Internet Resources
Diagrammatic representation of the internet in 2010
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Introduction – Internet Resources
A good researcher can quickly search the internet for themselves. The small list of resources given here is one I have found useful as a starter pack for authoritative sources of information.
Access to some academic sites can involve a fee so subscription sites are indicated with an asterisk.
Overview
The internet has revolutionized the way we access information, providing a vast array of resources for acquiring knowledge. In particular, specialist academic information has become readily available online, offering researchers, scholars, and students access to a wealth of valuable data. This article will delve into the major sources of specialist academic information available on the internet, covering academic databases, digital libraries, online repositories, open access journals, and academic search engines.
Academic Databases
Academic databases serve as structured collections of scholarly materials, providing access to a wide range of academic resources such as journal articles, conference papers, dissertations, and research reports. Popular academic databases include PubMed, JSTOR, Scopus, and Web of Science. These databases index and organize content from various disciplines, making it easier for users to search and retrieve relevant information. Researchers can utilize advanced search features to narrow down their queries, access full-text articles, and stay updated on the latest research trends.
Digital Libraries
Digital libraries house digital collections of books, journals, manuscripts, and multimedia materials, offering users a virtual repository of knowledge. Institutions like the Library of Congress, the British Library, and the Digital Public Library of America provide online access to vast collections of academic resources. Digital libraries not only preserve cultural heritage but also facilitate academic research by granting users access to primary and secondary sources. Users can explore digitized materials, conduct in-depth research, and access rare documents that might not be available elsewhere.
Online Repositories
Online repositories are platforms that allow researchers to deposit, share, and access academic materials such as preprints, datasets, and research outputs. Institutional repositories like arXiv, SSRN, and Zenodo enable scholars to disseminate their work globally and increase its visibility. By depositing their research outputs in online repositories, researchers can enhance the reach and impact of their work. Users can search across multiple repositories to find relevant research outputs, collaborate with peers, and access the latest findings in their field of study.
Open Access Journals
Open access journals provide free and unrestricted access to scholarly articles, making research findings available to a wider audience. Platforms like PLOS ONE, BioMed Central, and Frontiers in have revolutionized academic publishing by embracing open access models. Researchers can publish their work in open access journals, ensuring that their findings are accessible to practitioners, policymakers, and the general public. Open access journals promote transparency, foster collaboration, and accelerate the dissemination of knowledge in various disciplines.
Academic Search Engines
Academic search engines are specialized tools that help users discover scholarly content on the internet. Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, and BASE are popular academic search engines that index academic resources from various sources. These search engines enable users to locate articles, books, conference papers, and patents related to their research topic. Users can access publication metrics, citation counts, and related articles to navigate through the scholarly literature efficiently. Academic search engines provide a one-stop solution for researchers to explore academic content across disciplines.
Specialist Websites and Portals
Specialist websites and portals cater to specific academic disciplines, offering curated collections of resources tailored to the needs of researchers in those fields. Websites like SSRN for social sciences, IEEE Xplore for engineering, and PubMed for biomedical research provide comprehensive coverage of specialized topics. These platforms host conferences, webinars, and discussion forums to facilitate networking and knowledge sharing among researchers. Specialist websites and portals serve as hubs for scholars to access discipline-specific information, collaborate on research projects, and stay updated on the latest developments in their field.
Blogs and Online Forums
Blogs and online forums play a crucial role in disseminating academic information, fostering discussions, and building communities of practice. Researchers, scholars, and students often use platforms like ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and Medium to share their research findings, academic insights, and personal experiences. Blogs written by experts in various fields provide valuable perspectives, analyses, and commentary on current research topics. Online forums offer spaces for scholars to engage in scholarly discussions, seek advice, and collaborate on collaborative projects. Blogs and online forums complement traditional academic sources by providing a platform for informal knowledge exchange and networking.
The internet offers a plethora of specialist academic information resources that cater to the diverse needs of researchers, scholars, and students. Academic databases, digital libraries, online repositories, open access journals, academic search engines, specialist websites, blogs, and online forums collectively contribute to the democratization of knowledge and the advancement of research. By leveraging these major sources of specialist academic information available on the internet, users can access a wealth of resources, stay updated on the latest research trends, collaborate with peers, and contribute to the growth of their respective fields. As technology continues to evolve, the landscape of online academic resources will expand, providing even greater opportunities for knowledge dissemination and scholarly engagement (AI Sider July 2024).
Collective learning
Knowledge, when used wisely, has proved beneficial to humanity and the world, so as a well-intentioned researcher you can regard your contribution to collective learning as a manifestation of progress!
