Doctoral Researchers: Finding Information for your Literature Review and Beyond

If you’ve just started your PhD research, or if you’re looking for help and advice about finding information, we’re running a workshop next Wednesday that will prove extremely helpful.

This session enables you to turn ideas into an effective search strategy and statement. It outlines the current information landscape and takes you through the stages involved in deciding upon and developing an appropriate search strategy, as well as enabling you to create a search statement that you can put into practice. You will be able to seek and find research material in an effective and efficient manner using the resources available to you at Loughborough University, but also in the future too. You will be able to test and evaluate the search strategies and stantements for your own research topic as well as tryiing out citation techniques and setting up alerts to keep you up-to-date and further develop your knowledge of your research topic. 

Expert staff will be on hand to facilitate the session and provide guidance on resources and strategies.  You will also learn the key skill of critically assessing the results that you can find to further develop your search strategy.

The workshop will be taking place in Library Seminar Room 1 between 9.30am to 12.30pm on Wednesday 8th August. As spaces are quite limited, you will be required to book first. To do so, follow this link:

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/services/library/students/eventsandworkshops/listing/dr-finding-information-for-your-literature-review-1.html

Demystifying the REF – Limited Edition Workshop!

Come and find out how to demystify research quality – Everything you always wanted to know about REF / impact … but were afraid to ask!

‘Demystifying the REF: What is research quality and impact?’ is organised by Professor Liz Stokoe and runs on 10th May between10am-3pm. It includes a Q&A session, and some preparation is necessary before the workshop starts.

ALL @lborouniversity and @lborolondon Doctoral Researchers are welcome. You can book via Learn: https://bit.ly/2qCV9bg

Claudia Parsons Memorial Lecture 2018

The University is holding its annual Gender Equality Claudia Parsons Memorial Lecture on Wednesday 18th April at 1.30pm, West park teaching hub. It will be followed by a Research Showcase celebrating Loughborough’s gender research.

Dr Jess Wade will deliver the lecture who will share stories from “Hidden No More”, a US State Department exchange program where she joined 48 women from 48 countries to review international policies that champion women in science. As Jess also loves new materials, her lecture will also explore her work making flexible devices in the Centre for Plastic Electronics and the contributions made by women throughout history.

Details for the lecture can be found here:

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/events/claudia-parsons-memorial-lecture-2018.html

The lecture will be followed by a research showcase comprising lightening talks on gender delivered by a mix of Loughborough’s researchers from across campus.

Open Access Week 2017

It’s Open Access Week, and to mark the occasion we’re running a host of events across the week plus a competition to win some great prizes.

The theme for this year’s International Open Access Week is “Open in order to…”. This theme is designed to be an invitation to answer the question of what concrete benefits can be realised by making scholarly outputs openly available.

There are three ways you can get involved this week:

Alternative Out Of Hours Study Facilities for Postgrads & Researchers

Because the opening hours of the Library are reduced during University Vacations we often receive queries from postgraduate and research students asking where else they can study on campus when the Library is closed. There are at present three other possible locations that can be used:

  • Graduate House, the University’s purpose built social space and workspace for postgraduate taught and research students, which is open week days between 8am to 12am, and at weekends between 8am-5pm.
  • The Stewart Mason Building, where there are two open access computer labs for postgraduate and research students. The labs have a total of 79 workstations and are located in SMB.1.08 and SMB.1.09. The labs can be accessed 24 hours a day via swipe card (your University ID card).
  • The Haslegrave Building, offering a multi-boot computer labs in N004 / N005 with 80 or 40+40 seats offering Mac OSX / Windows / Linux, plus six open access computers in the Haslegrave Foyer area on the ground floor. Haslegrave is accessible 24 hours a day via swipe card.

Pop In for the Pop Up!

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Stuck for which books to choose for your topic? Don’t know what databases to use for researching your project? Struggling with referencing and citing your work? Let our wonderful team of Academic Librarians help!

