Author: Marié Roux (Page 1 of 14)

The Library offers data visualisation services in the form of workshops and a consultation service. The workshops provided are Principles of data visualisation, An overview of tools for data analysis and visualisation, Introduction to Microsoft Power BI and Introduction to Tableau Desktop and Flourish for data visualisation. In this blog post, we would like to focus on the principles of data visualisation.

When you build visual representations of your data, there are many factors to take into consideration. Please see below 12 principles for data visualisation, based on an article published in a blog post by Andrew Douglas.

1. Clarity

It is important that the visualisation is clear and can be easily understood by the specific audience it is intended for. You may want to add more text to the labels for easy comprehension. If a chart is difficult to understand, or there are important relationships between variables, do the extra calculation and visualise that as well.

2. Simplicity

Keep the visualisation simple and avoid unnecessary complexity. Chart elements like gridlines, axis labels and colours can all be simplified to highlight what is most important, relevant or interesting.  You may want to hide gridlines or highlight only one data series and not differentiate between all the series of your visualisation.

3. Purposeful

Decide which message or insight you want to communicate and design for that specific purpose. Here it will be important to also take your specific audience into account.

4. Consistency

Maintain consistency in the design elements throughout the visualisation. An example of this will be to use the same colours, axes, labels, etc. across the visualisations you use for a specific document/project.

5. Contextualisation

Provide context for the data being presented. This aspect goes hand in hand with the clarity of the visualisation. For the audience to understand your point, you might need to add more context in the form of labelling, more detailed titles, etc. You could also consider to use infographics, which provide more narrative with the visuals.

6. Accuracy

The data that your visualisation represents needs to be accurate.

7. Visuals encoding

Choose appropriate visual encodings for the data types you are visualising.

8. Intuitiveness

Design the visualisation to be intuitive and easy to comprehend.

9. Interactivity

Consider adding interactive elements to the visualisation, such as tooltips, zooming, filtering, or highlighting. This will allow the audience to interact with the data and in this process learn more about what it represents.

10. Aesthetics

Although aesthetics are subjective, a visually appealing design can engage viewers and increase their interest in the data. This is also the whole point of using a visualisation instead of a long description of your data.

11. Accessibility

Make sure the tools you use and the export of data and visualisations are available to your audience.

12. Hierarchy

Work out the hierarchy of information from the start and always remind yourself of the purpose of representing the data.

Design principles play an important role in creating visuals. It is not only about a click of a button to create a graph, but you need to apply these principles carefully to effectively communicate your data story to your audience.

Our Special Collections Divisions acquires, preserves and provides access to a substantial collection of rare and valuable books, primary documents and manuscripts that have been accumulated over many decades. Most of these collections are unique to Stellenbosch University’s Special Collections and are not available anywhere else in the world. They serve as valuable resources for documenting the cultural heritage of local, national, and international significance. These collections play a vital role in enhancing the University’s research impact, often being consulted by researchers when producing books, book chapters, journal articles, conference papers, and other scholarly outputs. Every year, the Library compiles a list of research outputs that were informed by Special Collections, including Manuscripts, Rare Books, Africana, and collections in the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS) in the Music Library.

The publications and the collections consulted in 2024 are listed below:

Articles

Bangani, S.  2024. Leveraging community engagement to contribute to Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 11. IFLA Journal, 50(3), 451-462. https://doi.org/10.1177/03400352241263533

(Africana, Manuscripts: various collections)

Lambrechts, L, Lindström, K, Hansen Van der Watt, L-M, Pitta, F, Deane, N, Moreschi, B & Petersen, L. 2024. Decay without mourning: Future-thinking heritage practices. International Journal of Heritage Studies:1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2024.2417062

(DOMUS: Hidden Years Music Archive Project [HYMAP])

Ncume, PS. 2024. Stellenbosch University Library exhibition celebrates 30 years of democracy. Liasa-In-Touch, 25(3):25.

(Manuscripts: various SA political collections)

Book

Cleophas, F. 2024. Physical education and physical culture in South Africa, 1837-1966. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

(Africana)

Conference presentations

Gollom, Ingrid. 2024. An overview of the life and career of South African concert pianist Lionel Charles Bowman (1919-2006) as compiled from the primary source material in the Lionel Bowman collection. Annual Congress, International Association of Music Libraries Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML), Department of Music, Stellenbosch University, 23-28 June.

