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Tag: Scholarly Communications

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Do you have questions about how to determine if a journal is a predatory publisher? Would you like a short tutorial on importing your citations into RefWorks? Do you need help understanding copyright laws and how these laws apply to you as a researcher in the scholarly publishing landscape? The Scholarly Communications Committee’s recent tutorials address these topics and more. To learn more about scholarly publishing and communications, watch one of the videos listed below or visit the full video tutorial library. 

In this video, librarian Ruth Bueter shows how Cabells Predatory Reports can be used to evaluate publishing options. The tutorial describes characteristics of predatory journals, explains what Cabells Predatory Reports are, limitations to the reports and ends with a demonstration of how to access and use the reports. This tutorial is useful for researchers who want to avoid publishing in a predatory journal or those who are interested in learning more about a resource that can help evaluate journals.

During this tutorial, Metadata Specialist Brittany Smith goes into detail about copyright in the United States, including rights automatically granted to authors of a work and how publishing agreements may impact authors’ rights. Additionally, the tutorial provides resources that can assist authors in understanding their rights and feeling confident when negotiating their agreements with publishers.

RefWorks is a citation manager that assists with tracking citations and building a bibliography to properly attribute works referenced in research. Senior Circulation Assistant Randy Plym demonstrates how to access RefWorks from Himmelfarb Library’s homepage and walks you through the process of importing citations from databases such as Pubmed or CINAHL. 

Many of the tutorials are five minutes or less and new videos are routinely added to the collection. Topics range from the research life cycle to understanding what editors look for in a manuscript to setting up a Google Scholar or ORCiD profile. If you would like to watch one of these tutorials visit the Scholarly Communications Guide or Himmelfarb Library’s YouTube profile.

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Himmelfarb Library’s Scholarly Communications Committee produces short tutorial videos on scholarly publishing and communications topics for SMHS, GWSPH, and GW School of Nursing students, faculty, and staff. Five new videos are now available on our YouTube channel and Scholarly Publishing Research Guide!

2023 NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy Resources by Sara Hoover - Sara is our resident expert on data management policy and resources. She provides an overview of the NIH policy, the essential elements of a data management and sharing plan, and highlights GW and non-GW resources that can aid you in putting together a data management and sharing plan. The video is 10 minutes in length. 

Animal Research Alternatives by Paul Levett - Paul demonstrates how to conduct 3Rs alternatives literature searches for animal research protocols. He defines the 3Rs and explains how to report the search in the GW Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) application form. Paul is currently a member of the GW IACUC. The video is 13 minutes long.

Artificial Intelligence Tools and Citations by Brittany Smith - As a Library Science graduate student, Brittany has an interest in how AI is impacting the student experience. She discusses how tools like Chat GPT can assist with your research, the GW policy on AI, and how to create citations for these resources. The video is 6.5 minutes in length.

UN Sustainable Development Goals: Finding Publications by Stacy Brody - Stacy addresses why the goals were developed, what they hope to achieve, and shows ways to find related publications in Scopus. The video is 5 minutes long.

Updating Your Biosketch via SciEncv by Tom Harrod - Tom talks about the differences between NIH’s SciEncv and Biosketch and demonstrates how to use SciEncv to populate a Biosketch profile. Tom advises GW SMHS, School of Nursing, and GWSPH researchers on creating and maintaining research profiles and he and Sara provide research profile audit services. The video is 5 minutes long.

You can find the rest of the videos in the Scholarly Communications series in this YouTube playlist or on the Scholarly Publishing Research Guide.

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OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research and development company, released the latest version of their generative text chatbot program, ChatGPT, near the end of 2022. The program provides responses based on prompts from users. Since its release universities, research institutions, publishers and other educators worry that ChatGPT and similar products will radically change the current education system. Some institutions have taken action to limit or ban the use of AI generated text. Others argue that ChatGPT and similar products may be the perfect opportunity to reimagine education and scholarly publishing. There is a lot to learn about AI and its impact on research and publishing. This article aims to serve as an introduction to this rapidly evolving technology.

In a Nature article, Chris Stokel-Walker described ChatGPT as “a large language model (LLM), which generates convincing sentences by mimicking the statistical patterns of language in a huge database of text collated from the Internet.” (Stokel-Walker, 2023, para. 3) OpenAI’s website says “The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.” (OpenAI, n.d., para. 1) ChatGPT may be used to answer simple and complex questions and may provide long-form responses based on the prompt. In recent months, students and researchers have used the chatbot to perform simple research tasks or develop and draft manuscripts. By automating certain tasks, ChatGPT and other AI technologies may provide people with the opportunity to focus on other aspects of the research or learning process.

