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November 6, 2024

Library Research News: November 2024 Edition

In this issue

Enhancing your searching with AI tools

It feels like a new AI tool appears every day. AI has the potential to enhance our work in many ways – and this includes searching for research literature. While the University has not yet endorsed or subscribed to any AI tools, it’s important for researchers to be aware of the opportunities and challenges presented by the range of tools currently on the market. AI literature searching tools can be useful to provide quick summaries of research, to identify seeding or starting papers for research projects, or to follow citation trails.

Responsible use of AI

As with other AI tools, AI literature search tools must be used responsibly. The library has a Responsible use of genAI in research guide to contextualise Deakin’s genAI guidelines for research more broadly.

In the literature searching context, it’s important to appraise tools for:

Responsible use also includes working to copyright and licensing obligations and acknowledging usage of the tools.

Some tools (such as Elicit) have fantastic potential with data extraction, but there are important copyright issues to consider. When uploading articles to the platform, users are creating and communicating a copy of the article to a third party. Users must ensure that they have the appropriate rights to these papers (such as a Creative Commons licence).

AI search tools can supplement (but not replace) traditional literature database searching. It’s important to note AI search tools don’t currently have sufficient transparency or reproducibility to be used for the systematic searching stage of systematic reviews or other evidence syntheses.

Tools for semantic-style literature discovery

Elicit is a popular example of a semantic-style literature searching tool. It enables phrase or conversational searching instead of traditional keyword-driven searching. It draws academic literature from Semantic Scholar (which in turn indexes papers through publisher partners and other data sources). Elicit is a freemium tool with additional functionality available with pay-for-upgrades. Learn more about using Elicit.

Search outputs from Elicit include summaries of the top-ranked papers, and data accessible to Elicit is extracted from the papers into a table.

More semantic-style literature discovery tools to explore:

Tools for literature mapping

ResearchRabbit is a literature mapping tool. Tools such as these use AI and citation mapping to identify similarities between papers and build connections into a visual network. ResearchRabbit is promoted as free (always). It also draws academic literature from Semantic Scholar. Research collections grow from an initial seeding paper and connections are generated between papers based on citation links or similarity. More connections can be identified from these papers – the rabbit hole. Learn more about using ResearchRabbit here.

More literature mapping tools to explore:

The AI landscape is awash with AI search tools. Many are still maturing. Some will disappear. We will likely see more AI search functionality added to other programs and tools. For now, these tools won’t wholly replace traditional search tools; however, we will continue to discover new and exciting applications for these emerging search technologies. We encourage users to carefully evaluate any AI tools that they consider using.

Open Access Week 2024: That’s a wrap

Through compelling speeches, animated panel discussions and entertaining debates, highly regarded members of the Deakin community explored the Open Access Week 2024 theme ‘Community Over Commercialisation’ and its importance to our university.

If you missed out on attending or want to refresh your memory on any of the content, stay tuned to this channel for a forthcoming wrap-up of the week. You can also view the webinar recordings on the Deakin Library YouTube channel.

New HDR workshop page

The library now has a dedicated page for HDR workshops, listing upcoming sessions for graduate researchers. These interactive workshops support researcher skills development across the lifecycle of their research projects. You’ll also find detailed overviews of each of our workshop topics, a form to request an out-of-cycle offering of one of our workshops, and additional researcher development opportunities. Be sure to bookmark this page for future reference.

Reminder: upcoming changes to Footprints

Footprints, Deakin’s tool for Research Data Management Plans (RDMPs) and dataset records, is going through some changes. We are upgrading to Version 3 of the ReDBox platform, bringing several improvements to user experience, functionality and workflow integration – and a name change! The new system will be called Research Data Planner, making it easier for you to know where to develop your RDMP and share your research with the wider community by creating a dataset record for Deakin Research Online (DRO). Watch this space for further updates on release dates, webinars and resources as they become available.

New issue of Journal of Teaching and Learning for Graduate Employability, a Deakin-hosted OA journal

We are pleased to share that Journal for Teaching and Learning for Graduate Employability (JTLGE) has released a new Special Issue: The graduate employability practitioner, highlighting the joys and challenges for practitioners in navigating graduate employability practice in Australian Higher Education. JTLGE is a free-to-read, free-to-publish, diamond access online journal, disseminating research and exemplary evidence-based practice that focus on teaching and learning to enhance graduate employability.

To view the full collection of Deakin-hosted open access journals, visit openjournals@Deakin.

Hot Tip: Creative Commons Attribution Builder

Did you know the library has a Creative Commons Attribution Builder? This can help you comply with the attribution requirement of each of the Creative Commons (CC) licences.

CC is a licensing system that allows creators to define how the public can use their work. When you re-use CC licenced images, text, music or video in your research, you must provide an attribution (creator, source and licence) to avoid copyright infringement of the original work. For more information, see About the Creative Commons attribution builder.

Event roundup

The library’s HDR workshops have concluded for 2024. However, you can view workshop topics, request a workshop or view recordings of previous workshops on the library’s new HDR workshops page, highlighted above.

Additional professional development for researchers is also available via Deakin eResearch: training and events.

Details for all upcoming library events will be made available on the Library What’s On page.

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Library Research News is a regular publication from the library, publishing library-related news for Deakin researchers. To stay in the loop, please subscribe to Article or access our latest issue via Research Matters.

To access library research services, please contact your librarian or navigate to Research via the library website. The library’s team of Scholarly Services Librarians bring discipline-specific expertise related to the following key areas:



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