October will be the final month during which we will present our #SmartResearcher webinars for the year. The focus of the webinars will be on how to supervisors can submit theses and dissertations on behalf of their students, important decisions around getting published, how to measure the impact of your research, and more.

These workshops are aimed at postgraduate students, emerging researchers and academic staff and the focus will be on the research process. The sessions vary in length depending on the subject matter, but cover a wide range of subjects related to the postgraduate research journey.

Increasing the visibility of your research output through self-archiving

Stellenbosch University’s institutional policy on the self-archiving of research output is curated by the Library and Information Service. Complying with this policy, which asks researchers to deposit copies of their research output in SUNScholar, our institutional repository, can greatly increase the visibility and impact of research output. This workshop will teach participants more about the policy and how to comply with the policy in order to improve access to and visibility of their research outputs.

Date: Tuesday, 1 October

Time: 14:00 – 15:30

Register Here

Making important decisions about publishing your research

This hands-on session covers important factors to help you decide where to publish your research. Making the right choices can increase readership and citations, diminish publication lag and ensure that your publication is eligible for government subsidy.

Date: Thursday, 3 October

Time: 10:00 – 13:00

Register Here

Enhancing your research impact through open access publishing

This workshop will introduce attendees to the principles of Open Access and how it can benefit the impact of their research. Open access publishing is a model of scholarly communication that provides unrestricted and free access to scholarly research outputs, such as articles, papers, and data. In open access publishing, the content is made available online to the public without financial, legal, or technical barriers.

Date: Tuesday, 8 October

Time: 14:00 – 15:00

Register Here

Managing your unique author identity with ORCID

ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-driven effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. This workshop will explain what ORCID is, how to register and populate your profiles.

Date: Wednesday, 9 October

Time: 14:00 – 15:00

Register Here

Maximise your research impact

This workshop will show how to improve your impact as a researcher. The following two sessions will be presented:

Increase the visibility of your research (1 hour)

Participants will learn to:

·         Find and navigate social research networks (ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley, etc.)

·         Develop research profiles

·         Understand how to increase your visibility as a researcher

·         Understand the role of science communication and social media

Tracking your citations (1 hour)

Participants will learn about:

·         The different citation metrics and altmetrics and where to find it

·         Awareness on methods to increase citations

·         Responsible use of metrics

Date: Tuesday, 15 October

Time: 14:00 – 16:00

Register Here

Submitting a thesis /dissertation to SUNScholar

This library training opportunity for academic staff is designed to provide practical guidance to academic staff who are now required to submit theses/dissertations on behalf of their students.

Date: Wednesday, 16 October

Time: 14:00 – 15:00

Register Here

EndNote for reference management

EndNote 21 offers various services, including reference management, organising and annotation of PDF documents and collaboration. In this session, we will show you how to download and install EndNote and how to set up your account.

Date: Wednesday, 23 October

Time: 14:00 – 16:00

Register Here