There are benefits and limitations to AI technology and many people agree that guidelines must be in place before ChatGPT and similar models are fully integrated into the classroom or laboratory.

Van Dis et al. notes that “Conversational AI is likely to revolutionize research practices and publishing, creating both opportunities and concerns. It might accelerate the innovation process, shorten time-to-publication, and by helping people to write fluently, make science more equitable and increase the diversity of scientific perspectives.” (van Dis et. al., 2023, para. 4) Researchers who have limited or no English language proficiency would benefit from using ChatGPT to develop their manuscript for publication. The current version of ChatGPT is  free to use making it accessible to anyone with internet access and a computer. This may make scholarly publishing more equitable, though there is a version of the program that is only available with a monthly subscription fee. If future AI technologies require fees, this will create additional access and equity issues. 

 While ChatGPT can produce long-form, seemingly thoughtful responses there are concerns about its ability to accurately cite information. OpenAI states that “ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.” (OpenAI, n.d., para. 7) There is a potential for AI generated text to spread misleading information. Scholars who have tested ChatGPT also note that the AI will create references that do not exist. Researchers must fact-check the sources pulled by the AI to ensure that their work adheres to current integrity standards. There are also concerns about ChatGPT’s relationship to properly citing original sources. “And because this technology typically reproduces text without reliably citing the original sources or authors, researchers using it are at risk of not giving credit to earlier work, unwittingly plagiarizing a multitude of unknown texts and perhaps even giving away their own ideas.” (van Dis et al, 2023, para. 10)

Students and researchers interested in using AI generated text should be aware of current policies and restrictions. Many academic journals, universities and colleges have updated their policies to either limit the use or institute a complete ban of AI in research. Other institutions are actively discussing their plans for this new technology and may implement new policies in the future. At the time of writing, GWU has not shared policies to address AI usage in the classroom. If you’re interested in using AI generated text in your research papers or projects, be sure to closely read submission guidelines or university policies. 

ChatGPT and other AI text generators are having profound impacts and as the technology continues to improve, it will become increasingly difficult distinguishing work written without the aid of an AI and work co-authored with an AI. The long term impacts of AI in the classroom have yet to be fully understood. Many institutions are moving to address this new technology. As we continue to learn about ChatGPT’s benefits and limitations, it is important to remain aware of your institution’s policies on using AI in research. To learn more about ChatGPT, please read any of the sources listed below! Himmelfarb Library will continue to discuss AI technology and its impact on research as more information is made available.

Additional Reading:

Work Cited:

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Himmelfarb Library’s Scholarly Communications Committee is pleased to announce five new short video tutorials have been added to our video library! This video library now includes 30 short 3-7 minute videos on a variety of scholarly publishing topics, perfect for microlearning! This round of new videos covers topics including human participant research support, addressing health misinformation and disinformation, using Dimensions Analytics, Cabells Journalytics, and finding an author’s H-Index using Google Scholar and Scopus.

Human Participants Research Support - Fall 2022

Are you interested in learning more about the resources available to support human participant research at George Washington University? This video includes information about the Office of Human Research (OHR), Institutional Review Boards (IRB), and CITI Training available through GW in this short three and half minute video.

Addressing Health Mis- and Dis- Information

This five-minute video discusses how to address health mis- and disinformation. Learn the difference between mis- and disinformation, the different types of mis- and disinformation, why this matters in relation to healthcare providers and health literacy, and how to address mis- and disinformation with patients. 

Dimensions Analytics: An Introduction

Dimensions, a database from Digital Science, tracks research output and has information about grants, publications, datasets, clinical trials, policy documents, and more. This tutorial provides a brief overview of Dimensions Analytics, which allows you to track and visualize research output trends, and allows for more comprehensive functionality. Several examples of use cases are also included.

Cabells Journalytics

This five-minute tutorial provides an overview of Cabells Journalytics, a tool that can be used to evaluate and compare journals in which to publish a manuscript. Learn how to access Cabells Journalytics, and see example journal records to see the depth of information provided about each journal. You’ll also learn how to compare up to five journals.

H-Index: Google Scholar vs. Scopus

In this five-minute tutorial, you’ll learn more about what the H-Index is (a measure of both quantity and quality of research output) and how it is used to track researcher productivity. This tutorial will then walk you through how to find an H-Index using both Google Scholar and Scopus, and why there is sometimes a difference in the H-Index value between these two sources.

