General Video Library
Co-Founders Rob Burleigh and Francis Dodds share their knowledge and insights.
June 2017
Future research at Burleigh Dodds
May 2017
The Burleigh Dodds Bookshop is now live!
Upcoming titles from Burleigh Dodds
April 2017
Working With Us
January 2017
The Burleigh Dodds 2017 publishing programme is here!
December 2016
Chapters now available from the bookshop
October 2016
We're delighted to announce that our online bookshop is now live and open for business!
In our latest video, Managing Director, Rob Burleigh, highlights our bookshop features including, browsing by topic or theme and the option to purchase individual chapters ahead of the book publication.
We're really excited to launch the new site and we'd love to hear your feedback.
At Burleigh Dodds we recognise the importance of authors contribution to our publications and that's why we put a lot of effort into disseminating information about the books/chapters to the widest possible audience.
Managing Director, Rob Burleigh, highlights events we will have a presence at over the coming months.
September 2016
With the launch of our new and improved website, we'd like to highlight the revamped FocusOn pages. FocusOn aims to support greater collaboration between research centres, countries and subjects. Francis explains more in this week's video.
5 September 2016
August 2016
We're excited to announce the arrival of our new website! We've added new features, streamlined the navigation and we hope improved the user experience. We're also delighted to announce that the online bookshop will be open soon! Watch the video from Managing Director, Rob Burleigh to find out about more exciting features on the new website.
29 August 2016
Archives
In our climate•SMART•publishing series, we've discussed what it actually is and why there is a need for it, but how are we going to achieve it?
This week, Francis discusses how we as a publisher can achieve climate•SMART•publishing in a number of ways.
27 June 2016
We’re delighted to share with you today some exciting news that Burleigh Dodds has been shortlisted for the Stationers’ Company ‘Innovator of the Year’ award for 2016.
Please click on the video to hear a short message from Managing Director, Rob Burleigh about why Burleigh Dodds has been shortlisted.
20 June 2016
Last week, Editorial Director Francis Dodds explained ‘what’ climate•SMART•publishing is. In this week’s video Francis gives his views on ‘why’ there is a need for it.
6 June 2016
Watch the video from Burleigh Dodds Editorial Director, Francis Dodds to find out what climate•SMART•publishing is.
30 May 2016
Why is there so much?
Part of the explanation is the size and continued growth of the international research community. However, it has been argued that existing structures for research funding and career progression have made the problem worse. Scholars have, in some cases, been encouraged to publish larger numbers of increasingly specialised journal articles to show their impact in a subject. The result has been an overload of ever more fragmented information which is difficult for scholars to digest. It is harder to identify trends and find what is relevant.
As proof of this, research on researcher behaviour shows the increasing number of articles researchers feel the need to read to keep up with their subject, shifts towards shorter reading times and the number of times this kind of information gathering fails to produce a useful result. One study suggested as many as a third of researchers felt the process of information gathering had not produced the right outcome. The consequences of this failure include poorer targeting and planning of research as well as duplication of effort between research groups. Given that there is little prospect of any decline in the number of articles being published, what can be done to help researchers? This will be the subject of my next blog.
Although there are many types of research, and many ways of carrying it out, there is general agreement on the key steps which are:
- Identifying a potential research topic
- Reviewing existing knowledge to identify where new information is needed
- Drafting a research proposal and obtaining funding
- Carrying out the research and compiling results
- Dissemination and peer review of research findings (e.g. through publication in academic journals)
Information usage is highest initially at the literature review stage and next at the stage of compiling findings for publication. For understandable reasons, individual researchers tend to use a relatively small number of tried and tested resources and services in locating the information they need. However, there is increasing evidence that information gathering using established methods is becoming more challenging for researchers. These challenges in locating the right information and their implications for research are discussed in my next blog.