The Virtual Research Environment

Introduction

The development of a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) is one of the tools that the University of Lincoln is using to make its support for researchers more effective. This wiki is intended to be used by researchers to share best practice and experiences. Its effectiveness will depend on how many researchers contribute to it, so we hope that as many researchers as possible will do so.

The Virtual Research Environment

A VRE comprises a set of online tools and other network resources and technologies interoperating with each other to support or enhance the processes of a wide range of research practitioners within and across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. A key characteristic of a VRE is that it facilitates collaboration amongst researchers and research teams providing them with more effective means of collaboratively collecting, manipulating and managing data, as well as collaborative knowledge creation. VRE Roadmap.

Existing VREs

The following are examples of VREs either running or under development, some of which are funded by JISC.

• myExperiment.org - "The myExperiment Virtual Research Environment enables you and your colleagues to share digital items associated with your research — in particular it enables you to share and execute scientific workflows."

• VERA - Virtual Research Environments in Archaeology

• Building a Virtual Research Environment for the Humanities at Oxford

JISC VRE Videos

Click here to view a playlist of videos about the JISC VRE projects.

Video for researchers

Video for developers

JISC publications

VRE Landscape Study

VRE Lessons Learned

Training

Existing Opportunities

• Workshop: Working smarter with the web

• Workshop: Getting started with RefWorks

• Workshop: Advanced searching skills for researchers

Planned Opportunities

• Workshop: Open Access and the Lincoln Repository.

• Workshop series: Effective Use of Wikipedia 101

• Interest group: Web 2.0 for research, teaching and learning.

Tools

Data Analysis

• Nvivo

• Weft-QDA

• SPSS

Publishing

• EPrints

• Open Journal Systems

• WordPress

Discovery

Library catalogues

• British Library Integrated Catalogue

• Copac - union catalogue, gives free access to the merged online catalogues of many major academic libraries in the UK and Ireland

• Lincolnshire county library service

• University of Lincoln Library Catalogue

Electronic databases

• e-Library (University of Lincoln Portal) - a directory of electronic library resources

Journals, e-journals, and journal TOCs

• Electronic Journals A-to-Z (University of Lincoln)

• ticTOCs

• SUNCAT - a free tool to help researchers and librarians locate serials held in the UK

• Zetoc:
  • Zetoc Search
  • Zetoc Alert
  • Zetoc RSS

Scholarly web search

• Google Scholar

• OAIster - search across digital repositories

• Scirus

Theses

• British Library EThOS - search and order theses online

• Index to Theses

Collaboration & Networking

• BuddyPress

• Access Grid

• Academia.edu

Reference management

• 2collab

• CiteULike

• Connotea

• EndNote Web

• Mendeley

• refbase

• RefWorks - supported by the University

• Zotero

• Link: Comparison of reference management software - from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bibliometrics and ranking

• ISI Web of Science (University of Lincoln Portal)
  • Arts & Humanities Citation Index
  • Science Citation Index Expanded
  • Social Sciences Citation Index

• Journal Citation Reports (University of Lincoln Portal)
  • JCR Social Sciences Edition

• Eigenfactor

• Publish or Perish

Resource collections

• Delicious (Research Office example)

• ResearchResearch (funding opportunities)

• Grantfinder (funding opportunities - request a login from Kay Marriot)

Misc.

• British Library - Growing Knowledge project. List of tools

Subject Specific Notes

Use this to add subject/discipline specific notes. If necessary, duplicate the headings above for a single discipline.