(DOMUS: Lionel Bowman Collection)

Khati, Patricia. 2024. Preservation of Special Collections material at Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service. Bi-Centenary Conference on Preservation of Knowledge and Documentary Heritage, Thaba Bosiu Cultural Village, Maseru, Lesotho, 22-24 August.

(Manuscripts: various collections)

Lambrechts, L & Van der Want, S. 2024. Life in the archive: Investigating growth and decay in the Hidden Years Music Archive. 18th annual SASRIM Conference, Department of Music, University of the Witwatersrand, 26-28 July.

(DOMUS: HYMAP Collection)

Lambrechts, L & Van der Want, S. 2024. Making the invisible visible: Investigating the hidden life of fungi in the archive. Annual Congress, International Association of Music Libraries Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML), Department of Music, Stellenbosch University, 23-28 June.

(DOMUS: HYMAP Collection)

Röntsch, M. 2024. Persona and the archive: Reconsidering the Christopher James Biography Project. 18th annual SASRIM Conference, Department of Music, University of the Witwatersrand, 26-28 July.

(DOMUS: Christopher James Collection)

Ncume, PS. 2024. Bringing the ‘hidden’ to the ‘public’: The case of Hidden Years Music Archive. Annual Congress, International Association of Music Libraries Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML), Department of Music, Stellenbosch University, 23-28 June.

(DOMUS: HYMAP Collection)

Theses and dissertations

Bergemann, Karl Jason. 2024. The Runaways: A study of enslaved, apprenticed and indentured labour flight at the Cape in the emancipation era, 1830-42. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University. [Online] Available https://scholar.sun.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/10eddb3c-72ad-431b-b737-6defe0e179ed/content

(Africana, Rare Books)

Malan, Eon. 2024. Vir die Musiekleier / To the Director of Music: Bydraes tot navorsing van orrel- en kerkmusiek (1980-2020). Unpublished Masters thesis. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University [Online]. Available: https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/130257

(DOMUS: SAKOV Collection)

Struwig, Mieke. 2024. An intellectual history of institutionalised music studies in South Africa. Unpublished Doctoral dissertation. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University [Online]. Available: https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/130248

(DOMUS: Bernard van der Linde, SASRIM)

(Africana, Manuscripts: various collections – GG Cillié Jr, WJ du P Erlank, HB Thom)

Authors: Marieta Buys, Mimi Seyffert-Wirth

Stellenbosch University’s Library and Information Service is a natural partner to the scientific research process. As such, we launched our own data management plan (DMP) tool, SunDMP, in 2024. This tool allows researchers to generate DMPs seamlessly online. Its comprehensiveness means it can be adapted for any purpose, internally to apply for ethical clearance, or externally to apply for funding. Researchers who require assistance with creating DMPs using SunDMP can contact Sizwe Ngcobo.  The information below is required when you create a DMP using the SU’s template (on SunDMP).

Researcher information

This section of the tool is meant for researchers to populate their demographic data such as their name, surname and other personal details, ORCID Identifier, university affiliation and the research data management roles they would perform when conducting a project.

Project information

As per international standard requirements, this section requires SU researchers to add basic information such as the project name, abstract, funder information (including the status), anticipated start and finish dates, and the ethics body in which they belong such as Health Research Ethics Committee; Research Ethics Committee: Animal Care and Use (REC: ACU); Research Ethics Committee: Biological and Environmental Safety (REC: BES); or Research Ethics Committee: Social, Behavioural and Education Research (REC: SBE)

Data description and collection or re-use of existing data

It is a commonly shared perspective that research projects extensively engage with data through activities such as reuse, collection, transformation, and analysis. The SunDMP template enables SU researchers to include comprehensive details of data collection in their DMPs. This ensures research data reusability and facilitates effective management throughout the research data lifecycle.

Click for full view

Documentation and data quality

SU researchers are required to document their data to ensure that other researchers can understand and interpret the data generated from the project. This section aims to ensure that SU researchers describe all the sources of data, this includes data generated through various instruments or from questionnaires; data to be newly collected as part of the current project, but it can also be pre-existing data that may need proper contracts with the maintainer, some pre-processing, and quality checks. It can also be reference data that is part of curated resources and (public) databases.