This newest installment of videos is part of the Scholarly Communications Committee’s Short Video Series, which covers a wide range of scholarly communications-related topics and covers all phases of the research life cycle. Have a scholarly publishing topic that you’d like us to discuss? We’d love to hear from you! To suggest a topic for an upcoming video, please contact Sara Hoover at shoover@gwu.edu. 

To learn more about scholarly publishing, check out our Scholarly Publishing Guide. This guide includes resources to help scholars find an appropriate journal in which to publish their research, tips on how to spot and avoid predatory publishers, and information on how to promote and increase the visibility of your published research.

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On August 25, 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) published a memorandum that updated guidance on research funded by federal grants and called for the end of a 12-month embargo period. By 2025, published research that is funded by the federal government must be made available to the general public and key stakeholders and must no longer reside behind a paywall. Government agencies, academic libraries, and other research institutions are in the process of understanding this memo and updating their policies. Many institutions believe this new memo and guidance will radically change the academic publishing landscape. While this policy will likely advance a cultural shift towards open sciences, there are also likely new challenges related to the publication lifecycle that researchers are likely to encounter. In this post, we’ll provide a detailed explanation of the OSTP’s guidance, how this will impact researchers, and offer library resources to help prepare for the change. 

The memorandum entitled ‘Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research’ (also known as the Nelson memo), lists three recommendations for federal agencies:

  1. “Update their public access policies as soon as possible, and no later than December 31st, 2025, to make publications and their supporting data resulting from federally funded research publicly accessible without an embargo on their free and public release;
  2. Establish transparent procedures that ensure scientific and research integrity is maintained in public access policies; and, 
  3. Coordinate with OSTP to ensure equitable delivery of federally funded research results and data.” (Office of Science and Technology Policy, 2022, p. 1)

Dr. Alondra Nelson, Deputy Assistant to the President, explained later in the memo that “The insights of new and cutting-edge research stemming from the support of federal agencies should be immediately available–not just in moments of crisis, but in every moment. Not only to fight a pandemic, but to advance all areas of study, including urgent issues such as cancer, clean energy, economic disparities, and climate change” (Office of Science and Technology Policy, 2022, p. 2-3). Under the OSTP’s new guidance, researchers, journalists, members of the public, and other interested parties will be able to access new research as soon as it is published at no additional cost. This will provide the public with the opportunity to learn more about new innovations and experiments and it will allow other researchers to replicate or expand on existing research. 

The new guidance will allow for more collaboration as researchers combat complex topics such as climate change, future pandemics, and other global concerns. New research and data will be made freely available to the public, so researchers and institutions will need to address how to handle publication processing fees. While this new guidance won’t go into effect until 2025 and there are still questions about how specifically it will alter existing public access policies at government agencies like the NIH, the staff at Himmelfarb are here to assist researchers who may have questions about how the OSTP memo will impact their work. 

The Scholarly Communication Committee tutorial ‘How to include Article Processing Charges (APCs) in Funding Proposals’ is a great place to learn more about budgeting for article processing charges when creating a grant proposal. ‘Open Access and Your Research’ examines the different open access models and the consequences it has on your research. And if you’re unsure of how to find article processing charges, the tutorial ‘Locating Article Processing Charges (APCs)’ offers guidance on locating this information on a publisher’s website.  If you have specific questions about this new memo and would like to speak directly with a librarian,  please contact the library via phone, email, or chat. 

References:

Office of Science and Technology Policy. (2022). Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research. Author. 

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Himmelfarb Library’s Scholarly Communications Committee is pleased to announce five new short lectures have been added to our video library! This round of videos cover topics such as finding article publishing charges (APC) costs, changing citation styles in PubMed, contextualizing preprints and more. 

Locating Article Publishing Charges (APCs)- In this video, you’ll learn about Article Publishings Charges (APCs), how to find them on a publisher’s website and at the end of the tutorial, receive some tips that will help you handle APCs. 

Changing Citation Styles in PubMed- Would you like to learn how to switch from AMA to APA or MLA? This video will focus on changing citation styles when generating citations in PubMed.

Locating Manuscript Guidelines- Learn how to locate manuscript preparation guidelines and author resources for scholarly journals. This tutorial will guide you through three different journal websites to show you where manuscript guidelines are typically located. 


Finding Journals with JCR- In this tutorial, you’ll learn about the Journal Citations Report database and how it can help you discover scholarly journals where you can submit your research for publication.

APA Citations for Legal Resources-  Are you familiar with the Bluebook legal citation style? Do you want to cite case law, but are unsure of the proper citation format?This video will provide a basic introduction to this citation style used by the APA which is useful when citing legal resources.

