Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service - News from research support services

Author: Marié Roux (Page 9 of 13)

What your Faculty Librarian can do for you

Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service contains a wealth of information that is continually developed to cater to the needs of researchers and postgraduate students during their academic careers. As part of the curriculum, postgraduate students are often required to submit a research project and for this purpose, each faculty is well represented by a Faculty Librarian, who amongst other things can provide research support and training and e-learning to students and staff.

Faculty librarians offer collaborative support to researchers by helping them with measuring research impact, advice on publishing and open access sources.

They also provide the following training to postgraduate students and researchers which specifically target the use of the library website to find, locate and apply applicable information and data sources, e.g.:

  • introduction to the relevant library guides
  • literature searches
  • literature reviews
  • systematic reviews
  • searching for information across multiple databases
  • referencing

See your faculty’s/department’s library guides here and contact your faculty librarian directly for assistance.

Library Research Week launches with panel discussion

The official launch of Library Research Week 2022 will be held on Monday, 16 May. It will consist of a panel discussion on Research ethics: friend or foe? Ethics play an important part in the research process from the initial stages of design to the final stages of reporting. Ethics committees in charge of research ethics processes are especially significant as they ensure that standards are met and that individuals and institutions are protected. This is especially significant since the promulgation of the POPI Act requires all researchers to ensure proper safeguards for personal information and the data collected for research purposes. Miscommunication can arise where ethical implications in applications may not always be made explicit. Ethics committees can approve, reject, modify or even prevent studies to continue, and this may cause researchers to regard ethics committees as unsympathetic towards their cause. This panel, consisting of researchers, experts and members of ethics committees will discuss challenges faced by researchers and ethics committees, and how they navigate through these challenges.​

The panellist will be Dr Marilize Burger (Division of Orthopaedic Surgery), Ms Katlego Mthelebofu (Faculty of Law) and Mr Jerall Toi (Information Governance). The discussion will be facilitated by Professor Ronelle Carolissen from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Please book here

You are welcome to see the full programme for Library Research Week here.

Contact: Marié Roux

Bookings for Library Research Week 2022 are open!

The official launch of Library Research Week 2022 will be held on Monday, 16 May. It will consist of a panel discussion on “Research ethics: Friend or foe?” with panellists Dr Marilize Burger, Ms Katlego Mthelebofu and Mr Jerall Toi from Information Governance, whose role includes ensuring compliance with the POPI Act at the University. The discussion will be facilitated by Professor Ronelle Carolissen from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

The rest of the week’s agenda will be based on the theme “Mapping your Research Journey” and each day will focus on a specific sub-theme. See more information below and a link to make your bookings.

Rigging the ropes: 

  • Search strategies with Google and Google Scholar, presented by Pepler Head
  • Do’s and don’ts of proposal writing, presented by Selene Delport
  • Literature reviews, presented by Elizabeth Moll-Willard

Navigating the new: 

  • Mixed-methods research, presented by Dr Ilse Eigelaar
  • Statistics in research, presented by Prof Martin Kidd
  • Sage Research Methods, presented by Claire Deakin
  • ATLAS.ti: Qualitative Data Analysis & Research Software, presented by Dr Bronwyne Coetzee

Traversing the tides: 

  • Research ethics and responsible research conduct within Social Sciences, presented by Clarissa Robertson
  • Introduction to Mendeley Ref​erence Manager and Mendeley Cite​, presented by Letlao Seloma
  • Checking your similarity index with Turnitin, presented by Samuel Morris
  • Copyright issues in research, presented by Carol Kat

Bridging uncharted waters:

  • Maximise your research impact, presented by Marié Roux
  • Management of sensitive research data, presented by Samuel Simango
  • Wiley Read and Publish Open Access agreement, presented by Janice Rimbault

Please visit this link to register for the different sessions:

Library Resesearch Week 2022: Programme and registration

Data visualisation workshops in 2022

Data visualisation is an important part of the research process. Although spreadsheets and data tables will always be present in research, new types of visualisations are emerging to make information more accessible than before.