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Legal and ethical requirements, codes of conduct

Research data collected or reused within a research project is subject to SU’s research data management regulations to govern permissible uses. Therefore, all SU researchers need to address various ethical, legal, and security issues within their DMPs. This ensures that all research data available for reuse undergo proper anonymisation, de-identification, and licensing procedures, thereby promoting compliance and safeguarding research data integrity.

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Data sharing and long-term preservation

In addition to ensuring comprehensive metadata and accessibility, SU researchers need to ensure that data that is intended for reuse must be securely stored (see SUNScholarData libguide for reference) and preserved. This entails that the DMP needs to address strategies for data storage and preservation to support future reuse, whether for rerunning experiments, usage as reference data, or facilitating use by other SU researchers or the general public for different purposes.

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Author: Sizwe Ngcobo

Music is more than sounds or entertainment – it has the power to heal, inspire, uplift, and connect us. But beyond the emotional and artistic impacts, music can also play a significant role in health and well-being. What if we could promote the sustainability and value of the performing and creative arts in society by uniting the concept of arts for health and well-being, with the concept of health and well-being in the arts, for mutual growth and reciprocity? Transdisciplinarity is a way of thinking that can accomplish this bridging of worlds. Importantly, music libraries are vital in facilitating innovation in this space.

Transdisciplinary research brings together experts from different fields to tackle ‘wicked problems’ with combined knowledge and methods, innovative perspectives, social engagement, and systemic thinking. Aiming for practical and sustainable solutions, transdisciplinarity has an overarching ethos towards the common good, bridging the gap between theory and practice, and driving social impact. The Health, Arts, and Performance Initiative (HAPI) at SU, led by Dr Bridget Rennie-Salonen, is a transdisciplinary research collaboration bringing experts together from multiple disciplines, such as music, health, medicine, and social science, to explore the relationship between music, health, well-being, and human performance.

Musicians and other artists face unique health challenges that often go unrecognized. From the outside, being a musician might seem like a dream job. But the reality is that many performers struggle with physical and mental health issues. Research has shown that musicians are at high risk for musculoskeletal disorders such as repetitive strain injuries, hearing and vocal health problems, and performance anxiety and mental health challenges. HAPI is working on topics such as developing health education for music students so they can learn how to prevent injuries, manage stress, and perform and teach better; addressing the mental health and well-being of performing artists; exploring social justice topics such as how music can promote positive social change; and developing support networks and resources for performing artists to seek help without stigma. Importantly, exploring these issues in the South African and African context is pivotal in order to address our unique socioeconomic challenges and diverse cultural needs, which require locally relevant research and solutions, and which will contribute valuable perspectives to the global discourse on health and well-being in and through the performing arts.

Yet one of the most overlooked enablers for this research is the music library and the librarian. Music libraries don’t just store sheet music and books; they are hubs of knowledge access, transfer, and sharing, to help transdisciplinary researchers push the boundaries of what’s possible. Music libraries are evolving too, becoming active and innovative partners, such as by providing access to essential research on musicians’ health, music psychology, and performance science; by facilitating knowledge transfer between disciplines; by helping to connect academic research and practical application; and by partnering with researchers to develop resources such as online platforms that integrate health and performance studies into music education.

Music is a universal force for well-being for all – the makers and the consumers. Music libraries are key players for shaping the future of transdisciplinary research innovation, linking music in health, and health in music.

Author: Bridget Rennie-Salonen | brsalonen@sun.ac.za | +27 72 479 9684

Following recent maintenance in the strongroom in Special Collections, an old newspaper, De Paarl, was identified to be digitised for preservation. The physical copy had become fragile and difficult to handle. The 1892 run of the newspaper was recently digitised in the Library and is hosted on SUNDigital Collections, the Library’s digital heritage repository.

Published by well-known Afrikaans family concern D.F. du Toit & Co. between 1883 and 1898, De Paarl is a very scarce resource and as far as can be ascertained, only available in the South African National Library in part. The publication also appeared infrequently, especially during the initial years of publication.

The resource offers a fascinating look at everyday life in a small town in the Western Cape before the 20th century and covers national and even international news of the time. Regular columns report on agricultural auctions, legal matters, the arrival of mail and even reports lost livestock.

Digitising the fragile newspaper has been a challenge and care has been taken to digitally enhance the PDF files and improve readability. The collection can be accessed at https://digital.lib.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.2/21351.

