Beyond UoB
As your research interests becomes more specialist and in depth, you may find that you need to look beyond the University's library service to access the resources you need.
The University of Bedfordshire's Document Supply (inter-library loans) service provides resources which are neither in stock nor held digitally in the University of Bedfordshire library. The service deals with requests for items which can be obtained from other libraries, including the British Library. Simply fill in a form to request an item. Full details about the Document Supply here.
The SCONUL Access scheme allows you to borrow or use books and journals at other libraries which belong to the scheme. As a University of Bedfordshire student or member of staff, you can use this scheme for free. The scheme covers most university libraries in the UK and Ireland, including many libraries in London, such as University College London (UCL), SOAS, and London School of Economics (LSE).
The British Library is one of six legal deposit libraries in the UK. This means that it collects one copy of everything published in the UK. It has well over 150 million items, with 3 million items added every year.
The British Library is next door to Kings Cross St Pancras train station in London. You can join the library for free and request to view items in advance. Remember to check how to join the library in advance of your visit.
You may wish to identify and visit a library which contains specialist information in your research area, for example:The National Aerospace Library, or the Wellcome Collection.
You could also consider joining your local public library, for example Luton Central Library or Bedford Central Library. Public libraries are free to join and will have a variety of print and digital holdings for you to explore.
An increasing amount of research is being made freely available online, via Open Access initiatives. See the Open Access section of this guide for more information.
This guide provides an overview of the bibliometrics available. These quantitative metrics include citation counts, impact factors, h-index and altmetrics and are used to gauge influence and assess impact.
It is important to use metrics cautiously (due to limitations and biases) and they can be strongly affected by subject discipline, publication year, source type, career stage and manipulation.
Types of metrics
Traditional metrics are often based on citations. Citations occur when someone acknowledges (cites) another person(s) work in their publication and citation metrics count the number of times publications have been cited by others within a database.
Article metrics: the aggregate number of citations that a research output has received. These are commonly called citation count.
Author metrics: measures both an author's productivity (number of publications) and research impact (citation count). The h-index is the most common and is available on Scopus
Journal metrics: measures the average number of citations to articles published in a journal within a specific time period.
Altmetrics (Alternative metrics)
These are not based on citation counts but gather data based on online activity and social media. For example:
- tweets, mentions, shares or links
- downloads, click or view
- saves, bookmarks, favourites, likes
- reviews, comments, ratings or recommendations
- adaptations or derivative works
- readers, subscribers, watchers of followers
Examples include:
Library on social media
