The Graduate School of Gadjah Mada University (SPs UGM) held a training session on utilizing the applications Publish or Perish, VOS Viewer, and Mendeley to help find research ideas and conduct bibliometric analysis. The training took place on Friday (October 4th) in Room 306, Unit 1, Graduate School Building at UGM, and was attended by no less than 50 students from both master’s and doctoral programs.
This training was initiated by librarians and journal managers at SPs UGM, aimed at enhancing the research skills of graduate students. The resource person for this training was Umi Sugiyanti, SIP., MA., a librarian at SPs UGM. She emphasized the challenges faced by many graduate students in collecting primary data for their thesis or dissertation research.
“Master’s and doctoral students often struggle to gather primary data for their theses or dissertations, so they need an application or software to obtain research data. Harvesting data from Publish or Perish and then analyzing it bibliometrically with the help of VOS Viewer can assist students in effectively completing their theses or dissertations,” explained Umi.
Umi added that there is one more application that is very helpful in writing theses or dissertations: Mendeley. Mendeley is software that can manage various types of references in writing. In bibliometric analysis, Mendeley functions to organize data obtained from Publish or Perish before analysis is conducted using VOS Viewer. This integration of technology not only streamlines the research process but also enhances the quality of academic work.
“When working on a thesis or dissertation, including a bibliography is mandatory; Mendeley is very helpful in writing the bibliography. I hope that as graduate students, writing a bibliography is not done manually but using an application. Mendeley itself is very easy to use and allows users to choose various styles of bibliography according to their needs,” added Umi.
In addition to providing theoretical understanding, Umi gave practical demonstrations of using the three applications. Students were also directly assisted with the installation of these applications and their practical use. From this training, students gained skills in navigating these technologies. In the future, skills in various software applications will be crucial in the competition for decent job opportunities.
Author: Asti Rahmaningrum