Author: Mimi Seyffert-Wirth

Stellenbosch University has a Read & Publish agreement with IWA Publishing. Unlimited free Open Access publications for corresponding authors affiliated with the institution are available with this uncapped agreement.  There is no limit to the number of articles that can be published with open access. To qualify for the waiver during the submission process, please ensure that you are listed in your article as the corresponding author and include your full institutional affiliation and associated e-mail address. Articles from authors at Stellenbosch University may be published under the Creative Commons licenses (CC BY), authors retain all rights as per the CC license.

For guidelines on how to publish here, please visit https://iwaponline.com/pages/rp_guidelines.

Enquiries: Sakhile Mngomezelu

The academic research landscape is evolving rapidly, especially with the advent of generative AI tools developed on large language machine learning models emerging as game-changers for scholars. In research environments, AI tools can mostly be used as general-purpose tools (e.g. Microsoft Copilot) or as task-specific tools (e.g. to deduplicate papers in literature reviews).

General-purpose tools such as large language model (LLM) chatbots can best be applied as research assistants (e.g. to do prompting for ideation or data analysis), or as a model to do data analysis on (such as sentiment-analysis on datasets added to a language model). The latter is accomplished computationally using LLM application programming interfaces (APIs), or by creating Custom GPTs (generative pretrained transformers) with domain-specific datasets. Both of these methods require a paid subscription to an LLM chatbot service.

In this blog entry we focus our attention on task-specific AI tools within the context of research tasks in search and discovery, topic comparison, text summation and writing. This is discussed by way of focusing on the three main application areas of AI tools in research environments, namely in:

• Reviewing prior studies
• Identifying gaps in knowledge
• Generating new research hypotheses for testing

Let’s briefly discuss each of these separately by reference of two tools within each application area that are available to SU researchers:

1.      Reviewing prior studies

AI tools can help automate systematic reviews by scanning the abstracts and full texts of documents to extract key terms and then use clustering algorithms to group similar studies to identify trends. The benefits of using AI to review prior studies include the speed of processing thousands of papers in hours, finding hidden patterns across studies and handling growing volumes of research, although some niche domains still lack sufficient training data.

By example, the EPPI-Reviewer systematic review software package uses machine learning to screen and categorize research papers for systematic reviews. Developed by the EPPI-Centre at University College London, the EPPI-Reviewer is a recommender web-based tool originally developed for Cochrane authors to support the development of systematic reviews from study screening through to data collection, analysis and synthesis. It manages references, stores PDF files, and facilitates qualitative and quantitative analyses such as meta-analysis and thematic synthesis. It also contains some new ‘text mining’ technology which is promising to make systematic reviewing more efficient. It works with modern browsers and web-enabled devices, and one can sign up for a free one-month trial before considering the paid version (https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/eppireviewer-web).

AI tools can also enhance ones understanding of the semantics of scientific literature and recommend relevant papers and highlight key findings in research by mapping relationships between studies using word embeddings and graph-based algorithms. This is typically accomplished on the back of large language models to summarize findings across papers. Semantic Scholar (https://www.semanticscholar.org) is a free AI-powered search and discovery tool that is an evidence synthesis platform that uses a combination of machine learning, natural language processing and machine vision to add a layer of semantic analysis to the traditional methods of citation analysis to extract relevant figures, tables, and entities from papers. It allows you to search across approximately 200 000 000 papers from all fields of science, for free.

2.      Identifying gaps in knowledge

AI can also assist in identifying gaps in human knowledge across different domains of study, from niche fields to broad interdisciplinary research. In doing so it allows researchers to process large amounts of data, detect patterns, and highlight what’s missing.

Various GPTs that are accessible through a paid LLM chatbot service – such as ChatGPT – are useful in accomplishing this. Notably, the Wolfram Alpha GPT allows a researcher to uncover connections between disparate fields by analysing structured data to highlight unexplored correlations.  The VOSviewer is a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks and can visualize citation networks to show declining interest in older theories versus emerging clusters. Although not an AI tool per se, the VOSviewer offers text mining functionality like that deployed in AI models that can be used to construct and visualize co-occurrence networks of important terms extracted from a body of scientific literature. The software can be used freely for any purpose (https://www.vosviewer.com/).

Although SU does not have a subscription to it, Scopus AI combines generative artificial intelligence with Scopus’ trusted content and data to help researchers accelerate their research. It also assists in mapping new research areas and finding opportunities for interdisciplinary cooperation. Built in close collaboration with the academic community, it provides a unique window into humanity’s accumulated knowledge through Scopus, the world’s largest multidisciplinary and trusted abstract and citation database.

