Built Environment, Computing and Engineering

I'd be happy to show you the resources available that support research, including LibrarySearch, individual databases such as Sage Research Methods, and the Edinburgh Napier Research Repository. Just email me to arrange an appointment.

Do you need books not currently owned by our library? Email the details of the book and depending on availability, cost and wider use, I may be able to buy books for your research. If not, you can use the Interlibrary Loan service or I can help you find the books at other local libraries. 

Listed below are some of the main tools and services to aid research. You can find further information on the library's post-graduate research pages or the Staff Intranet Research pages. I'd like to highlight the Literature Reviewing information.

Are you thinking about the next REF? Thinking about publishing? Go to the Open Access blog for lots of advice and support, including the Open access publishing deals page. 

We also have a very useful guide called Measure your research performance. From the more traditional metrics to altmetrics, this guide will help you to understand the basics.

Please note that access to our databases is for educational purposes only. You must not use our resources for commercial purposes as this may be against licence agreements. If you have any doubts, particularly regarding research projects with companies, please discuss your needs with me. 

Web of Science 

• Multidisciplinary - not full text but you may be able to link to some full text using ViewIT.
• Off campus access requires your Edinburgh Napier network login details.
• Includes Conference Proceedings Citation Index - indexes the published literature of the most significant conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions in a wide range of disciplines. Use these databases to track emerging ideas and new research in specific fields.

JISC Library Hub Discover 

• National, Academic, and Specialist Library Catalogue.
• Access to the merged online catalogues of many major libraries in the UK and Ireland including the British Library.
• Scottish contributors include Edinburgh University and the National Library of Scotland.

WorldCat

• WorldCat connects you to the collections and services of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. Also available on your mobile - find in a library near you.

Reference management tools can be very helpful when you're working on a substantial piece of work. There are lots of reference managers around but they basically do very similar things:

• Import references from online databases and LibrarySearch
• Manually add citations to your library
• Insert formatted citations into a Word document as you write
• Create bibliographies in a wide variety of bibliographic styles

The best advice is to find the reference manager that suits you and to spend some time learning how to use it.  

Endnote is available through the university . 

Mendeley is available free online, just go to the Mendeley website to create your free account. 

For more information on using EndNote and Mendeley, go to our Reference Management LibGuide.

Check the Training and Events Calendar for training sessions on using these reference managers.

Publish or Perish

• A software program designed to help individual academics to present their case for research impact to best advantage.
• It uses Google Scholar to obtain the raw citations, then analyses these and presents a variety of statistics.
• They do warn that it is not a perfect tool. A poor result might be due to working in an obscure subject, writing in a language other than English, or publishing mainly in books.

Journal Citation Reports (JCR)

• Commonly used for measuring journal impact factors, JCR can be accessed through InCites as follows:
  • Go to the Web of Science link below, 
  • Access the Products icon at the top right of the WoS homepage,
  • Go to Journal Citation Reports in the drop-down menu.
  • Training is available for JCR on InCites.

Web of Science 

• The citation databases contain the references cited by the authors of the articles. You can use these references to do cited reference searching. This type of search allows you to find articles that cite a previously published work.
• Includes Conference Proceedings Citation Index - indexes the published literature of the most significant conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions in a wide range of disciplines.

Keep up to date with your favourite journals.
JournalTOCs 

• Search for thousands Journal TOC - Table of Contents RSS feeds by Title, Subject or Publisher
• JournalTOCs is easy to use, and it's free.
• Find over 33,000 scholarly journal Table of Contents (TOCs) from over 3,550 publishers.
• Export TOC feeds to popular feedreaders.

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online Service

• This service from the British Library aims to offer a 'single point of access' where researchers can access ALL theses produced by UK Higher Education.
• Downloading digital and digitised theses is free to the researcher. A small number of participating institutions might not be able to offer Open Access and in this case the researcher may have to pay for the digitisation.
• Where a thesis must be digitised before supply, you can expect a short delay. However, you'll be informed when the thesis is ready and you can then log on and download it.
• EThOS can only offer the theses of participating institutions.

DART - Europe E-theses Portal

DART-Europe is a partnership of research libraries and library consortia who are working together to improve global access to European research theses.

Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) - Tracks the growth of existing open-access archives.

These are a few of the new books recently purchased by the library. Go to LibrarySearch, sign in and see the full range of resources available to students and staff at the university.