Supporting Cardiff's researchers
7 January 2011
Information Services provides a wide range of tools and services in support of the University's research community, to enable them to meet their research goals more easily.
The majority of our IT, library, graphics and media services are used by most researchers every day, for example to access the internet, to store and access documents, and to access electronic journals, databases and increasingly electronic books remotely.
Our services routinely support and enable Cardiff's researchers in undertaking research of international distinction and impact.
Some key initiatives of particular relevance to researchers include:
Bibliometrics
Bibliometric data – data about publications, including citations and impact factors – might be included for the assessment of some disciplines in the forthcoming Research Excellence Framework (REF). It can provide useful comparator information to demonstrate the position and profile of research undertaken at Cardiff. Increasing the visibility of research and access to the full text (through tools such as Cardiff's publications repository, ORCA) may increase the citations to a piece of research, and indicate its perceived 'impact'.
INSRV is enabling researchers to exploit the bibliometric data available from databases such as Web of Science and Scopus, which in turn helps Cardiff University to be better informed about the impact of publications within different fields, as well as aiding collaborative and interdisciplinary work.
I-WIRE and ORCA – Online Research @ Cardiff
ORCA is the University's open access repository service, designed to make research from Cardiff's authors more widely available and easier to find on the web. When populated with bibliographic information from all publications since 2008, ORCA will help with the collation of publications for the forthcoming Research Excellence Framework, and will help deliver increased visibility, impact and citation counts for the University's research outputs.
I-WIRE is a JISC-funded project that aims to significantly improve the ease and effectiveness of managing Cardiff's research publications. By the time it completes, in March 2011, the project will have developed an enhanced workflow and electronic toolset for the easier submission of Cardiff's research publications into ORCA, which can then be re-purposed for use in researcher profiles, CVs etc. Researchers will be able to make use of this easier submission process via a 'Manage my Publications' link in Cardiff Portal, which will further increase the visibility of open access publishing.
ARCCA – Advanced Research Computing @ Cardiff
ARCCA operates as a sister organisation to INSRV for the support of computation-based research at Cardiff. The centre supports research across a range of disciplines, including traditional mathematical and computational subjects, but also increasingly biomedical, humanity and social science disciplines.
ARCCA has already enabled 175 different research outcomes in the year following its launch. These include journal publications, conference proceedings, invited lectures and presentations, poster presentations and research projects.
Find out more...
INSRV's support for researchers and how to get the best from our facilities