For the rest of term the Academic Librarians will be running a Pop-Up help desk in the Library foyer where you can ask for specialist help with your course work or research project.

The first stand is running today, 11am-12pm, and then next Wednesday, 16th November, between 3pm-4pm, and then alternate Mondays and Wednesdays for the rest of term.

International Open Access Week Webinars

oa week

For this year’s 9th International Open Access Week, OpenAIRE has scheduled a full week of webinars on various exciting Open Science topics. During the week of October 24th-30th, join them at lunchtime (12pm) each day for key insights into the ethics and implementation of Open Science, especially as they relate to the EC’s Horizon2020 programme and OpenAIRE’s mission to foster the social and technical links that enable Open Science in Europe and beyond.

The first two webinars are particularly recommended to Loughborough researchers:

  • MONDAY 24th: “The fundamentals of Open Science”, on key introductory themes in Open Science, with Tony Ross-Hellauer (OpenAIRE, University of Goettingen), Paola Masuzzo (Ghent University) and Chris Hartgerink (Tilburg University).
  • TUESDAY 25th: “H2020 Open Access mandate for project coordinators and researchers”, on Open Access to publications in Horizon 2020, with Eloy Rodrigues and Pedro Principe (University of Minho).

To participate in any (or all) of these webinars, please register here: https://goo.gl/HIcpJT

For further information, visit:

https://www.openaire.eu/openaire-celebrates-open-access-week-16

Summer Elevenses Are Back!

IMG_0044The University Library invite academics, research staff and PGRs to join them for a coffee/tea over the summer from 11-11.30am each Wednesday from 27th July to 17th August. 

Each week in Graduate House, you will have the opportunity to learn more about a research related topic, as well as to network with other researchers from across campus. This year we have built the topics around the theme of scholarly communication. Experts from the Library, Research Office and Civil and Building Engineering will be delivering short presentations, answering questions and leading discussions on key issues.

This year’s topics are:

Please click on the links above to find out more and to book.

We look forward to seeing you there!

20,000 Items Under the Repository!

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Dr Papathomas is pictured receiving his prize from Professor Steve Rothberg, PVC Research and the University Librarian, Emma Walton.

The 20,000th item has been added to Loughborough’s Institutional Repository by Dr Anthony Papathomas, Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology in the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences.

Dr Papthomas has thirteen papers and his PhD thesis in the Institutional Repository. The winning submission, co-authored with Brett M. Smith and David Lavallee, is available on the Repository here.

The Institutional Repository, based here in the Library, ensures that Loughborough University’s research output is visible to the wider research community, increasing its impact and citation rates. It also assists authors in complying with funder Open Access requirements for their papers, including those of the RCUK and HEFCE. It contains a range of items including full-text journal articles, conference papers, book chapters, official reports, PhD theses and audio-visual material.

For further assistance with submitting papers for inclusion in the Institutional Repository, please contact us in the Library on 01509 222338 / 222414 or email repository@lboro.ac.uk

New ORCID Identification Facility for Researchers Now Available

CjJSeA7WgAAcGhgThe Research Councils UK have recently launched a new facility that allows researchers to create or connect their ORCID identity in the Research Council’s grant system, Je-S.

An ORCID identifier is a unique string of numbers creating a digital identifier that distinguishes individual researchers. By allowing researchers create or connect this ID to the Je-S system it improves the flow of research information across the higher education sector.

ORCID offers a platform for researchers to capture their scholarly activities throughout their careers even if a researcher changes their name, publishes under a different name, moves institutions, or switches fields. This helps researchers continue to gain exposure and recognition for their work. Increasingly it will also be a tool to link and re-use research information unambiguously across multiple systems whether that’s for funders, publishers or the researcher’s university.

For further information about the initiative, visit the RCUK blog here:

http://blogs.rcuk.ac.uk/2016/05/23/researchers-can-now-create-or-connect-their-orcid-identifier-in-the-research-councils-grants-system-je-s/