Guides and databases: LibrarySkills@UCL: Communicating and sharing information: Independent research

Independent research

Researchers need to be fully aware and participate in effective communication of research. These pages will help you to understand:

Your digital researcher profile
Open Access and Open Science
Systems and technologies for professional communication with other researchers

Researcher identification

ORCID for UCL researchers

Open Access and Open Science

UCL Open Access
Open access means making research publications freely available online. It ensures that your work reaches the widest possible audience, and that it can be used and shared easily. Discover more about open access and the support available to you at UCL.
UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship
Open Science & Scholarship module
This tutorial uses a series of videos and quiz questions to work through the Open Science and Scholarship module. It takes 60 to 90 minutes to complete, but you are welcome to work on individual elements at your own pace.

Copyright for researchers

Copyright essentials
This online, self-paced module will help you understand copyright and apply this understanding to your studies, research and other activities.
Copyright and your PhD thesis
Guidance from UCL Library Services

Academic writing and getting published

Academic Communication Centre
The UCL Academic Communication Centre provides writing support for UCL students.
IOE Writing Centre Online
Self-access resources for Academic Writing in Education Studies
Nature Masterclasses
Access to interactive, online courses for researchers drawing on the expertise of Nature Research journal editors and experts. Courses include: Scientific Writing and Publishing, Narrative Tools for Researchers, Managing Research Data to Unlock its Full Potential, Effective Collaboration for Research, Focus on Peer Review, Networking for Researchers, Persuasive Grant Writing, Advancing your Scientific Presentations.
Publishing research
Self-paced course from the University of Southampton Library aimed at postgraduate researchers, covering the key steps in planning, writing, submitting, revising and publishing your first journal article.
Getting your paper published: life and medical sciences
A list of useful resources compiled by UCL Library Services. Resources on choosing a journal and open access are not specific to life and medical sciences and may be of use to researchers from any discipline looking to publish.
Writing for publication
Guidance from Health Education England, aimed at NHS staff.

Researcher networking and sharing sites

ResearchGate
Researcher networking and sharing site.
Academia.edu
Researcher networking and sharing site.

While these sites include many useful resources that have been shared by their authors, there are occasional infringements of copyright and licensing agreements which we would remind you to be aware of before downloading or linking to content or uploading your own published research.

Keeping up to date with journal literature

Most databases that index journal literature allow you to set up email alerts for new articles on a particular topic or in a particular journal. Many individual journals will also have an alerting facility on their website. You may also find the following online services useful:

Browzine Web
Browzine presents UCL's academic journals in a browsable format. BrowZines easy to navigate bookshelves and compelling visual display allows users to easily find subject areas of interest, to see available scholarly journals, and get to content with a single click.

Browzine App
BrowZine is an e-journal browsing service that allows our journal collection to be browsed in an easy and intuitive way on mobile devices. It is also available as a web service called BrowZine Web.
JournalTOCs
JournalTOCs is the largest, free collection of scholarly journal Tables of Contents (TOCs): 33,123 journals including 16,657 selected Open Access journals and 11,745 Hybrid journals, from 3447 publishers.

Current Contents Connect
Current Contents Connect is a current awareness database that provides access to complete tables of contents, abstracts, bibliographic information, and abstracts from the most recently published issues of leading scholarly journals, as well as from more than 7,000 relevant, evaluated websites.

Academic communication skills resources

Academic communication skills resources
This list includes useful resources for academic communication skills including academic writing, research methods, critical thinking, skills for literature reviews and systematic reviews, referencing, presentation skills, writing for publication, statistics and general study skills.