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 

The Library and Information Service is pleased to announce two additional Open Access (read and publish) agreements recently signed in addition to existing agreements. These agreements extend reading access and provide Open Access publishing opportunities for Stellenbosch University staff and students. Authors can publish in fully Open Access journals at a discount and in hybrid journals without having to pay article processing charges (APCs).

​The following agreements were signed in 2024:

Taylor & Francis (T&F) Open Access (Read and Publish) agreement

This agreement commenced in 2024. It is a three-year agreement (2024-2026).

Institutions participating in this agreement have read access to nearly 2000 journals in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) and Science & Technology (S&T) packages. In addition, eligible authors affiliated with subscribing institutions can publish their articles open access in all Taylor & Francis Open Select (hybrid) journals without paying article processing charges (APCs). Eligible authors will also benefit from a 10% discount when they publish in the Taylor & Francis fully Open Access journals. Read the full press release here.

The Company of Biologists  Open Access (Read and Publish) agreement

This agreement commenced in 2024. It is a three-year agreement (2024-2026).

Under this agreement, corresponding authors from the SU community can publish an unlimited number of research articles as Open Access in the publisher’s hybrid journals, such as Development, Journal of Cell Science, and Journal of Experimental Biology, as well as their fully Open Access journals, including Disease Models & Mechanisms and Biology Open. Authors will not be required to pay any article processing charges (APCs) for these publications. Researchers will also benefit from unrestricted access to the publisher’s hybrid journals, including their complete archives dating back to 1853. Read the full press release here.

Contact details:

For more information about the publishers and to view titles eligible for Open Access publishing, please visit https://libguides.sun.ac.za/OApublishing.

Enquiries about Open Access agreements may be directed to the Manager: Scholarly Communications and Open Access, Tel: 021 808 9907.

From time to time the Library and Information Service acquires temporary access to electronic sources via the internet. Staff members and students of the University are encouraged to test these sources available on trial and to complete the evaluation form to provide feedback to the Library.

A current trial is available for The Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE). The trial runs from 10 April to 10 May. It is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes experimental methods in video format. JoVE covers research methods and experimental techniques from the physical and life sciences. The journal currently has 13 sections: Biology, Developmental Biology, Neuroscience, Immunology and Infection, Medicine, Bioengineering, Engineering, Chemistry, Behavior, Environment, Biochemistry, Cancer Research, and Genetics. It also publishes Science Education collections aimed at instructing scientists in fundamental concepts and methods in various fields including biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, and practical subjects like laboratory safety, cell culturing, etc.

Enquiries: Tel: +27 21 808 4884/4852  | E-mail

We are thrilled to announce that this year’s launch of Library Research Week on 13 May 2024 will coincide with the launch of our new Data Management Planning (DMP) tool, SunDMP. Powered by FAIRWizard, the new DMP tool will ensure full compliance of SU researchers with international standards in the form of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles. It will enhance data organisation and preservation at the University. This tool is set to improve data quality, facilitate data sharing and ensure compliance with funder requirements. Through our subscription to this tool, SU researchers will no longer need to scour for DMP tools elsewhere, which will help improve research efficiency at the University.

Data management plans are an integral part of the research process. This has necessitated researchers to prospectively think about the data they intend to collect during the research process, and how such data will be managed to strengthen their research design. To achieve this requires a good research data management plan (DMP). A DMP is a written document that describes how a researcher expects to collect or generate data during the research process, how such data will be managed, described, analysed and stored, and what mechanisms will be used at the end of the project to share and preserve such data. Being cognisant of such developments, Stellenbosch University’s Library and Information Service division as a natural support partner to the research process has taken an initiative of licensing a DMP software tool that will enable researchers to generate DMPs automatically. SU researchers need to use DMPs as a map to follow when dealing with their research data as it helps navigate possible events they may encounter during the research process.

