DIS and LISU have been awarded a 194,000 Euro grant from the PEER Group (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) to consider the perceptions, motivations and behaviours of authors and users towards journal publishing and repository deposit. The research will be longitudinal in nature and will run until July 2011

The final departmental Research Seminar of 2008/09 will take place on 24th June, when James Dearnley and research students will talk about The use of Second Life in teaching and learning.

The Institute of Sport and Leisure Policy (ISLP)  and the Department of Information Science (Anne Morris and Claire Creaser) have been awarded a contract to undertake satisfaction surveys over the next 5 years for the Amateur Swimming Association.

Rachael Lindsay won the PhD student prize at the UKAIS doctoral consortium in Oxford at the weekend, after presenting on her work with Leicestershire Constabulary.    Professor Ray Paul’s evaluation of her session and response to questions was that she was without doubt the best PhD student at the conference . She was put through a very gruelling questioning, which ’she handled admirably’.   Congratulations and well deserved, Rachael! 

During her placement year, Chloe Wilson (a final year student on the IMBS programme) was involved in a project at Schroders Investment which has won a “RealIT” award and also featured in a Computer Weekly article.  The latter describes the major IT overhaul which has helped global investment firm Schroders cope with the market volatility surrounding the credit crunch.

Dr Adrienne Muir, senior lecturer and postgraduate (taught) admissions tutor, was interviewed for a recent Guardian article on Masters courses in library and information science.  The article covered the content of LIS courses, the benefits of taking a taught postgraduate course, employment prospects, and funding opportunities.  Students from the University of Sheffield and the University of Aberystwyth also offered advice and their experiences to people wanting to enter the profession.

…..today’s information professional is also likely to be immersed in the virtual world of search engines, tags and all manner of web-based tools, working in a variety of settings. Competition to get into this exciting and expanding field is tough and a master’s can help you get a professional post.

A new research project commissioned by JISC is published today: Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the costs and benefits.  One of the key findings is that sharing research information via a more open access publishing model would bring millions of pounds worth of savings to the higher education sector as well as benefiting UK plc.

Professor John Houghton from the Centre of Strategic Economic Studies at Melbourne’s Victoria University and Professor Charles Oppenheim at Loughborough University were asked to lead research that would throw light on the economic and social implications of new models for scholarly publishing.   The contributors from Loughborough included Charles Oppenheim, Anne Morris, Claire Creaser, Helen Greenwood, Mark Summers and Adrian Gourlay.

The Departmental Research Seminars 2008/2009 programme kicks off  again this week with Louise Cooke  discussing Social network analysis on January 28th 2009.

The Emerald Group Publishing Limited have informed the Department that Dr. Michael Norris has been named as a Highly Commended Award winner of the 2008 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award in the Information Science category for his doctoral thesis ‘The citation advantage of open access articles’.   These prestigious awards have now been running for four years and attract submissions of an exceptionally high quality from across the globe in all subject areas. 

Michael was awarded his Ph.D. in the autumn of 2008 and is continuing to work on a research project in DIS.  Charles Oppenheim, Head of Department commented: “This recognition of Dr. Norris’ research is richly deserved. His outstanding research explored the topical and contentious issue of whether Open Access journal articles receive more citations than toll access journals, and if so, why. His work demonstrated that the reasons for the increase of citations are complex and cannot be explained away in a simplistic fashion, as some have tried to do.”