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#AEJMC15 is just around the corner! This year I am truly thrilled to be traveling to San Francisco to co-present a study about social media education in the college classroom.
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for details.
It’s that time of year again! AEJMC is just around the corner. This year, I’ll be traveling to Montreal for the conference.
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for details.
This is the third and final post on what’s been a popular Google Scholar Tutorial on becoming a Google Scholar power user.
This post about the Recommendations feature comes last because you must have a Google Scholar profile in order to use it.
In past blog posts, I’ve written about great ways to find research articles for your literature review. Specifically, I’ve talked about using Google Scholar search, and the Mendeley search option.
Google Scholar recommended research is another way of finding research articles that I’m loving. It is super easy to use and I’ve found tons of articles I wouldn’t have found before. As you recall, these recommendations are based on your citations – in other words, what you’ve published online. So of course they are going to be tailored to your research interests.
If you have your Google Scholar profile set up, Google Scholar will recommend new research articles to you based on your publications. So the recommendations are almost always super relevant and helpful for future studies!
To access these, go to scholar.google.com and click “My Updates” at the top.
Also, Google Scholar will often list the most recent recommendations under the search bar at scholar.google.com. You can get the rest by clicking “see all updates” (see photo above)
Here are my recommended articles today:
Tailored scholarly article recommendations – what could be better?
Hope you enjoyed this series of posts on Google Scholar! If you did, please share this post!
Other articles in series:
-Cheers!
Matt
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for details.
Now that the semester is over, there are two major things I like to spend my break doing: research projects and optimizing my classes with mods and improvements (or creating new classes, if needed). So, let’s talk about research!
When it comes to research, there is one piece of software I could not live without: the FREE app Dropbox.
Nothing has more fundamentally changed how I do research than Dropbox. That’s because much of my research is collaborative with great scholars such as Dr. Francis Dalisay and Dr. Masahiro Yamamoto. (Yes, not even Mendeley – Not so long ago I talked about how Mendeley reference manager changed my life when it comes to productivity in research).
The Rundown: Dropbox is free and works with Mac or PC, or mobile devices. You get 2 gig for free (at least, that’s how much you got when I signed up), and can get more free space by completing certain actions like getting a friend to sign up (I now have 4.5 free gigs). There are paid versions.
I was under the impression that just about everyone was using a tool like dropbox when collaborating with others on research, until I heard otherwise from numerous colleagues. Many are still relying on the old fashion approach of: Edit and Email. So I thought I’d take a minute to highlight the crucial benefits of synching software for collaboration on any document.
Edit and Email
Before I started using dropbox, my research collaboration life went something like this: One person would work on a manuscript document. When he/she was done, that person emailed the document to me with some comments on changes made. I’d then take my turn when I could and reply back with an attachment of the document updates. Meanwhile, the other person was waiting on me and if it was a busy time of the semester, that may have been several days or a week. If he had downtown and could work on the document, or had a sudden inspiration, he was unable to for fear that I was making edits to the file he had previously sent me and to try and merge the changes between conflicting documents, his new edits and my edits to the original he’d sent me, would be a big pain. This made for a slow, slow, painful process. And that’s only with two authors. Things get exponentially more complicated with 3 or more authors.
Enter Dropbox
As soon as I discovered Dropbox, a file synching service, I quickly convinced my co-authors to adopt it. Here’s why:
Dropbox or other software like SugarSync enables you to share folders with others (through invite) that automatically sync whenever any file in the folder is changed, added, or removed.
The folders are stored on your computer like a regular folder. You treat them exactly like any other folder, including the ability to have subfolders.
For example, if I’m working on a manuscript titled Manuscript.doc, every time I save the file, everyone else who shares the folder with me is automatically updated to the latest version of the file (if their computer is off, it will sync when it is turned back on). When I’m done working on the file and close it, everyone immediately has the latest version of the file. A coauthor can immediately open the file and begin working on it. When she’s done, I can pick right back up, or a third coauthor can begin working (Note: You cannot work on a file simultaneously or there will be a conflicted copy saved to your folder). This eliminates the “hurry up and wait” nature of Edit and Email and the major headache of different coauthors having different versions of the manuscript, such as trying to merge one person’s edits into the latest version.
To avoid the possibility of multiple people trying to work on the file at the same time (which causes a conflicting file to be created in your folder that you then have to manually go through and be sure any conflicts are resolved), we always send a quick email letting the other co-authors know we are about to start working on a document or that we plan to work on a document at from, say, 1-3pm this afternoon.
If I could – I’d give Dropbox a high-five for helping me greatly increase my productivity as a scholar when it comes to collaborative work!
Additional Benefits of Dropbox:
That’s all for now! Best of luck to everyone who recently submitted to ICA. Hopefully my papers are accepted and I get to see everyone in Seattle!
Do you use Dropbox or a similar synching service for research? What do you like about it? What tips and advice do you have to share with readers? Which synching service is best?