Like a map, a DMP ought to be explicit and concise so that others can read it and immediately understand what the principal investigator is doing or intends to do with their data. DMPs are often required by funders, including the National Research Foundation. For this reason, the Library and Information Service division will officially launch SunDMP on 13 May 2024, during Library Research Week. This will ensure that SU researchers use the SunDMP software tool to write formal DMPs, and identify weaknesses in their plan, guided by the metrics centered on the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) principles. Moreover, this will provide SU researchers with a framework to record what they intend to do with their data during the research process. After having consulted with various stakeholders within the institution, the Library and Information Service division is convinced that the SunDMP tool is a valuable resource that will help SU researchers save time when managing their data, protect their data, and increase research efficiency.

Contact the Research Data Services team, Xabiso Xesi and Sizwe Ngcobo: rdm@sun.ac.za

There are numerous ways in which you can showcase your research and therefore improve the impact of your work. Considering these aspects when you publish and promote your research is important.

Decision-making about where to publish

• Publish in high-impact journals:
  Use the Journal Impact Factor (Web of Science) or Citescore and SNIP metrics (Scopus). Always publish in journals that are accredited by the DHET. See the lists of accredited journals on the Division for Research Development’s website.
• Publish Open Access:
  Always look out for options to publish your work in accredited Open Access journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ list) is a good place to start. Because of high article processing charges (APC’s), it is best to make use of the open access agreements with 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. Have a look at all the publisher agreements and the lists of journals in which you can publish at discounted rates in the Open Access Publishing library guide.

Use persistent identifiers

• ORCID
  Create and connect your ORCID iD to your SU identity. Connect your iD to all citation databases and other research profiles where possible. Remember to keep your record up to date with adding your employment and works (publications) especially.

Manage your author profiles in citation indexes/databases

In both these citation databases there might be more than one profile for your name. If this is the case, you may request them to merge the different profiles. In Web of Science you also need to claim your profile if you haven’t done so yet. It’s important to connect your ORCID id in both these databases.

• Scopus
• Web of Science

Create and maintain online profiles

These profiles will help you to make your work more visible and accessible, which could in turn help you to get more citations.

• Google Scholar is an important profile since some funders will ask for your Google Scholar H-Index while applying for funding, etc.
• ResearchGate
• Academia
• Lens.org

Post about your work on social media channels

• Facebook
• X
• LinkedIn

Communicate about your research (Science Communication)

• Blog posts
• Personal webpage / Research Lab webpage or blog
• Publish in popular magazines related to your research (health, agriculture, etc)
• Write for magazines such as “The Conversation”
• News items / Media

Track your impact (bibliometrics)

Track your impact through citation databases and altmetrics. Go to your author profile or do a search for your publications and track your metrics.

• Scopus
• SciVal
• Web of Science
• Dimensions (free version)
• scite (free version)
• Altmetric Explorer for Librarians (request this information from  Marié Roux)

The above information comes from a workshop “Maximise your research impact” which will be presented on 23 May 2024.  Make your reservation to get more in-depth information about these topics.

An exhibition about 30 years of democracy can currently be viewed in Special Collections at the Library. UNICEF defines human rights as “standards that recognize and protect the dignity of all human beings.” In South Africa, Human Rights Day is a National Public Holiday that is historically linked to the Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960.

The commemoration of the day serves as a reminder of the sacrifices that people made and the gains that came with achieving democracy.  Although the country continues to be confronted with inequalities resulting from weak governance, uneven wealth distribution, unemployment, poverty, and others; the existence of human rights should inspire citizens to continually strive for the betterment of our country and its people. By enshrining human rights in the constitution, the country affirms how it values human dignity, equality, and freedom.

This year, thirty years into democracy, it is time for South Africans to remember that the democracy we are celebrating began when the country’s political landscape shifted in the 90s, resulting in the first democratic elections in 1994. Part of celebrating this milestone should be our continuous commitment to uphold, protect and advance democracy and human rights. 

Special Collections has some collections that cover themes on human rights and democracy in South Africa.  You can visit collections such as Frederik van Zyl Slabbert Collection, Edwin Cameron Collection, IDASA Collection , Noseweek, South African Elections and Vrye Weekblad.

For more information on the material in Special Collections, visit our library guide.

Author: Pakama Ncume