UTAR’s commitment towards achieving research excellence continues to be supported with the recent dialogue session titled “ScienceDirect Empowers Research Outcomes”, co-organised by Library and Elsevier on 8 November 2018 at Kampar Campus.
Invited speakers from Elsevier were Solution Manager Michelle Foo and Dr Benny Ang. Also present at the dialogue session were Institute of Postgraduate Studies and Research (IPSR) Deputy Director Dr Chong Yee Lee, academics and postgraduate students.
“We are very delighted to have with us representatives from Elsevier to share with us on how we can use ScienceDirect to further our research progress, and even to improve our research content. This is an important session because we will be able to understand how we can make full use of ScienceDirect in our research, at the same time enabling the Library to provide better assistance for researching. I hope we will maximise this opportunity given to us and I encourage everyone to ask questions,” said Dr Chong in her opening remark.
Foo gave an introduction about Elsevier, explaining that Elsevier is a global information analytics company specialising in science and health. She further explained that the role of Elsevier is to help institutions and professionals to progress science, advance healthcare and improve performance. Its target is to combine content with technology, supported by operational efficiency, to turn information into actionable knowledge.
Foo giving an introduction on Elsevier
Dr Ang, on the other hand, highlighted the common challenges faced by researchers which were information overload when searching for content, difficulty in exploring new subject areas, not aware of the global research trends and difficulty in connecting with other fellow researchers. While those were the common challenges faced, Dr Ang also mentioned that those challenges actually highlights what researchers should also do in order to progress further in the research field.
Dr Ang continued explaining how e-books are a critical complement to journal content and he gave a comparison on what a book content provides versus an article content. For book content, Dr Ang explained that it provides breadth connecting various disciplines. The book content acts as the catalyst for discovery in a new area; gives broader view of a topic; contains more sustained arguments, differing opinions, nuance and complexity; offers experts opinions on the most relevant topics; and lastly provide links to other relevant or unexpected fields, materials and methods.
Dr Ang explaining the challenges faced by researchers
On the other hand, according to Dr Ang, article content provides depth in the growing disciplines. He elucidated that content from article contains specialised knowledge, narrowly focused, extreme depth in the related fields, provides latest research and results and it shows the latest techniques applied.
“Researchers have a pressing need to get up-to-speed in new fields. To innovate, researchers must make connections across disciplines. Statistics have shown us that globally, 44% of researchers look for content outside their immediate fields more than once a week. Researchers are looking into journal articles, hard reference materials, books and online sources to quickly orient themselves in unfamiliar fields,” said Dr Ang.
The speakers also pointed out that Elsevier book and journal content are complementary to help researchers solve their problems more efficiently. To illustrate better, the speakers explained that books provide content that is essential to a research’s definition, applications, processes, perspectives and methods, whereas the content from journals provide researchers with the most recent developments and latest researches.
Towards the end of the talk, the speakers also allocated time for the participants to ask questions and an interactive Q&A session took place.
UTAR academics are actively involved in research and many of their publications can be found in Elsevier. Elsevier has also awarded a number of academics for their publications. Read more about the award-winning publications below:
FBF academic's research recognised as "Most Downloaded Article"
Winning the Top Cited Author Award
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