Researcher News & Insights

Why do researchers do their research and how did they arrive at their academic niche? As part of our ‘Featured Authors’ series, we previously spoke with Alison Heard from the University of Calgary who discussed her paper as well as the challenges faced throughout the entire research, writing and publishing process. 

As a speaker at the University of Oxford’s Curo-Pi3 conference in 2018, we interviewed Professor Rik Tykwinski. He shared his insights into what young academics and PhDs should do when attending academic conferences, what academics get up to when they attend international conferences, and how simple curiosity can be the driving force behind academic research. 

As part of our Global Researchers series, we’ve been in contact with Researcher users to learn more about their research, the challenges they face, and what benefits they’ve derived from Researcher. 

Why do researchers undertake research and how does Researcher impact this process? With the sheer volume of papers being published across a whole spectrum of subjects, it can be difficult to understand the motivations and behaviours of individual researchers. Yet learning how academics and researchers ‘do what they do’ and understanding how the embracing of new technologies is driving scientific innovation is important for the entire scientific publishing community. 

Since Researcher launched in 2017, we have displayed millions of paper abstracts across multiple subjects and disciplines to over one million researchers and academics globally. We could analyse streams of data that pinpoint trends in academia and scientific publishing, but this fails, from an individualistic perspective, to uncover one of academia’s most important questions - ‘why?’. Why do researchers do their research and how did they arrive at their academic niche?

Over the last few years, research output in Africa has increased significantly. National and international technologies and strategies, and infrastructure for future research development, have all had positive effects on African research output. Yet the continent of Africa still generates less than 1% of the world’s research. Both a lack of funding and global scientific publishing trends have created tensions for those undertaking research in Africa. 

To recognise the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we are celebrating the most prominent women scientists and their research. There are a significant number of women in science making a major impact in their respective fields, and although this number is increasing, they are still significantly underrepresented in STEM. 

In Summer 2019, we opened our platform to allow publishers and learned societies to promote their journals, papers and other bespoke content. 

We have recently launched a portal to provide live reporting to our clients as well as other publishers and learned societies who have listed us as official indexers.

On Thursday 5 December, we conducted our third webinar with academics from Asia-Pacific countries, and the discussion was divided into four main topics: Open access, government focus on R&D, where to publish and choosing what to read.