Knowledge is cumulative: we are gathering more and more as time passes. In all disciplines, there is a refinement of our mental categories of understanding and explanation (names, classifications, definitions, descriptions, principles, theories, laws etc.) and the material; technologies we use. This is a routine part of disciplinary progress as knowledge is reconfigured into ever more efficient analytical categories and a collective worldview comes increasingly into focus.
The World Wide Web was a communications transformation that happened within a single generation as a continuing communications transition from spoken language to written word, to printed word, to electronic word. Anyone connected to the internet now has access to the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of mankind while just sitting on their bottom.
Scholarly research is being transformed as entire domains of knowledge become digitized. Pacing up and down library shelves is rapidly becoming a relic of the past: the world’s cutting-edge research can be accessed on a home computer, and experts in almost any specialist field can now be heard on Youtube expounding the latest principles, theories, controversies and advances in their respective disciplines.
Classical & Renaissance Literature & information
* Perseus Digital Library – The Perseus Project is a digital library of Classics Department of the Tufts University near Boston, Massachusetts. The project assembles digital collections of humanities resources.
Theoi Classical Texts Library is a collection of translations of works of ancient Greek and Roman literature. The theme of the library is classical mythology and so the selection consists primarily of ancient poetry, drama and prose accounts of myth.
Thesaurus Linguae Graecae Canon of Greek Authors and Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
The Livius website offers information on ancient history. There are currently 4317 pages. You will also find more than 10,500 original illustrations.
World Data
We all need basic and up-to-date information about the world if we are to be well-informed global citizens.
Today’s compendium of human knowledge – the encyclopaedia of the 21st century – is the publicly-generated Wikipedia. Because Wikipedia can be edited by anyone it has, among many people, a poor reputation. It is, however, monitored for both vandalism and quality: it is a good starting place in any investigation.
The following sites are useful sources of up-to-date world data:
OUR WORLD IN DATA – ‘Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems’
GAPMINDER – ‘The basic global facts’
HUMAN PROGRESS – long-term global trends
Pictures, charts, diagrams
A picture is worth a thousand words. A map of the world indicates the surface area covered by each country. But surface area is generally of little concern. ? Worldmapper is a charting resource that expresses country size in relation to parameters other than surface area.
https://worldmapper.org/ – WORLDMAPPER – select a parameter to express in terms of relative country size
https://www.youtube.com/c/UsefulCharts/ – USEFUL CHARTS – wide range of subjects
https://www.themaparchive.com/explore/ Map Archive
Natural history
WORLD HISTORY OF SCIENCE ONLINE (WHSO) – is an international bibliographical project aiming to become a major online resource for scholars who are looking for resources for their scholarly work. The website classifies and indexes online resources in the field of the History of Science and technology of scholarly merit and provides brief descriptions of these resources.
THE BIODIVERSITY HERITAGE LIBRARY (BHL) – gives free access to historical biodiversity knowledge: it improves research methodology by collaboratively making biodiversity literature openly available to the world as part of a global biodiversity community service.
SIR JOSEPH BANKS PAPERS an extensive archive held by the State Library of New South Wales. Section 5 contains 381 papers and correspondence relating to collectors and gardeners.
Australia
Trove – Australian and online resources at the National Library of Australia: books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, archives and more. http://trove.nla.gov.au/
Literature
* Early English Books Online (EEBO) http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home
* Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ecco/
Google Books https://books.google.com/
Gallica http://gallica.bnf.fr/
History
Best of web sites – EdTechTeacher – http://besthistorysites.net/general-history-resources/
The History Guide, Sources for Historians – http://www.historyguide.org/resources.html
Web sites for world history – http://guides.lib.udel.edu/c.php?g=85352&p=549186
World History Centre Resource Guie for historians – http://www.worldhistory.pitt.edu/documents/WorldHistoryOnlineResources.pd
Institute of historic research – https://www.history.ac.uk/
Philosophy
Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy http://www.iep.utm.edu/
Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/
Other resources http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/philinks.htm
Words
*Ngram viewer – Googles calculator for historical frequency of word use https://books.google.com/ngrams
Books
*Archive of ebooks https://books.google.com/ngrams
Plants
Atlas of Living Australia – All organisms. Australia’s most comprehensive data bank for biological research and based in Australia – http://www.ala.org.au/
Encyclopaedia of Life – a Smithsonian collaborative encyclopedia compiling as much information as possible about the world’s species of plants, animals and microorganisms https://www.eol.org/
GenBank – an annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/
Plants of the World Online – Kew Botanic Gardens – http://science.kew.org/strategic-output/plants-world-online
Annual Statement of Global Plant Statistics, Kew – https://stateoftheworldsplants.com/
Tree of Life web project – http://tolweb.org/Green_plants
garden plant names – Royal Horticultural Society database of plant name sand information – http://apps.rhs.org.uk/horticulturaldatabase/
Global Plants – the world’s largest plant image database – http://plants.jstor.org/
Plant List – all the known species of plants in the world http://www.theplantlist.org/1.1/about/#wcs
http://www1.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/ibc99/iopi/iopihome.html
List of world herbaria http://sweetgum.nybg.org/science/docs/The_Worlds_Herbaria_2018.pdf
International Organization for Plant Information
The Global Plant Checklist c. 300,000 vascular plant species and over 1,000,000 names, is IOPI’s first priority. Eventually, the Checklist will also include non-vascular plants (mosses, lichens, algae, and liverworts). The taxonomic backbone to which users can append their more specialized information. Part of the Species 2000 coverage of all organisms. A provisional Checklist is in operation.
