All Office of Scholarly Communication courses

This is a friendly introduction to Github – a free and open source platform that can help you build projects that are collaborative, well documented, and version-controlled.

In this workshop we will introduce you to the Github ecosystem and help you get you comfortable navigating basic Github workflows. We will make sure that you leave the workshop aware of the best practices for developing projects on Github (e.g. writing a good “readme” or posting and labeling issues) and an understanding of how Github can help make your projects more readable and accessible.

This workshop is developed for anyone looking for a solution to making projects – whether it be your research on arctic glaciers, the materials for an undergraduate course, your PHD thesis, or even a cookbook – more manageable. This workshop is geared towards all skill levels, but first-time and novice users are encouraged and prioritized.

Full details of this workshop can be found at: https://kirstiejane.github.io/friendly-github-intro/

• Would you like to share your research findings with the international academic community, without paywall restrictions?

• Would you like to boost citations of your work?

• Did you know that funders recognise the benefits of Open Access and most now require it as a condition of their grants?

These are questions for postgraduate students at all stages of their research.

Problem solving is a daily part of working in a library, whether it is for our users or ourselves. Turning these problems into research projects is the next step but one that many of us find difficult to take.

Delivered as part of our Conference with Confidence series, this workshop will help you think about the everyday innovations in your library and how these can be turned into research projects for discussion at future events. We will look at the pros and cons of undertaking research in your workplace, how it can help to generate solutions to problems, support a case for resources or just find out more about your library.

This workshop is suitable for those interested in undertaking research projects, complete novices or those wanting to know more about the possibilities of workplace research. Who knows where is might lead?

Delivered as part of our Conference with Confidence series

Being a reflective practitioner is something which doesn’t come naturally to all of us but it is a surprisingly easy skill to develop. As well as helping you to think critically about your own personal development, undertaking reflection can help library staff to improve their service and deal with user feedback in a constructive way.

Delivered as part of our Conference with Confidence series, this interactive workshop will help you to understand the theory of reflective practice, how to overcome barriers to integrate it into your everyday role and offer a chance to practice reflective writing. All skills that come in handy when preparing those conference abstracts… It is also useful if you are thinking of undertaking any level of professional qualification such as CILIP Chartership or Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.

Delivered as part of our Conference with Confidence series

One thing that puts many people off speaking at conferences is a perceived lack of presentation skills. Although this is one way to undertake public speaking, presentation skills are a much wider part of the information profession and can encompass anything from leading a tour to working at an enquiry point.

Delivered as part of our Conference with Confidence series, this workshop will take you through the process of creating and delivering a presentation, offer tips on design, outline techniques to deal with nerves and help you to feel more confident in communicating with others. Offered as a more accessible version one-hour version of our previous interactive workshop, this session offers you a chance to refresh your knowledge in a supportive environment.

Delivered as part of our Conference with Confidence series

How do you create the perfect copyright recipe?

Creative Commons licenses sit alongside existing copyright regulations as a way to help researchers use existing creations and share their own work with others. This webinar will explore the history of the Creative Commons movement, explore how the licenses can be put together and how librarians can encourage their researchers to use them to their best advantage.

Please join us for the May forum which is an fully online session. This session is a workshop intended to gather research data storage needs of researchers throughout the University.

The venue for this session is: online via Zoom

Places are limited, so please book as soon as possible. Equally, please cancel as soon as possible, should you no longer be able to attend. Once enrolled, you will be sent the Zoom joining link.

Bookings for this event need to be approved as it is designed specifically for members of the Data Champion Programme.

Data Tree is a new online course that has been developed by the Institute for Environmental Analytics. It is designed for PhD students and early career researchers with all you need to know for research data management, along with ways to engage and share data with business, policymakers, media and the wider public.

In this interactive workshop, course Director Vicky Lucas will introduce Data Tree. This will be an opportunity to find out about the leading experts who have contributed to the course, its interactive quizzes, videos and real-world examples, and to delve into some of the topics covered. Attendees of the hour-long session will leave fully prepared to use this excellent free resource to build on their data management skills, solve data handling problems and communicate the results of the research to non-academic audiences.

Read more information about Data Tree

The Netherlands has been frontrunner in the transition to Open Science. The Dutch government has mandated all universities to have 100% Open Access to academic publications by 2024 and has recently broadened its scope to research data. These plans can only succeed by national cooperation of all parties involved.

The chairman of Tilburg University is one of three main negotiators with the publishers. As such, the university is expected to be leading the development of policies in Open Science and the monitoring of progress.

In this talk, Hylke Annema of Tilburg University will tell us about the current developments in the Netherlands and at Tilburg University.

