Research discovery 101: The Observatory of International Research

Ever find yourself lost in the search for new research in your field?

Many research discovery tools deem either too demanding or not trustworthy enough to drill down as they risk including predatory journals. In this post, Andreas Pacher introduces the Observatory of International Research, a tool for research discovery that is friendly and useful to people both in- and outside of academia and scholarly backgrounds. Using Web of Science’s SSCI (Social Science Citation Index), the tool lists all recent, arguably trending research papers in 850 journals in chronological order (with other options of filtering by journal, topics, areas, etc.), with an aim to provide quick and simple “access to scholarly trends across the social sciences”. The eight social science categories currently tracked are Anthropology, Area Studies, Communication, Geography, History, Law, Political Science and Sociology.

The current version of OOIR went online on 1 November 2018. Access OOIR website to explore the tool, or subscribe to Researcher@Library blog to never miss an announcement, training and resources!