Research leaders
Research leaders are at the cutting edge of a field. It is useful to know who they are, what their current research focus is and where they work. This information can help to validate and provide credibility to your work.
Who is researching in my area, and where are they publishing?
Databases
Search in relevant databases to find other researchers writing in your area, and to find the journals or conferences in which they publish. The list of databases by subject will help you to decide which database to use. Some database options are:
- limiting your search to peer reviewed, refereed, academic or scholarly if available.
- viewing or sorting the results by author, to see the most prolific writers in the field. Note that this aspect is not necessarily an indication of quality. You may also be able to sort the results by Source to see the title with the most articles in an area of study.
- creating an email alert or RSS feed based on a search statement or a
list of journals. These will alert you to
- new material published in your area of research
- new issues of journals of interest to you
- new works by authors of interest to you
Web of Science
In Search for use either the Refine
results, or the Analyse function option at the search results to rank the results by author, source
or institution.
Scopus
In Scopus at the results screen you can see the list of authors or source titles
in ranked order by the number of citations. You can also use the Citation
tracker to find whole of career cites for an author.
Web Citation Index is a service that is under development, hosted by ISI Web of Knowledge. It is a citation index of technical reports, preprints, theses and white papers, from subject-based and institutional-based web repositories. The Analyse tool is available from the results screen to see the list of authors in ranked order by the number of citations.
University Science Indicators
Thomson Scientific’s University Science Indicators is a database
of publication and citation statistics that reflect research performance for
Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and United States during the years 1981-2005.
The database contains publication and citation counts taken from the peer-reviewed
journals indexed by Thomson Scientific and is presented as multiple tables
from which data can be drawn selectively, by choosing institutions, fields,
and various analysis levels.
The database is not networked. If you are interested in obtaining information, contact your Academic Library Team
National Citation Reports
The National Citation Report is a database of Australia's
journal articles in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The dataset
contains bibliographic information for each paper indexed plus year by year
and total citation counts for each paper. There is a linked file of expected
citation rates for each paper, based on the journal title, publication year
and document type (article, review, editorial, etc.). Detailed bibliographic
and citation data on every paper can be searched, grouped, summarized, and
ranked using any data elements, such as author names (all author names), institution,
discipline, year, citation
count, collaborating institutions or nations.
The database is not networked. If you are interested in obtaining information, contact your Academic Library Team
Digital repositories
Institutional digital repositories are developing rapidly around the world, and may comprise e-prints, digital theses and electronic publishing.
- University of South Australia is a member of the Arrow project (opens in new window), an Australia wide research initiative, that
- showcases UniSA's research and intellectual output to the world
- provides a comprehensive picture of the breadth and diversity of research at UniSA
- Google Scholar There is a project underway to convert out-of-copyright holdings into digital format and offer access to them via Google Scholar. If you use the Google Scholar link on this page, or the one on the Library home page, you will have access to some full text where it is available from subscriptions held by the UniSA Library.
Theses
- The Finding theses online workshop lists sources of published theses including databases
- Searches on internet search engines may find researchers currently working on their thesis. Use your subject keywords and add theses or thesis or dissertation(s) to the search statement
Other universities
Most university web sites will have links to current research interests and institutes.
- Australian Education Network University Guide (opens in new window) provides a list of universities in Australia, searchable by state or city, with rankings
- Braintrack (opens in new window) University Index is a worldwide University-Index on the Internet
- Colleges and Universities (opens in new window) is a gateway to the home pages of universities around the world
Who are the leading researchers in my field?
- ARC (opens in new window) (Australian Research Council) advises the Government on research matters and manages the National Competitive Grants Program
- NHMRC (opens in new window) (National Health and Medical Research Council) is Australia’s leading expert body promoting the development and maintenance of public and individual health standards, research funding, consideration of ethical issues, development of advice and regulation of sensitive research activities
- Incites (opens in new window) provides details of top international scientists, journals, institutions, nations, and papers
- Science.ca (opens in new window) describes Canada's greatest scientists and their achievements