Themed Let’s Achieve Research Excellence, the 12^th annual Library Research Week will be launched on 13 May 2024 by Professor Sibusiso Moyo from 15:30 to 17:00. This year’s event will also see the launch and introduction of the first University’s Data Management Plan (DMP) software, SunDMP, a DMP tool powered by Fair Wizard. To ensure wider access, the launch will be in a hybrid format, allowing guests and speakers to attend in-person or online. However, due to the small size of the physical venue, only invited guests will be given a choice to attend in person. In line with the tradition of the Library Research Week, during the launch, there will be a guest speaker who will focus on the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.  

After the launch, there will be events each day from 14 May until 17 May 2024. These seek to empower researchers on many aspects of the research process including proposal writing, literature reviews, research methods, academic writing skills, scoping reviews, research data management, publishing and many more.

This year’s event has an inspiring lineup of speakers who will conduct these workshops and discussions on research best practices. Check out the programme on the library’s website: Library Research Week Page.

Prof Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe is Professor and Coordinator for Research Professional Development in the University Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She will present a guest lecture at the Stellenbosch University Library on Saving the time of the user: Academic library implications of industry initiatives and trends.

The lecture will take place on Friday 10 May from 09:30-10:30 in the Library’s Auditorium. All students and staff are welcome to attend.
Please book your seat here.

Removing stumbling blocks for users accessing content and services continues to be a significant challenge across the information landscape. Friction points include discovery, access, and authentication/authorisation workflows. Open access publishing promises to assist but is not the full solution. Recent industry initiatives have attempted to smooth pathways and improve researcher experience. This keynote will share industry efforts, including but not limited to Get Full Text Research (GetFTR), Seamless Access, and the Article Sharing Framework, identify how these efforts are shaping the information access landscape, and catalyse a conversation to explore how libraries and higher education institutions might better serve our users by leveraging these industry efforts.

In celebration of 30 years of democracy in South Africa, the Library and Information Service will be hosting a unique exhibition this month. This exhibition will showcase some of the material from the manuscript collections curated by Special Collections.

The collections focus on the path to democracy through negotiations to create a climate of change in South Africa within political, economic, and social arenas. We look at some of the organisations and individuals that played a role in the negotiations and preparations for democracy from the economic pressure to the conferences and workshops and voter education to the 1994 voting and the first democratic parliament as well as the changes and highlights of the democracy in South Africa till 2024. This exhibition also serves as a reminder of the enduring journey towards a more just, inclusive, and democratic society, honouring the resilience and collective spirit that continue to shape South Africa’s future.

The exhibition will be on view from Monday 13 May in the Stellenbosch University Library.

The launch of Stellenbosch University’s new Data Management Plan (DMP) platform, SunDMP, will take place during the launch of Library Research Week on Monday 13 May, at 15:30. Book here to attend this event.

SunDMP revolutionises research data management by streamlining DMP creation, ensuring legal compliance, and fostering a culture of transparency. Planning for research data management has advanced significantly with SunDMP, which the FAIR wizard platform enables. Data management planning entails preparing how researchers will manage their data during and after the research process. Researchers now have a solid tool to expedite this process and effectively articulate their data management strategies. SunDMP is important because, by the SU Research Data Management Regulation, these plans must be submitted with research grant applications.

Creating thorough data management plans (DMPs) is essential to data management planning. These documents function as road maps, outlining different facets of data management during the research project. Researchers specify how data will be gathered, handled, examined, and distributed in a DMP. DMPs also include strategies for encouraging research data reusability, which is essential to modern scientific methods.

Researchers can use technologies such as SunDMP to create strong DMPs, assisting them in making important decisions and guaranteeing adherence to legal requirements. Additionally, SunDMP can improve the efficacy and accessibility of data management planning by providing researchers with intuitive software, ultimately promoting an open and accountable culture of research data stewardship.

Please contact Xabiso Xesi (Tel: 021 8089489) or Sizwe Ngcobo (Tel: 021 8089978)  for assistance. Or send them an email at rdm@sun.ac.za

Other important links on the topic of Research Data Management:

• SUNScholarData (Institutional research data repository)
• SUNScholarData library guide
• Research Data Management  library guide
• Plan and manage research data

The final #SmartResearcher workshops for the first semester will take place in May. Some of the most important topics in the research life cycle will be presented during this time.  In this article we would like to highlight the workshops which will take place on the topic of Open Access and improving the impact of your research.

The fifth step in the research life cycle is Share and publish and the 6th step is Monitor and evaluate.

A few workshops related to these topics will take place this month (click on the links to make a booking):

• Increasing the visibility of your research output through self-archiving
  

  Tuesday 7 May, 11:00-12:30
  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.

• Enhancing your research impact through open access publishing
  

  Thursday 9 May, 12:00-13:00
  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.

• Managing your unique author identity with ORCID

  Tuesday 21 May, 12:00-13:00
  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.

• Maximise your research impact
  

  Thursday 23 May, 11:00-13:00
  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 and Tracking your citations.

• Making important decisions about publishing your research
  

  Tuesday 28 May, 10:00-13:00
  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.

Another two workshops about using Endnote reference manager will also be on offer:

• Migrating your Mendeley Library to EndNote
• EndNote for reference management

Enquiries: Kirchner van Deventer