CiteULike



=Description =

Citeulike is a free website that helps users store, organize and share academic publications.[1] It is a Web-based social bookmarking tool and was initially created for scientists and scholars but has since caught on with a lot of academia. It helps users organize all of their articles into one repository and automatically shows a bibliography of the article in whatever format (APA, MLA, etc.) the user specifies. The website also uses “social tagging” to classify information online, but unlike del.icio.us which specializes in storing URLs, and Flickr which specializes in photographs, Citeulike specializes in academic literature. This fusion of Web-based social bookmarking services and traditional bibliographic management tools enables the user to gather, collect, share and discover academic literature and research papers. =History =

Citeulike was created to solve the problem the creators were experiencing themselves: "Collecting material for a bibliography is something which appeared to require an amazing amount of drudgery. All the existing options seemed to require more effort than strictly necessary to transfer the citation details for the article currently open in my web browser into some sort of permanent storage. I'm sure with a lot of practice I could have got the process down to twenty seconds or so, but that twenty seconds just presented enough unpleasantness of flipping between browsers and external applications, copying and pasting details, and opening downloaded "citation export" files that I was far less likely to actually do it. I'd need amazing amounts of self discipline to consistently bookmark everything I ever read on the off-chance that I might want it again. Unless, of course, it just involved clicking a button on the browser and having it all magically happen.

So, the obvious idea was that if I use a web browser to read articles, the most convenient way of storing them is by using a web browser too. This becomes even more interesting when you consider the process of jointly authoring a paper. There is a point where all the authors need to get together and get all the articles they wish to cite into the one place. If you do this process collaboratively on a web site, then it's easier. The next obvious leap is that if all the references are available via a web interface on a central server, it would be really nice to see what your colleagues are reading and be able to show them what you're reading. It cuts down on the number of emails saying "have you seen this article?" In fact, if enough users register on the system, you'll probably find people reading the same articles as you. That provides a great way of keeping on top of the literature - you simply share it with people who have common interests. If we have a model of everyone's library being completely open, then our reference manager has suddenly transformed itself into a piece of social software. That's what Citeulike aims to be."[1] It has been online since October 2004 and was the first Web-based social bookmarking tool designed specifically for the needs of scientists and scholars.

=Impact on Teaching and Learning =

This online tool is free so it is available to all teachers and learners. The tool allows the researcher, who could be a teacher or learner, to concentrate more on the content and research and spend less time fumbling around for articles when all the articles are all online at the tip of their fingertips. It will be much faster to find an article instead of trying to rummage through stacks and stacks of journals.

The process of collecting information is made easier for the end-user because a Web browser is the natural tool for exploring publications, hence it is just logical that the Web browser be equally the natural tool with which to collect bibliographic records. This process is less time-consuming and less error-prone as all the relevant metadata required to create a proper bibliographic record automatically from the publisher’s site is extracted. Citeulike supports most of the major publishers and the process gathering and collecting of information works seamlessly for the user without having to leave the Web browser. The sharing and tagging aspect of this tool will also help the user discover new articles or even discover new colleagues by paying attention to who has been tagging the same thing the user has. This information gathering and sharing aspect makes research more powerful and precise. Researchers can keep up with trends in their field of interest, learn about areas outside of their specialty, and keep in touch with their academic fields without having to go to the library. =Practical Applications =

This tool is mostly intended for use in higher education as Citeulike specializes in academic literature. Specifically, Citeulike allows scholars with access to full-text databases not readily available to the public to bookmark and tag those references. That means CiteULike can be used with commonly used databases like JSTOR, as well as public sites like Amazon. Users find this tool highly useful to keep their articles and citations organized. They can browse or search through collections of articles bookmarked by other people with similar interests. Because scholars specialize in particular niche, Citeulike has great value to them as new papers are more easily discovered, relevant clusters of interest are naturally formed and the tags are more meaningful as well. Although Citeulike is used primarily by faculty, fellows, and graduate students engaged in more intensive research, this bookmarking site can also be used by the average college student just looking to organize research for a term paper. From a users' point of view, it is more practical to have a single, centralized social bookmarking service to store and organize all their research publications rather than storing these publications on different services all over the place. This is also the case from the sharing and collaborative point of view.[4] =Examples or Demonstrations =

<span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0in;">This is a free site but an account needs to be created before the tool can be used. To do this, go to the web site and then click “Join now” on the bottom left of the page. Once you have registered, a confirmation screen will appear and you are ready to use the tool. **Figure 1. First page to join Citeulike** <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0in;">Once you have registered and logged in, you can start to post an article to your library. Essentially, the functionality of the tool is simple; when a user sees a paper or article on the Web that interests them, they just click a button and add the article to their personal library. Simply navigate using the toolbar at the top of the Citeulike page labeled myCiteULike. You can post an article manually by typing in the bibliography or by posting a URL.



**Figure 2. MyCiteULike Toolbar** <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0in;">Once you have found an article you would like to bookmark, just copy the link and post it in Citeulike.

**Figure 3. Online journal article to reference**

**Figure 4. Posting an article from online journal to Citeulike** <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0in;">Once the URL is posted, the bibliographic information is automatically extracted from the article and added to your library. You can also add tags to your article. These tags will help you organize your article so you can find them better later.

**Figure 5. Article can also be tagged** <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0in;">Once your article has been posted, you will see it on your own personal library.

**Figure 6. Article is added to personal library** <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0in;">Below is a quick tour of Citeulike:

media type="youtube" key="LkNeEUV4sPs?fs=1" height="385" width="480" align="center"

=<span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0in;">References =


 * 1) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0in;">Citeulike FAQ @http://www.citeulike.org/faq/faq.adp
 * 2) Wikipedia entry on Citeulike @http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CiteULike
 * 3) <span style="display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0in;">Citeulike blog @http://blog.citeulike.org/
 * 4) Kevin Emamy and Richard Cameron article 'Citeulike: A Researcher's Social Bookmarking Service' @http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue51/emamy-cameron/

=<span style="color: #000080; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0in;">External Links =

@http://www.delicious.com/ [] [] [] [] @http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkNeEUV4sPs

= About the Author =

Ro Hayslip is a student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa's College of Education. She is enrolled in the Masters of Education in Educational Technology program. She is currently working as an Application Developer for the University of Hawaii's Information Technology Department.