Other ERA Resources: Where should I publish? | Who is citing me? | Using Journal Citation Reports FAQ
On this page: Who are leading researchers in my field? | Who else is researching in my area? Finding research publications | Other Internet sources | Contacting researchers
It is useful to know who is researching at the cutting edge of your field, where they work, and what they are publishing. It can also be useful to know emerging and "hot" areas of research interest.
This page will answer the following questions:
- How do I find out who are the leading researchers in my field?
- How do I find out who else is researching in my area and where they are publishing?
Who are the leading researchers in my field?
Essential Science Indicators (ESI)
ESI provides access to a compilation of performance statistics and trends. The chief indicators of output are journal article publication counts. For influence and impact measures, ESI employs both total citation counts and cites per paper scores.
It is important to recognize that the data in ESI are limited to Thomson Scientific-indexed journal articles only . No books, book chapters, or articles published in journals not indexed by Thomson Scientific are taken into account here, either in terms of publication or citation counts.
Types of Data
- Citation Rankings
- Scientists
- Institutions
- Countries
- Journals
- Most cited papers
- Highly cited papers (last 10 years)
- Hot papers (last 2 years)
- Citation Analysis
- Baselines - citation data (citation count norms, averages, and percentiles by field and journal) to aid in the interpretation of raw citation counts obtained from Web of Science
- Research Fronts - algorithmically derived topics reflecting research intensive and breakthrough areas of current science.
Commentary
- In-Cites: behind-the-scenes look at the scientists, journals, institutions, nations, and papers selected by ESI
- Special Topics: special attention to selected areas of research
- Science Watch: editorial content from archived issues (more than one year old) of Science Watch
You can also access ISI Essential Science Indicators from ISI Web of Knowledge or via the Electronic Databases page. ESI has its own tutorial.
Who else is researching in my area, and where are they publishing?
Databases
Search in relevant databases to find others researching in your area, and the journals or conferences in which they publish. The Subject Resources list will help you to decide which database to use.
When searching a database:
- Limit your results to peer reviewed, refereed, academic or scholarly journals, if this feature is available.
- You may be able to sort the results by author, to see the most prolific (not necessarily the best) writers in the field.
- Most databases allow you to sort a results list by Source to see which journals publish the most articles in an area of study.
Searching Web of Science :
In general Search use either the Refine your results , or the Analyse option at the Search Results Summary screen to rank the results by author, source or institution
Community of Scholars:
This is a feature of Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) proprietary databases. Community of Scholars profiles information about scholars and organisations from around the world, including their affiliations and publication information. The CSA databases offering this feature are:
- ERIC
- Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
- PsycINFO
- Social Services Abstracts
- Sociological Abstracts
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.
Alerts/RSS feeds : Many databases allow you to set up 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
Finding Research Publications
- Search the relevant databases as outlined above
- Search JCU ePrints
- Search Open DOAR - an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. As well as providing a simple repository list, Open DOAR lets you search for repositories or search repository contents (including JCU ePrints). Institutional digital repositories are developing rapidly around the world, and may comprise journal articles, pre-prints, 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.
- The Australian Research Repositories Online to the World (ARROW) project is an initiative currently in development.
Other Internet sources
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Google Scholar selectively searches scholarly literature on the web. It claims to cover "peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and other scholarly literature". Google Scholar often indicates JCU holdings and freely available versions of publications.
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Web Citation Index is hosted by ISI Web of Knowledge. It is a citation index of web-based grey literature such as 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.
Finding more about researchers & how to contact them
Most university web sites will have links to current research interests and institutes.
- Search Google for the researcher's name and home institution
- 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
If this information is inadequate, incorrect, or can be improved in any way, please let us know