Species Plantarum Project is a longer term project aiming to record essential taxonomic information on vascular plants on a world basis. It may be likened to a World Flora.
Plant (and animal) species numbers (Australia) – http://www.environment.gov.au/science/abrs/publications/other/numbers-living-species/executive-summary#plants
Historical and ancient texts – www.biodiversitylibrary.org www.archive.org
Trees & shrubs – http://www.beanstreesandshrubs.org www.beanstreesandshrubs.org
British biography – The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography www.oxforddnb.com
Trees Beech, E. et al. 2017. GlobalTreeSearch – the first Complete Global Database of Tree Species and Country Distributions. Journal of Sustainable Forestry, DOI: 10.1080/10549811.2017.1310049
Kew’s State of the World’s Plants
Weeds – Global Compendium of Weeds – http://www.hear.org/gcw/
Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi 2020
Crop profiles – NewCROP provides crop profiles listed by Purdue University Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Center for New Crops & Plant Products
Scientific Research
Researchers keen to network with co-workers, look for jobs, and gain exposure for their work, use the following sites:
Google Scholar – https://scholar.google.com.au/
ResearchGate – https://www.researchgate.net/home
Biodiversity
The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), known informally as the Biodiversity Convention, is a multilateral treaty. The Convention has three main Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) including: the conservation of biological diversity (; the sustainable use of its components; and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources. In other words, its objective is to develop national strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity.
GBO-5 (2020) provides global summary of progress towards the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and is based on a range of indicators, research studies and assessments (in particular the IPBES Global Assessment on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), as well as the national reports provided by countries on their implementation of the CBD. The national reports provide rich information about the steps taken in countries worldwide in support of biodiversity conservation, sustainable use, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits. This body of Information provides a wealth of information on the successes and challenges in implementing the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and in reaching the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. GBO-5 draws on the lessons learned during the first two decades of this century to clarify the transitions needed if we are to realize the vision agreed by world governments for 2050 ‘Living in Harmony with Nature’.
We are heading into the year 2020, when the world will review its progress on sustainable development by means of the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization is a 2010 supplementary agreement to the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Climate
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The Paris Agreement – signed in 2016, is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) addressing greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance. The agreement’s was adopted by consensus on 12 December 2015. As of February 2020, all 196 members of the UNFCCC have signed the agreement and 189 have become party to it. Of the seven countries which are not party to the law, the only significant emitters are Iran and Turkey.
Australian Climate – BOM and CSIRO State of the Climate 2020 is a report on the impact of climate change on Australia indicating that Australia is experiencing these impacts now
Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO) is the flagship publication of the CBD that summarizes the latest data on the status and trends of biodiversity and draws conclusions relevant to the further implementation of the Convention.
The global scene is carefully documented in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
United Nations Environmental Program – World Conservation Monitoring Centre
Media Gallery
State of the World’s Plants and Fungi 2020
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew – 2020 – 1:10
Bitesize Guide: Living Planet Report 2020 | WWF
WWF-UK – 2020 – 4:31
5th Global Biodiversity Outlook
Convention on Biodiversity – 2020 – 0:45
First published on the internet – 1 March 2019
. . . revised 3 November 2020
The Anthropocene. World land surface resized by its population overlaid with data related to human action and interaction on the planet. Each transformed grid cell in the map is proportional to the total number of people living in that area.
The major human communication and infrastructure links are shown in this map as an image of built-up areas & the light pollution of cities (white/yellow over land), roads (green), railway lines (orange) shipping routes (white/blue over sea), pipelines (red), transmission lines (blue) and submarine cables (yellow over sea).
This map uses population estimates for the year 2020 based on data from the Gridded Population of the World (GPW), v4 at 0.25 degree resolution, released by SEDAC (Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center). The information of an interconnected world redrawn in this map was assembled by Globaïa. The following datasets were used (accessed October 2016): – Roads, railways, pipelines, transmission lines: Mapability.com – Submarine cables: Cablemap.info – Air routes: ICAO stats – Shipping lanes: NCEAS data – Built-up areas: NaturalEarth and SAGE – Earth at night: NASA
This Worldmapper work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
