We’re very pleased congratulate Muhammad Basri Jafar on being our November Advisor of the Month – Basri completed his Bachelors in English Education at the State University of Makassar, Indonesia, and continued with the Master Degree in Early Childhood Education at The Ohio State University, USA. He followed up with a PhD in Communication, Culture, and Languages at Victoria University, Australia.

Basri recently came to visit us at Mendeley HQ in London and told us about his research investigating students’ perception of Mendeley in academic writing, and of his amazing plans to organise the Mendeley International Symposium in Education (MISE) in Makassar next year.

How did you get into your field and what is your research story?
I get into my field in billiteracy development through the extensive reading and research over years and years. My current research on the Exploring Indonesian students’ perception on Mendeley reference management software in academic writing has been presented in the The 2nd International Conference on Information Technology, Computer, And Electrical Engineering (ICITACEE 2015) indexed by IEEExplore.

Where do you do your research/work the best? What kind of environment suits you?
Doing research with the community development looking at the literacy program under the UNESCO Project on National Literacy Building for Timor Leste and the UNESCO program on education for all is an exciting work for the my latest work experience as a UNESCO consultant of education for all for Timor Leste.

How long have you been on Mendeley and what were you using prior to Mendeley and how does Mendeley influence your research?
I have been on Mendeley for more than two years after experiencing using Endnote in my PhD work. Mendeley is a simple reference management software and easy to use in academic writing.

Why did you decide to become an Advisor and how are you involved with the program?
Since experiencing Mendeley easy to use in the academic writing then I decided to incorporate Mendeley in writing article, research paper and other publication.

What academic/researcher/librarian would you like to work with or meet, dead or alive?
Nancy Hornberger, a Professor in Pensylvania University, USA who pioneering the continua model of biliteracy.

What book are you reading at the moment and why?
Language Ecology authored by Dr. Mark Garner, the Roehampton University since this book inspired my research on ecological perspective on language use in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.

What is the best part about working in research?
The best part of working in research is the way we find the most up to date, and futuristic topics, as well as finding the dynamic of the data in the field to put into a comprehensive output of the research.

And the worst/most challenging part about working in research?
The most challenging part of research is working with the participants who are quite difficult to reach and communicate with for data collection.

What is the one thing you want people to know about Mendeley?
One thing that I want people to know about Mendeley is the way Mendeley help authors in citing and referencing simultaneously as well as highlighting feature for easy revision.