All Office of Scholarly Communication courses

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.

Cambridge is in a strong position to determine its own ambitious vision for a more open, accessible and inclusive approach to the sharing and use of research to help drive innovation and discovery and help address global challenges: for health, for climate, for equality and diversity. With changing societal attitudes and technological advances in communication tools, now is the time to consider which strategies we want to adopt to maximise the reach and impact of Cambridge research including through new and open forms of scholarly communication.

Libraries play a crucial role in the scholarly communication landscape, with librarians being well-placed to understand both the needs of the researchers we support and the challenges in providing access to materials. We hope you will want to take part and help shape the options for Cambridge.

These workshops are designed to create a space to think ahead, taking a long view, and explore what the future of scholarly communications will look like locally and globally. They follow on from similar workshops involving leaders in research, publishing and libraries at Cambridge earlier this year. We will have an opportunity to review and comment on some of the outputs of the previous workshops.

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.

At the start of this year, UKRI’s open access policy for long-form scholarship came into effect. This policy applies to monographs, edited collections and book chapters under contract from 1 January 2024 that acknowledge funding from any of the UK’s research councils. This session will introduce the policy, how to comply and the broader open access books landscape, allowing plenty of time for questions.

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.

Much research claims to benefit communities globally but are research outputs really available to everyone, even if they are made open access?

Join us on a world tour to discover what is possible when researchers and governments make their research outputs available openly. What kind of impact do they have outside the academy – and outside the global north? What more can we do to make these outputs useful to innovators and to those researching outside the academic sector?

Everyone is welcome to attend this free event: visit our booking page.

Where and how can you share your articles? Each article goes through different versions, from submitted manuscript, through accepted manuscript, proof, and finally version of record. Often the text is very similar, but subtle differences mean that one version can be legally shared and another cannot. In this course, you will learn how to identify article versions and apply the correct terminology.

Publishing journal articles is a key element of a successful research career. As you are starting on this journey, you may have a lot of questions, for example:

• Where and how should I publish my research?
• How do I maximise the number of readers and citations?
• How should I respond to reviewers?

Some learned societies are increasingly dependent on publishing revenues, yet as open access becomes the new normal, researchers and librarians alike are questioning expensive subscription and publishing deals.

The Office of Scholarly Communication presents a panel debate for Open Access Week 2018 and Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2018. Join representatives from learned societies in the arts and sciences, including the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Historical Society, in conversation with their members within the University of Cambridge to ask ‘what is a learned society in the 21st century?’ How can the societies sustain their place in the academic landscape and answer the challenges created by open access requirements?

Everyone is welcome to attend this free event: visit our booking page.

We want to hear YOUR views on research. Who owns your work? Who should access it? How does your research compare to other disciplines?

Come along for a free lunch and to discuss how the University can support you in practicing Open Research. Learn about the requirements placed on researchers and the tools you could use to boost your impact. Find out what your peers think and contribute to shaping a University-wide strategy for Open Research training.

The Office of Scholarly Communication invites you to join Naomi Penfold of ASAPbio for an hour of relaxed, small group discussions on how and why publishing is changing to become more transparent, and what this means for you.

Bring your lunch and join a 'discussion table' to explore questions such as...

• why change academic publishing?
• who and what is transparency good for?
• what should we not change?
• what are preprints and why bother?
• where does peer review fit in?

ASAPbio is a scientist-driven non-profit ensuring the voices of science and the scientist are represented in innovation to improve transparency in life science communication.

This event is open to all, although will be of particular relevance to those in biomedical and life sciences.

Librarians are used to dealing with data in all its forms but sometimes researchers aren't so sure. Many funders now require evidence from the researcher of how they plan to manage the data they use and collect during the research process and this often has to be tailored to specific guidelines. This presents a great opportunity for library staff to work with the research community but how do they get started?

Join the OSC to learn more about what a data management plan is, why they are necessary, the different information needed, how to complete one and how to support someone in completing theirs. This interactive train-the-trainer workshop will include a mix of presentations and activities with a chance to put your new knowledge into practice.

Prevent research disasters through good data management

• How much information would you lose if your laptop was stolen?
• Have you ever emailed your colleague a file named 'final_final_versionEDITED'?
• Do you know what your funder expects you to do with your research information?

As a researcher, you will encounter research data in many forms, ranging from literature sources, interviews, measurements, numbers and images.

Whether you create, receive or collect this information, you will need to organise it.

Managing digital information properly is a complex issue. Doing it correctly from the start could save you a lot of time and hassle when preparing a publication or writing up your thesis.

Feeling lost in getting started on data management?

Attend the workshop to get inspired and started on how to structure, backup and describe your data.

This workshop (for students in the area of physical and human geography, as well as STEM subjects generally) will work through the challenges around managing research data as well as the benefits of working reproducibly. Participants will be provided with guidance and resources on how to effectively manage projects and avoid data loss throughout the research process.

You will hear of what can happen if researchers do not manage their data well as well as what happens to research data after the end of a project, such as how to share and store data in a long-term and sustainable way. It is never too early to start thinking about these things, so get a head start on your research data management practices now!

Department of Geography, Seminar Room

Paola Quattroni from Cancer Research UK coming to run a workshop on 11th May.

This is a really good opportunity to influence the Cancer Research UK data policy and give feedback to your funder about the changes you would like to see. Paola will give a short talk and then the majority of the workshop will be given over to discussions and opportunities for researchers to feedback their experiences, problems and suggested solutions to enable more data sharing. As well as discussing data sharing Paola will also bring some data management plans so researchers can find out more about what they should and should not be putting in their grant applications.

Solving the problem of Open Access or causing more trouble?

Open Access can be hard to understand at the best of times but one term that causes particular confusion is ‘mirror journals’. Promoted as one way of solving the problem of a lack of publisher interest in Open Access, these titles are appearing in every discipline but what are they?

Join the OSC for this information webinar to find out all about mirror journals, their history, the problems they can solve and those that they can potentially cause!