This year the offering of workshops offered by the Library on data visualisation will include the following:

Researchers and students are also welcome to make use of the consultation service available on this topic.

Please contact Marié Roux for more information.

Did you know about the SU ORCID integration?

You might already have an ORCID ID, since it is compulsory to add your ID to any NRF application and use it when you publish a new article. But did you know that Stellenbosch University has an integration with ORCID? We would like to encourage you to connect your ORCID ID to your Stellenbosch University identity. Please follow this link and follow the steps below.

  • First sign in to the SU portal
  • You will be directed to the “Manage your researcher identities” page
  • Click on the “Connect” button under ORCID
  • If you already have an ORCID ID you will be able to sign in and authorise SU to view and update your ORCID profile
  • If you don’t have an ID yet, click on “Register now”, complete the form and authorise SU to view and update your profile, all in one step!
  • We encourage you to use your sun.ac.za email address to register.

It would be ideal to close the gap between how many researchers at Stellenbosch University have IDs versus how many have connected their IDs to the integration. See the graph below illustrating how many IDs were created and how many IDs were connected between 2013-2021.

 

If you need any assistance with creating and/or connecting your ORCID iD, please contact:

Marié Roux / Kirchner van Deventer / Your faculty librarian

Read the ORCID library guide

Register for the next ORCID workshop (10 May 2022)

Get help on all aspects of the Research Process

Do you know about this helpful Library Guide that assists you with all the aspects of the research process?  It follows all the steps involved with conducting research, from the planning phase, data collection, the writing process, archiving, publishing, and measuring your impact. Where the Library is not involved, you will be referred to the correct information elsewhere on campus.

Please contact us if you need further assistance with any of these steps.

 

 

 

Developing a plan for communicating your research

The following steps might be a good way to improve your online visibility as a researcher and assist you with communicating about your research:

  1.  Create and maintain online profiles (e.g. Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Academia).
  2.  Use persistent identifiers (e.g. ORCID, Researcher ID in Publons, DOIs) to disambiguate yourself as an author or to link to your work.
  3.  Publish in Open Access journals or choose Open Access options.
  4.  Use Creative Commons licenses for your work for re-use.
  5.  Self-archive pre- or post-prints to institutional repositories (SUNScholar).
  6.  Publish your data to data repositories (SUNScholarData).
  7.  Make social media engagement about your research a regular habit (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter)
  8.  Engage your audience in meaningful conversations about the topics that you are interested in.
  9.  Connect with other researchers by means of academic network tools (ResearchGate, Mendeley, etc)
  10.  Appeal to various audiences via multiple publication types (academic articles, news items, blog posts, magazine articles)

It will be important to check in on your goals often, at least once in six months, or when you have published a new article.

Get help:
Marié Roux
Faculty Librarians
Research Commons Librarians

Sources:
Library guide: Research Impact & Scholarly Profiles, University of California, Berkeley Library
Library guide: The Research Process: Improve your impact, Stellenbosch University 

Play the Research Data Management Adventure Game

The Library recently launched a Research Data Management Adventure Game. It is a text-based role-playing interactive serious game based on an academic research project’s data management challenges. The game takes the form of an online choose-your-own-adventure format in which game players take a simulated research project through the processes below whilst encountering data management challenges along the way.

The game focus on the following learning outcomes:

  • Data management planning
  • Designing participant information sheets and consent forms
  • Choosing appropriate equipment for research projects
  • Acquiring suitable third-party research data
  • Organising research data
  • Storing research data appropriately
  • Analysing and documenting research data
  • Preparing research data for archiving
  • Publishing research data

The game was developed as part of a collaboration between the University of Bath Library and Stellenbosch University’s Library and Information Service.

Try it out here and let us know what you think! See also more about the game on the SUNScholarData library guide.

Contact Samuel Simango if you need any assistance with Research Data Management.

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