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Tag: research

Ways to Use Copyrighted (Academic) Content for Blogging

While working on a blog post the other day, I asked myself (once again) how academic material taken from (copyrighted) journals and books, may be used (legally and appropriately) by researchers like myself. I’ve attempted to find an answer to this question on various occasions, but it seems that every publisher has guidelines on its own. Asking a law professor at our business school brought some relief. I further contacted a few publishers via Twitter and I’ve been pleased with the responsiveness of Oxford University Press, for example. However, their clearance process is too cumbersome to work with in practice. On the same day, I discovered a very useful guide published by Elsevier: Ways to Use Journal Articles: A Practical Guide. Posting the link to Twitter, it was re-tweeted several times, an indicator of its usefulness to other researchers, I suppose. Therefore, I decided to include the link to the guide on my blog and add an abstract of the relevant section below. If you come across similar documents, please drop me a line. I would surely like to have a look at them.

Anyone may in written work quote from an article published by Elsevier, as long as the quote comprises only a short excerpt such as one or two sentences. An appropriate citation, including the journal title, must be provided. If the intended use is for scholarly comment, noncommercial research or educational purposes, an institution or academic may, without seeking permission from Elsevier, use: 

  • a single text extract of fewer than 100 words or a series of extracts totaling no more than 300 words
  • a maximum of two figures from a journal article or a total of five from a journal volume

These guidelines reflect Elsevier’s endorsement of the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers’ 2008 guidelines for quotation and other academic uses of excerpts from journal articles. Find more details on these guidelines at www.stm-assoc.org/document-library/ (see Guidelines for Quotations from Journal Articles).

How to search the IS Senior Scholars’ Basket of Journals?

My supervisor asked me the other day to make sure I was aware of all articles in my field which have been published in reputable journals. He mentioned the IS Senior Scholars’ Basket of Journals when referring to reputable journals. The following journals belong to that list:

  • European Journal of Information Systems
  • Information Systems Journal
  • Information Systems Research
  • Journal of AIS
  • Journal of Information Technology
  • Journal of MIS
  • Journal of Strategic Information Systems
  • MIS Quarterly

While I am pretty sure I have collected articles from a wide range of disciplines and sources, some of which were from the list above, I hadn’t checked for consistency with the IS Senior Scholars’ Basket of Journals, so I started my search. As usual, I went right into the Ebsco database only to find out that about half of the journals weren’t covered by the subscription. I then tried searching for hints on where I could search all eight journals at once. An article by Chapman and Brothers states that ABI/INFORM Global and Business Source Premier are the databases providing the best coverage in the MIS field. Eventually, I came across the website by Dr. Venkastesh. It provides an advanced search interface for different combinations of the basket journals. This was pretty much what I was looking for. Dr. Venkatesh’s efforts are somewhat similar to what Anne-Wil Harzing does with her Journal Quality list with the notable difference that the latter addresses a different set of journals, namely in the fields of economics, finance, accounting, management, and marketing.

References:

Chapman, K., & Brothers, P. (2006). Database Coverage for Research in Management Information Systems. College & Research Libraries, 67(1), 50–62.

How to Increase the Odds of Publishing Your Research?

The points below were collected in three sessions, namely Publishing Qualitative Research in Premier Academic Journals, How Can I Make An Impact? A Conversation with Management Researchers Seeking to Change the World and Publishing in the Top Tier.

What needs to be in it in terms of content?

  • Know your literature(s)
  • Follow events that are ongoing
  • Study longitudinal processes
  • Study field settings and diverse groups
  • Study how and why questions
  • Strategically choose your research question(s)
  • Focus on neglected problems
  • Have a bold vision
  • Focus on results/value creation
  • Use examplars (i.e. other articles in your journal of choice that have studied similar phenomena or used similar methodology)

How do you generate ideas and get access to data?

  • Use student projects
  • Come up with call for problems (much in the same way as we do call for papers or call for proposals)
  • Talk to big thinkers
  • Leverage partnerships/co-authorships

What are questions to ask yourself?

  • What are research questions you really care about?
  • What’s the career you would like to pursue and where can you make a difference?
  • What would you like to be your legacy?

Although I am aware that there is no recipe to publishing research, I do believe some of these suggestions will help me to focus my efforts. I hope the same holds for you.

Call for Papers: Methodological approaches to the study of virtual environments…

…and online social networks

I just came across an interesting Call for Papers by the Graduate Journal of Social Science. As the title of this post indicates, it deals with methodological approaches to the study of virtual environments and online social networks. It therefore addresses one of the key questions I’ve been asking myself since I started my PhD. To my knowledge, no such compilation exists to date. The most accessible text that I have come across regarding this topic is Bernie Hogan’s Analyzing Social Networks via the Internet. If you’re interested, please have a look at the details below. Deadline for submission is March 15, 2011. I’m certainly looking forward to having a look at the full issue.

This special issue aims at mapping some of the methodological approaches to the study of virtual environments, and welcomes both theoretical and empirical analyses that address them. The interest here is in what methods graduate researchers choose to use, the problems they face in trying to use them and the ways in which these methods are being adapted in relation to these virtual sites of study. Graduate students doing empirical work on virtual worlds and online social networks from all disciplines are strongly encouraged to submit papers dealing with the processes of choosing, applying and critically evaluating their methods.

While we expect contributions to vary according to the particular focus of investigation, questions such as the following may be relevant: What are the advantages and disadvantages of these methods? Are such methods developed specifically for the study of virtual worlds and/or online social networks, or are they adaptations of traditional research methods in social sciences? Are there specific disciplines, theories, or academic frameworks that offer more suitable insights regarding such methods- or can using them suggest limiting the scope of this ‘new’ research environment?

Authors are encouraged to submit papers addressing questions such as:

  • How to choose a suitable method for the study of virtual worlds and/ or online social networks?
  • Methods for exploring the social and cultural aspects of virtual worlds and/ or online social networks.
  • Methods for exploring the technical aspects of virtual worlds and/ or online social networks.
  • Criteria for evaluating research on virtual worlds and/ or online social networks.
  • Simulations as research methods: problems, recommendations, evaluation.
  • Methods for collaborative research in virtual environments and/ or online social networks.
  • Ethical issues.
  • Immersion: do we need to be users of virtual worlds/ online social networks to study them?
via gjss.org

Hogan, B. (2008) Analyzing Social Networks via the Internet. In: N.Fielding, R.Lee and G.Blank (eds) The Handbook of Online Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.