La Trobe University

Library

ERA: Research Peers

Who are the leading researchers in my area? Where are they publishing?

Using Library Databases

Use a database to identify researchers in your field.

  • The list of databases by subject will give you an idea of what databases to use.
  • Limit your search to peer reviewed, refereed, academic or scholarly if available.
  • Sort the results by Author. This will identify the most prolific (but not necessarily the best) researchers.
  • Most databases allow you to sort a results list by Source to see the title with the most articles in an area of study.
  • If you are using the database Web of Science use the General search option. Use either the Refine your results or the Analyse function option at the search results to rank the results by author, source or institution.
  • If you are using the database Scopus use the Basic search option. Go to the Refine results section to rank the results by author.
  • If you are using the National Scientific Reports database, search Summary by Author. Then click on the Restrict Search button and limit by Field or Keyword.
  • Use ISI Highly Cited – available through the Web of Knowledge. This allows you to search by name, category, institution or country.
  • Set up a Database Alert. Many databases allow you to set up an email alert to notify you of new research by specific authors, new issues of journals, or new material published in your area of research. The library Alerting Service page contains more information on how to set up alerts.
The Community of Scholars - Cambridge Scientific Abstracts 

Community of Scholars  profiles information about scholars and organisations from around the world, including their affiliations and publication information. At the search results screen click on the Scholars tab to see a list of those working in the area of your search. You can also add your own details to the database.
The CSA databases offering this feature are:

  • DAAI: Design and Applied Arts Index
  • ERIC
  • Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
  • Social Services Abstracts
  • Sociological Abstracts

A listing of relevant scholars working in the subject area searched is displayed, with direct links to full Scholar Universe profiles. You can sort the listing of scholars by relevancy ranking or by last name.

CUDOS

CUDOS (Commonwealth Universities Database Online Service) brings searchable access to over 500 universities in countries in the Commonwealth. Search by institution, individual or research area. Password available from the Inquiry Desk.

Web Citation Index

Use the Web Citation Index available through ISI Web of Knowledge. It is a citation index of web-based material including technical reports, preprints, theses and white papers from subject-based and institutional-based web repositories. You can use either the Refine your results or the Analyse option at the 'Search Results Summary' screen to rank the results by author.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar uses Google to search through the Internet but it retrieves only scholarly material. It searches across many disciplines and sources including peer reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organisations. If you find a journal article in Google Scholar, and the library subscribes to that journal, you can link directly to the full text article. This will work if you're using a computer on campus.

If you're using a computer off campus you'll need to set up your Google Scholar preferences.

Current Research Practices and Academics' Interests

Most university web sites provide information on current research practices and academics' interests.  The following sites will help you identify universities from around the world:

  • Australian Education Network University Guide provides a list of universities in Australia, searchable by state or city, with rankings
  • Braintrack University Index is a worldwide University-Index on the Internet
  • Colleges and Universities is a gateway to the home pages of universities around the world
  • In-cites provides a behind-the-scenes look at the scientists, journals, institutions, nations, and papers selected by the Essential Science Indicators.
Finding Research Publications
  • Search the relevant databases as outlined above
  • The ARROW project  (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World) is an Australian initiative to support best practice institutional digital repositories comprising e-prints, digital theses and electronic publishing
  • Search OpenDOAR - an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. As well as providing a simple repository list, OpenDOAR lets you search for repositories or search repository contents. Institutional digital repositories are developing rapidly around the world, and may comprise journal articles, preprints, post-prints, digital theses & dissertations, electronic publishing, as well as non-research related materials.
  • The Australian Digital Theses Program aims to establish a distributed database of digital versions of theses produced by the postgraduate research students at Australian universities.
  • Search other theses collections using one of the Theses Databases.