Discussion among participants about best practices is highly encouraged.

You know about Symplectic Elements as a way to gather the outputs of our research community but have you ever wanted to know more about the connections between funding and publications?

Digital Science, the makers of Symplectic Elements, have recently launched a new product called Dimensions. Dimensions integrates with Elements to link grants, publications, citations, clinical trials and patents and enables us to take a completely different view of what our research community is doing.

Join Dr Juergen Wastl from the Research Information Office for a demonstration of how the institutional instance of Dimensions works, ask any questions and get some hands on experience with the system.

For a sneak preview, the publication instance of Dimensions is available to all here.

This course will give you the confidence and tools to promote your research more effectively to a variety of audiences. We will explore how to reach more colleagues and increase your chances of being cited. We will also examine how to publicise your work more widely and reach the public. You will discover some tools to help you disseminate your research and track its impact. There will also be an opportunity to reflect on which solutions are the most practical and most likely to succeed in your circumstances.

Venue: DMB GS1

Are you completely new to Twitter and struggling to start? Or are you already on Twitter but know you could be making better use of it to promote yourself and your library? Join Librarians In Training for an interactive workshop aimed at helping librarians to make the most of their time online.

Offered as part of the Librarians In Training Easter App Hunt this interactive session will give you the chance to enhance your Twitter skills. For those new to the platform there will be guidance on what Twitter can be used for and how to get started whilst those already using Twitter will benefit from learning how to engage library users, promote their service and enhance their own professional network.

The session will include both advice and practical exercises so you can put your new knowledge to the test.

Increasing numbers of electronic alternatives to the traditional paper lab book are available, offering advanced opportunities for managing your research.

• Are you moving towards web-enabled working in the lab?
• Have you considered the advantages of - and issues around - going paperless?

Hear from researchers and PIs across the disciplines who are using Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) and those considering a trial, and from current providers.

We are grateful to Dotmatics for supporting this event.

Join the OSC for an exciting opportunity to hear a preview of Dr Danny Kingsley's keynote for the upcoming CONUL2017 conference. Feedback on both the talk and the topic are encouraged!

Emerging from the Chrysalis - Transforming Libraries for the Future

Access to information has changed immeasurably in the past decade, bringing the traditional role of the academic library into question. Rather than a doomsday scenario, this situation offers huge potential for information professionals to situate the library at the heart of research support. 'Scholarly communication' is the umbrella term for the information exchange between research communities, research funders, the publishing industry and the general public. This talk will discuss the establishment of the Office of Scholarly Communication at Cambridge University, how it is now embedded within multiple administrative areas of the University and how it works collaboratively with the research community to identify areas that need expertise, support and services. By taking an open and transparent approach to this work, the Office of Scholarly Communication has had an impact not only within the institution, but nationally and internationally. This has not been without challenges, including working within a strict university governance system and managing unstable funding sources. However this work is now more important than ever at a time when academic publishers are investing substantially in research management and analytics businesses. Libraries that embrace the management of the unique work created within their own institution may find themselves central to the research institution of the future. The alternative could be obsolescence.

If you have recently started receiving peer reviews, or would like to become a reviewer, this is an unmissable chance to pick up tips and best practices for responding to reviews, being noticed as a reviewer, getting your review done, and getting credit for your work

The Office of Scholarly Communication invites you to an essential introduction to Peer Review.

You'll learn...

• how to make the most of the peer review process
• how to increase the chance of being asked to review
• how to get ready to review and be recognized for your work
• how to write the feedback you wish you'd received.

If you have recently started peer reviewing, or are ready to get involved, this is an unmissable chance to pick up tips and best practices from PLOS, publishers of the world's largest multi-disciplinary peer-reviewed journal.

The Office of Scholarly Communication invites you to join PLOS for an essential introduction to Peer Review.

You'll learn...

• the 3 questions you should always ask yourself when you're asked to do a review
• how to get ready to review and be recognized for your work
• how to read a manuscript with peer review in mind
• how to write the feedback you wish you'd received.

Stay on after the workshop to chat to PLOS staff and editors and enjoy light refreshments.

So much choice, so little time!

With the growth in both traditional and online publishers choosing the best place to share their work is becoming an increasingly complex decision for researchers. The first in our Librarian Toolkit series on helping researchers publish will cover topics such as writing tools to use, picking the right format for publication, factors to consider when choosing a journal and how to use impact factors and other metrics.

FAIR data are those that are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. Sounds simple enough, but what do each of these terms mean in a practical sense and how can your researchers tell if their research data is FAIR?

The Research Data Team at the Office of Scholarly Communication join forces with FOSTER Open Science to offer this workshop to help you get to grips with the key principles and consider how you can help your researchers make their data FAIRer.

