Frequently Asked Questions
Last updated: October 19, 2022 at 10:48 AM
ScholarWorks
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ScholarWorks is Brandeis’s data repository and portal (new Faculty Guide) for showcasing all types of scholarship, expertise, and activities by our community of scholars. ScholarWorks aids in the transmission of knowledge by allowing the public to have a window into our community and its work.
To promote the person and their work; to ensure better discoverability of Brandeis scholarship and Brandeis scholars to the public.
- Efficiency: Data about you will be pulled from the repository for annual faculty activity reporting; additionally, publications are harvested from a huge index (approx. 4.3 billion records) so in the case of publications represented in this index, adding citations manually is often not necessary.
- Visibility: Content on your profile is dynamic and is published to Google Scholar; the system is also integrated with ORCID.
You’re right. The legacy repository (formerly known as Brandeis Institutional Repository) was only for open access materials. In this repository, you can still add PDFs for preprints, working papers, and other types of scholarship for which you hold the copyright or you have published as open access. Everything else will have a citation-only record. Please don’t add files for any copyrighted materials. All PDFs must adhere to web accessibility guidelines.
Yes, all profiles are searchable by keywords. The fields indexed for searching include your biography, keywords summarizing your research interests, affiliations, and more.
“Smart harvesting” refers to an automated process to capture research outputs from a massive index of content contributed by thousands of publishers and providers. The index itself contains about 4.3 billion items. ScholarWorks identifies these outputs as published by the our faculty and researchers, captures the metadata associated with them, and adds them to the repository, thus reducing the workload.
For traditional, published scholarship, it is pretty decent; though, as with all automated processes, it has flaws. As you review your profile and encounter these flaws, please reach out to librarypublishing@brandeis.edu and someone from the Library will help you correct any content issues.
For example, we know that the index sometimes gets the asset type wrong (journal article, book, book chapter, review, working paper, etc.). Making these adjustments is pretty quick and easy, so please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Content can be hidden. Please refer to the documentation for instructions on how to do this. As a best practice, you are always encouraged to hide content that you do not want to be visible as opposed to deleting the content. Please keep in mind that the scholarship, activities, projects, etc. that are listed here will be pulled into your annual activity report (including things that are hidden from public view).
Addressing Differences with the Legacy Faculty Guide
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ScholarWorks organizes content differently. Because teaching is one of the many activities in which you’re engaged, your courses are listed under activities. (Note: We are actively engaging with the vendor to bring about further improvements so that courses taught are more prominently displayed.) Similar to the legacy Faculty Guide, courses go back two years and Independent Study courses are not included.
Having a dedicated place for activities and service represents a new opportunity to promote your service to advance your academic discipline. The types of activities that you are strongly encouraged to promote here include peer-review activities, editorial activities, invitations to be a keynote or plenary speaker, conference organizing activities, and much more. In the past, you may have listed some of these under honors in the legacy faculty guide. Now you have a dedicated place to list this work. Activities are added by clicking the “Add Content” button. Please visit the ScholarWorks User Guide for full instructions on managing activities.
You may have ongoing research projects and forthcoming publications planned. In the legacy faculty guide, there was no dedicated place to list these efforts. Brandeis faculty and researchers now have the ability to list ongoing research projects in a dedicated space. In addition to ongoing research projects, it is recommended that you list forthcoming articles as projects for purposes of faculty activity reporting. The purpose of this is to ensure the “smart harvesting” process does not bring in a duplicate entry for forthcoming publications. Please see the ScholarWorks job aid for full instructions on managing projects.
Editing a ScholarWorks Profile
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- Go to https://scholarworks.brandeis.edu.
- Click on “sign in” in the upper righthand corner.
- After logging in using your Brandeis credentials, you will be directed immediately to your profile where you can begin adding or editing content.
DO NOT make edits to your ScholarWorks profile until you receive an email notification that your profile is ready for review. The project team will begin releasing new profiles for review, starting in mid-September on a rolling basis as each profile is complete.
- If you have not received a notice to review your profile yet, it is because your initial data migration and validation is not yet complete. Let the processes run to completion to ensure that data that you add is not overwritten until data migration is completed.
- You will receive an email when your profile is ready for review and/or self editing. The email will also include resources and guides related to using ScholarWorks.
You may add new or missing assets and material to your ScholarWorks profile. If you need to edit or remove scholarship that already appears on your profile, please email metadata@brandeis.edu.
No. Profiles are automatically created for faculty, researchers and postdoctoral scholars, based on position status in Workday. If you do not find a profile, but are currently appointed in one of these roles, please email the ScholarWorks Faculty Profile Team.
It is generally understood that citation metrics have flaws. That said, it is important to see them as part of the picture with regard to research impact. ScholarWorks includes altmetrics (social media engagement) built in.
Additionally, the Library is considering ways of helping you demonstrate impact to supplement citations given that these metrics are not meaningful to every discipline in the same way. One example being considered here is associating Brandeis research with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. If this sounds interesting to you, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Mark Paris.
Yes, you may connect your Scopus ID, arXiv ID, or other identifiers to your ScholarWorks profile. These identifiers are dynamic and will link to your profile in the respective platform.
At this time, displaying your pronouns on your profile is not supported; however, this will be supported in the future. In the meantime, you are encouraged to update your pronouns in Workday. See the user guide for updating personal information. When this functionality is released in ScholarWorks, the data will be fed from Workday as the system of record and you will be notified.
ORCID and ORCID iDs
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The Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) registry provides unique, persistent, non-proprietary identifiers for researchers, creators and contributors of all types. For a condensed introduction to what you need to know about ORCID at Brandeis, visit the Brandeis Libraries ORCID Guide.
An ORCID iD is a unique digital identifier that definitively ties your scholarly work to you, and can help increase recognition of your research. Your ORCID iD moves with you throughout your career, improving attribution and visibility of your grants, research, scholarship and creative and entrepreneurial activities. The use of ORCID iDs is fast becoming standard in academia, and many publishers and funders now require them.
Please email library staff at librarypublishing@brandeis.edu, who can confirm if you have an ORCID iD or not. Don’t create a new one if you think you might already have one.
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Log into ScholarWorks.
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Click the "Edit profile" button above your photo.
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Under the Researcher Identifiers section, click "Register or Connect your ORCID ID."
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Login to your existing ORCID account OR Create one if you don’t have one. ORCID iD registration is free and takes less than a minute.
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Authorize Brandeis as a Trusted Organization when prompted.
When you connect your ORCID account to a trusted resource or organization, ORCID will notify you any time a process pushes content into your profile. You may or may not want these notifications. The good news is that you are in control. The information on the ORCID Inbox Notification and Frequency Settings webpage provides information regarding notifications (you can turn them off or change the frequency), but if you have any questions or need further assistance, please do not hesitate to reach out to librarypublishing@brandeis.edu.