection

The library can now provide access to the Sage Premier Collection giving access to the full text of over 800 journals published by Sage. This is an interdisciplinary collection covering business management, education, communications, psychology, sociology, criminology, health sciences, science and technology.


Some of the Science journals available include:

American Journal of Sports Medicine
European Journal of Criminology
Food Science and Technology International
International Journal of Evidence and Proof
International Journal of Toxicology
Journal of Biomaterials Applications
Nutrition and Health
Sports Health


Click here to begin searching Sage Premier now (you will need your library ID and PIN)

For a list of all library databases go to Databases A-Z

Keep track of citations to your articles - enhance your online reputation

Suggestions for researchers to enhance online reputation

There are a number a useful places for researchers to maintain an online profile and showcase their work.
These tools enable you to track your citations and h-index and make your publications easily retrievable. Some are detailed below:

Google Scholar Citations

• Create a public profile e.g. Eamon Maher, Michael O'Connell

Researcher ID (Web of Science)

• Make your publications easily retrievable with your Research ID badge

Other similar communities and useful links :

Academic Search (Microsoft)
MyScienceWork
Academic.edu

ResearchGate

Mendeley

ARROW@DIT - Institutional repository administered by DIT

Kudos - a free web service that helps promote your research - Kudos user guide .  It can link to your ORCID ID (see below).

ORCID - provides a platform to link these communities together

ORCID provides a unique persistent identifer number linked to your research e.g. Wouter Gerritsma

Already have a Researcher ID? 
A number of organisations have integrated the ORCID registry.  ResearcherID has created an integration with ORCID that allows users to transfer publications as well as profile data between the two systems. From the user's ResearcherID profile or ORCID record they can initiate a link which will add the ORCID ID to their RID account and their RID number to their ORCID record. The user then has the option to transfer works and basic biographical information between the two systems.

Ten things you need to know about ORCID

With an ORCID ID you can join Impactstory for free. With Impactstory you can track buzz on Twitter, blogs, news outlets and more: we're like Google Scholar for your research's online reach. Making a profile takes just seconds:

Social Media

Health check your digital identity - a resource from piirus.ac.uk (accessed 10/11/2016)
Using Twitter in university research, teaching and impact activities from the LSE impact blog (accessed 10/11/2016)

Which one should I use?

It is suggested that you have an online presence on them all.  At any one time your citation metrics will be different on each profile so link to the best profile for funding proposals etc.


Academic spam
You should also be aware of academic spam.  A useful blog post from libfocus covers this topic.

Citation metrics
Bibliometrics are measures of an author's influence or impact - Bibliometrics for the individual - NDLR.
Altmetrics - What are altmetrics?

Other related blog topics -
Keeping up to date - current awareness




Image - Pixabay