Once you have completed How FAIR is that research data?: an online course (for research support staff including librarians and administrators in all disciplines) we invite you to attend this workshop session with the Research Data Team from the Office of Scholarly Communication to discuss your experiences in assessing the FAIRness of your data, including any problems you encountered. We will also discuss guidelines on how to best support researchers in making their data FAIR.

FAIR data are those that are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. Sounds simple enough, but what do each of these terms mean in a practical sense and how can you tell if your own research data is FAIR?

The Research Data Team at the Office of Scholarly Communication join forces with FOSTER Open Science to offer a practical workshop to help you get to grips with the key principles and consider how you can start to make your own data FAIRer.

Once you have completed How FAIR is your research data? An online course (for researchers and postgraduate students in all disciplines) we invite you to attend this workshop session with the Research Data Team from the Office of Scholarly Communication to discuss your experiences in assessing the FAIRness of your data, including any problems you encountered. You are welcome to bring examples of your data to this session to further develop your skills, or try your hand at FAIRifying more example datasets from Apollo.

Helene Brinken (University of Gottingen, FOSTER) will guide you through workflows, tools and resources to help you embed open research into your research practices.

This session will take place in 1S4 Computer Room, Faculty of Education.

More information to follow.

Following the workshop, you are invited to stay for our event Reproducibility in action: improving research in the life and social sciences.

'Dear esteemed author…'

So-called predatory publishers regularly approach researchers via email to solicit manuscripts and conference papers. With the emphasis on publishing as a measure of academic success still strong it can be easy to give in to temptation and flattery but this can do more harm than good to a future career.

This session will look at the problem of predatory publishers using case studies. Attendees will be given tips on how to spot a predatory publisher or conference and the best advice to offer if one of their researchers has been approached.

Are your students confused by copyright? Do you struggle to find the answers to their questions? You are not alone!

This final session of our Librarian Toolkit series on helping researchers to publish, this workshop will deal with common copyright questions which arise during the publication process. From including copyrighted work in a thesis to sharing published work on social networks copyright is a complex minefield and it can be hard to know where to start when giving advice.

This session for librarians will equip attendees with knowledge about third party copyright, making work available open access and how researchers can share their work legally online.

David Carr and Robert Kiley from the Wellcome Trust are coming to Cambridge to talk with researchers about the Trust’s policy on data, software and materials management and sharing, which was released in July 2017. They will give short talks about the extended requirements for sharing all research outputs and an update on how their policy on open research has been working. Afterwards you will have the opportunity to ask them any questions you might have.

This event will be held in the Gurdon Institute tea-room.

Advertised on behalf of ReproducibiliTea, the Open Science Journal Club in the Department of Psychology

The Open Science Journal Club invites anyone interested in Open Research to join this lunchtime session, where Dav Clark will introduce Gigantum, a free open source tool designed to streamline reproducible and collaborative data science. Gigantum aims to bring together complex tools, workflows and community approaches that enable exciting research collaborations and also enable others to evaluate and build on your work.

The session will introduce the Gigantum Client, an MIT licensed web application that runs locally, simplifying and automating tools like Docker, Git, and launching environments like JupyterLab. Dav will also describe paid services hosted by Gigantum that enable single-click publication and collaboration from the Client. You will learn about versioning and collaboration features, how to easily move work between local resources and the cloud, as well as new approaches to creating and managing scientific datasets. There will also be the chance to go under the hood to show how sophisticated users (e.g., Research Software Engineers, Data Librarians, etc.) can create customized data science environments that are easy to distribute, and are accessible to users with diverse skill sets.

All welcome - if you aren't a member of the Department of Psychology, please meet at the Department Reception by 12.55 and Ben Farrar will show you to the Nick Macintosh Seminar Room (a second escort will check at 1pm for latecomers!).

This session will include a hands-on demo, so please bring your laptops. You may bring your lunch if you wish, and Dav is happy to join participants for lunch afterwards.

• Do you use data in your research, or do you provide research support to those who do?
• Would you like to learn basic programming skills to program your own models and applications?

There is more to programming than simply writing lines of code. This free workshop will provide you with a basic set of skills to make the coding process more effective, less error prone and more maintainable.

This workshop is intended for those looking to obtain a basic understanding of the approach to be taken when designing a program as well as actually writing small programs to solve specific problems. It is designed for those with no prior experience of programming.

It is organised by the Office of Scholarly Communication and The Betty and Gordon Moore Library, and delivered by Peter Smyth (Research Associate) and Chris Park (Data Scientist) from the UK Data Service.