The key benefit in using these tools is to analyse millions of papers/patents in hours, and to link gaps in one field to solutions in another.

3.      Generating new research hypotheses for testing

Hypothesis generation involves analysing existing data, finding patterns, and suggesting new areas to explore. AI tools work by finding statistical anomalies, under-explored correlations or conflicting results in data and literature. They also merge ideas from disparate fields using embeddings or graph networks and, in the process, they can generate 100+ hypotheses in minutes.

A practical AI tool to assist in such literature-driven hypothesis generation is Elicit (https://elicit.com/), which uses language models to help researchers quickly find relevant papers and summarize critical findings. Instead of sifting through hundreds of articles manually, researchers can rely on Elicit to scan abstracts, identify noteworthy points, and even suggest potential methods for study. Another valuable platform is Scite.ai (https://scite.ai/) which helps users see how an article has been cited – whether supportively, neutrally, or even in contradiction.

Cross-disciplinary tools designed on LLMs such as GPT-4 or Claude can also be prompted to brainstorm hypotheses by combining fields of study by using prompt engineering to merge concepts from unrelated fields.

Summary

While AI isn’t a replacement for human expertise, it’s a powerful ally. By integrating tools like Elicit or Scite into workflows, researchers can tackle complex projects with greater speed and confidence. As these technologies advance, they’ll continue to democratize access to knowledge and push the boundaries of academic inquiry.

AI tools such as Grammarly can also assist in the writing process but that applies to academic work beyond only research environments and is not discussed here separately.

Author: Wouter Klapwijk

The Library and Information Service has signed agreements with a number of publishers that make it easier for SU researchers to publish open access (OA), and in some cases to even publish OA without paying any article processing charge (APC). Many of these agreements have been negotiated by the South African National Library and Information Consortium (SANLiC), of which Stellenbosch University is a member. Herewith is a list of new and recently updated agreements with publishers.

Royal Society of Chemistry Platinum Agreement (2024-2027)

The Library and Information Service has signed a four-year agreement (2024-2027) with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). This agreement allows authors affiliated with Stellenbosch University to publish open access in any of the RSC journals without paying article processing charges. The Royal Society of Chemistry consists of journals that cover the core chemical sciences and related fields such as biology, energy and the environment, engineering, materials, medicine, and physics. There is no limit on the number of articles that can be published open access by authors affiliated with Stellenbosch University. To read more about the titles that are part of the agreement, please visit https://libguides.sun.ac.za/c.php?g=1232541&p=9019731.

SAGE Publishing

This agreement commenced in 2022 and has been renewed for three years (2025-2027).

SAGE is an independent academic and professional publisher of journals, books and electronic media spanning a wide range of subjects. The SAGE SANLiC agreement provides access to SAGE Premier journals collection of over 1,100 titles and permits affiliated authors to publish open access in the hybrid titles listed in the SAGE SANLiC agreement without paying article processing charges.

Fully open access titles: eligible corresponding authors will receive a discount of 20% on SAGE’s fully open access portfolio of titles. Please Click here to see the list of Gold open access titles. There are a few titles where SAGE is contractually prevented from offering open access publishing. A list of excluded journals is available from the publishers

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

This agreement commenced in 2021 and has been renewed for three years (2025-2027). Cambridge University Press (CUP) currently publishes over 400 peer-reviewed scholarly journals, of which 330 are hybrid journals and 40 are gold open-access journals. Participating institutions receive access to CUP’s full collection and affiliated authors can also publish in most hybrid and gold open-access Cambridge Universit Press journals without paying article processing charges (APCs).

Emerald

 This agreement commenced in 2022 and has been renewed for three years (2022-2027). Emerald publishes over 300 scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. The Emerald/SANLiC agreement for 2025-2027 is a transformational open-access agreement that provides read access to the collection that Stellenbosch University subscribes to and authors affiliated with the institution can publish a capped number of articles open access at no extra charge

Oxford University Press

This is a three-year agreement (2025-2027) where read access is provided to OUP’s full collection of more than 370 journals. Affiliated authors can publish open access in OUP’s hybrid journals without paying APCs. In addition, there is a 10% discount on APCs for publishing in OUP’s gold open-access titles.

See the full list of agreements in the Open Access Publishing library guide.

Author and contact person: Sakhile Mngomezulu