A Gateway to Researchers for Resources

INTRODUCTION

Research is a systematic investigation of a problem or question. The process of research implies various components in accordance with appropriate research methodology based on the type of research problem or question. It is a continuous process to bring societal changes and ease the life of human beings. Research allows researchers to pursue their career in their area of interest. There are 950+ universities in India. Each of these universities are involved in teaching and research in a variety of disciplines. Managing and monitoring research activity is a time-consuming task that requires a lot of effort to aggregate various information at one platform. It is a need of an hour to manage research activity with the use of the latest tools and techniques to complete the research work within the stipulated time.

ABOUT

Shodh-Chakra is an initiative of Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) Centre under the guidance of University Grants Commission (UGC) to help the academic community during their research life cycle. Shodh-Chakra provides a unique space to the researcher, guide/supervisor and university to manage the research lifecycle of a research scholar. This will work as a digital workspace wherein researchers can collect, store, organize and cite their research work. The Shodh-Chakra would help researchers to create their profile and manage their preferences. The process of using the portal starts with signing an MoU between University and INFLIBNET Centre. The university/institute has to provide valid information of the researcher and supervisor. Further, researcher can login into system and avail the features of Shodh-Chakra. The system will generate login credentials to researchers, supervisors and universities.

Login

Following are the stakeholders:

Researchers

Profile Management
Knowledge Resources
Assistance for Literature Work
Resource Aggregation
Publications (Workshops & Conferences)
Reference Management
Interaction with Guide
Thesis Submission

Guides / Supervisors

Dashboard
Profile Management
Work Progress Tracking
Interaction with Researchers
Knowledge Resources

Universities

Dashboard
Profile Management (Researcher & Guide)
Communication / Intimation Module among Researchers, Guides and University
Work Progress View
Report Generation

Objectives of ShodhChakra

To provide consistent support to the researchers;
To provide single point access to all the research needs of higher education institutions in India;
To provide dedicated platform for search, store, organize and manage literature;
To supply bibliographic information of millions of scholarly communications through the single platform;
To provide research support to the academic community by amplifying the latest tools for conducting research;
To empower and educate research scholars in conducting research work;
To provide interactive platform between guide and researcher;
To provide single point access to view research activity of all research scholars;
To understand the research trend across the universities;
To provide a single portal for managing researcher, guide, and university’s research activity;

Features and functions

The Shodh-Chakra creates and maintains research profile of scholar(s) & guide(s);
It provides access to more than 3.5 lakhs full-text theses;
It helps researcher(s) to find out relevant literature from millions of scholarly articles from Shodhganga, Google Scholar, IRINS, Crossref and other databases;
Store, collect, organize and manage scholarly resources in a personalized resource space known as My Library;
It stores information of Scholarship/Fellowship received by a researchers and other administrative details of the researchers;
Single search box to find out resources using keywords from major metadata fields;
The Shodh-Chakra provides access to pre-populated Knowledge Resources that are useful sources of information for a researcher before beginning the research work. (Shodhganga, MOOCs Module on Research Ethics, etc.);
It gathers information of upcoming seminars/workshops and conferences in all the fields across the country on participatory approach;
It has a unique feature to mark the favourite resource so that it can be referred in future while preparing the manuscript;
Reference management tool (Zotero) is integrated with a portal that will help researchers to manage resources;
It also facilitates researchers to annotate the resources;