Health Sciences: ResearchRaven Assists Researchers Find Info About Funding, Conferences, Calls for Papers, & More
Say hello to ResearchRaven (great name by the way). It's a new information resource for health services that went officially went live earlier this week.
First, a Few Fast Facts:
1) It's free to access, search, and find with ResearchRaven.
2) It's a production of Samaritan Health Services Center for Health Research and Quality based in Corvallis, Oregon. The the Center for Health Research and Quality began in 2008.
3) Announcements in the ResearchRaven database may have been edited, so it's important to link to the original document. Of course, a link is provided.
4) Like any database or research tool these days, ResearchRaven has a Twitter feed.
What is It? (In Their Words)
ResearchRaven is designed to advance health research, program development and scholarship by enabling users to efficiently find current information about funding opportunities, professional conferences, calls for papers and other research-related materials.
The site is divided up into several sections:
1) Meetings and Conferences
+ As we write this article 194 events are listed from around the globe.
+ The text of each entry can be downloaded as a PDF.
+ Entries can be sorted by one of many categories. From academia to youth.
+ Cool. You can sign-up for e-mail notification of new conferences or get the info via RSS.
2) Calls for Papers/Conferences
+ The same features and categories as listed above.
+ Also, the e-mail / RSS options
It's very useful that the categories are consistent from section to section
4) Funding
In this case, ResearchRaven offers a direct link to its sister site, ScanGrants which looks very similar to "Raven"
You'll Find:
Grants, scholarships, fellowships, prizes for scientific achievement or distinguished service, travel awards to professional meetings, abstract, essay and poster awards among other sources of funding.
The funding comes from, "private foundations, corporations, businesses, and not-for profit organizations. Finding and listing less traditional funding opportunities is also a priority [very good idea].
Funding/ScanGrants is also searchable. Fields include: maximum amount; regions [of the U.S.]; category; and audience. E-Mail and RSS alerts are also part of ScanGrants.
5) You'll also find a section named, "Leman's Lexicon."
Useful definitions (often with embedded links) of information terms (e.g. article metrics) and info technology terms (e.g. cloud computing).
The definitions are written by Hope Leman, a librararian for Samaritan Health Services Center.
First, select which database to search (Conferences; Calls for Papers/Meetings; Calls for Papers/Publications).
Then enter any text; date or date range, country; category and audience (you can select more than on category and audience)
ResearchRaven is a welcome addition to the database landscape and the fact that it's free is a big bonus. A tip of the cap to Samaritan Health Services Center for Health Research and Quality for making it available to all. The learning curve is low and it aggregates info that would we be challenging if not impossible to find, organize, and search in a timely manner. In the funding section we're impressed that they're looking for "less traditional" opportunities or put another way, content that you can't find elsewhere.
Here are a few things we would like to see:
+ A link or links that would make it easier to move between ScanGrants and ResearchRaven.
+ Letting users know how often and when the database is updated (good use for Twitter) . Perhaps, even creating a new entry file.
+ More Content (We're very confident that it's coming).
+ An option to sort entries (when browsing) by date.
+ Tell us something about who Hope "the lexicon person" is. (-:
Congrats to the ResearchRaven team. We look forward to not only more content but to more useful features going forward.
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