These videos and the committee’s other videos from previous lectures are located under the ‘Scholarly Communications Video Tutorials’ tab on the Scholarly Publishing guide. The guide also includes resources to help scholars find a journal that will publish their research, tips on how to spot and avoid predatory publishers, ways to increase the visibility of your published research and more!

 The Committee is working on another set of videos that will be released during the fall semester 2022. The committee members are eager for feedback and/or suggestions for video topics. We would love to hear from you! If you have a scholarly publishing topic that you’d like the committee to discuss, please contact the committee chair, Sara Hoover, at shoover@gwu.edu.

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The academic publishing landscape can be difficult to navigate and Himmelfarb Library’s Scholarly Communications Committee is dedicated to answering general and specific questions that arise during the submission and publication process. The Committee continues to expand its ‘Scholarly Communications Short Video Library’ and there are nearly 20 videos to watch that cover various topics such as how to properly change citation styles, how and why to archive your publications with an institutional repository and how to set up your Google Scholar profile. If you’d like to watch the videos, but are unsure of where to begin here are some suggestions:

Advanced Literature Searches and the PubMed MeSH Search Builder:

In this lecture, you’ll learn about PubMed’s MeSH builder and how you can use it to help you perform advanced literature searches. Paul Levett, a Reference and Instructional Librarian, provides a step by step guide on how MeSH terms can be used to locate specific research articles that can assist you during the advanced literature search process. If you’re in the beginning stages of brainstorming a research topic or question, this tutorial will provide insight into how to conduct your own literature search and discover publications that will help you narrow the scope of your own research. 

Screening: What do Editors Look For?

When you’re ready to submit your research for publication, this tutorial by Reference and Instructional Librarian Stacy Brody will talk in-depth about how journal editors select manuscripts for their respective journals. The submission process may seem mysterious and difficult to understand, but this video will discuss six features editors consider when evaluating manuscripts.  

Retractions, Corrections, & Expressions of Concern:

Are you unsure of the difference between retractions, corrections and expressions of concern? Would you like to ensure you’re using research that is considered a valuable source to cite? In this tutorial, Ruth Bueter,  Serials and Systems Librarian, breaks down the difference between these terms and discusses how and why an article may be retracted or corrected or why there may be concerns with a published article.

These are just a few of the many videos currently available in the Scholarly Communication’s video library. The Scholarly Communications Committee is currently working on a new round of videos to add to the video library and hopes to share their new lectures in late spring or early summer. if you’d like to suggest a topic please fill out this suggestion form!

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As we start the new semester in 2022, the Scholarly Communications Committee is pleased to share another round of short video lectures to help researchers navigate scholarly publishing and promotion. The short lectures will cover a variety of topics including promoting your research after publication, the research life cycle, open access publishing and much more. The new videos are available for viewing on the ‘Scholarly Communications Short Video Library’ and on Himmelfarb Library’s YouTube Channel under the ‘Scholarly Communications Videos’ playlist.

Here are the titles and descriptions for each video:

Promoting Your Research
Are you looking for ways to promote your research or publications? In this brief tutorial we cover basic social media promotion tips, tweetable abstracts, and the value of including your research in open access repositories. We also discuss the importance of ensuring that researcher profiles include accurate and up to date publication information.

Advanced Literature Searches and the MeSH Search Builder
This tutorial provides information on how to access and utilize the MeSH search builder using PubMed. We discuss how to perform advanced literature searches using this tool.

The Research Cycle
This tutorial provides an overview of the research lifecycle and describes what happens in each phase.

CREDiT taxonomy
Do you have questions about authorship credit and order? The CREDiT taxonomy can help! In this tutorial we discuss contributor roles and publishers that utilize CREDiT to ensure that researchers get credit for their work!

Retractions, errata, expressions of concern
In this tutorial we give an overview of retractions, corrections, and expressions of concern. We discuss reasons for retractions, the process of making corrections to published research, and look at examples in PubMed.

Open Access and Your Research
Is there value to publishing your research in an Open Access (OA) format? In this tutorial we define Open Access, give examples of different types of OA, and discuss options for publishing or archiving research in an OA format. 

Once you’ve finished watching the new videos, explore our video library and watch the previous short lectures to learn more about publication, promotion and the resources Himmelfarb Library offers. 

If you are a researcher with questions or concerns about publishing your research or looking for ways to promote your work to a wide audience, the Scholarly Communications Committee is here to assist you at every step of the process. Feel free to contact members of the committee via email by using the email address listed at the end of each video or contact Himmelfarb Library at himmelfarb@gwu.edu. If you have suggestions for future video topics, leave them in the comments or send an email and a staff member will share it with the committee.

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