Doctoral Development Programme (DDP) workshops
The library offers a range of sessions for PhD researchers as part of the Doctoral Development Programme. Find face-to-face and online workshops and webinars to help you develop research skills.
Overview
Through a mix of face-to-face activities and webinars, our workshops aim to help you to develop the skills you need throughout the research process, from literature searching, referencing, managing research data, to identifying places to publish your work.
Visit the student researcher webpages to explore the Library's support for research or contact your librarian for more information.
Workshops
Beyond the Impact Factor: Using metrics to identify influential research
With an ever-increasing amount of published research, it can be difficult to identify key publications and authors in your field.
This session will give an overview of citation metrics and altmetrics and introduce a range of tools that can be used to find highly-cited and highly-discussed journals, authors and papers. You can use them to help discover topics, researchers, papers and journals which generate interest and attention within academia and beyond.
Whilst metrics should always be used alongside qualitative judgements and are not an indication of quality, they can provide a useful insight into how research is shared, cited and discussed. We’ll discuss the strengths and limitations of metrics such as the impact factor and provide guidance on how to use metrics responsibly.
- Tuesday 20 Feb 2024, 10:00 - 11:30 GMT (this is a face to face workshop)
See recordings of previous sessions
- More information on metrics is available about tracking citations and online mentions.
Copyright and open access: Your thesis and beyond
What is copyright and how does it affect you as a researcher? Sign up to this session to find out how you can reuse material fairly and legally in your writing - and how copyright protects works that you produce. Discover the possibilities of open access publishing and what your responsibilities are as a doctoral researcher to make your research available to the widest possible audience.
- Thursday 14 March 2024, 10:00 - 11:00 GMT (this session will be held online)
See recordings of previous sessions
Introduction to reference management
This one-hour workshop will introduce you to the purposes and principles of using reference management software. You will learn how to import references, edit references, and how to insert citations into your written work.
We will demonstrate the fundamentals of reference management software using Endnote 21, which is our recommended program. You will practice using the program of your choice. Please come to the workshop with either Endnote 21, Zotero or Mendeley Reference Manager installed on your laptop.
Session dates and times:
- Thursday 30 November 2023, 11:00-12:00
- Tuesday 9 Jan 2024, 11:00 - 12:00
- Wednesday 7 Feb 2024, 14:00 - 15:00
- Tuesday 5 Mar 2024, 10:00 - 11:00
- Wednesday 10 Apr 2024, 14:00 - 15:00
- Wednesday 15 May 2024, 14:00 - 15:00
- Tuesday 11 Jun 2024, 10:00 - 11:00
Introduction to open research
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Open Research is a set of practices aimed at making the processes and outputs of research more transparent and freely accessible whenever possible. These practices increase the impact of research, enable broader access to knowledge, and address concerns about the reproducibility of academic studies. This session will provide an overview of some of the concepts and practices that support open research, and explore ways these might be relevant to your own research.
We’ll talk about: The background and purpose of the open scholarship movement; Open research and the research lifecycle, Pre-registration and registered reports; The FAIR and CARE principles; Open data and software; Open access publishing; Alternative publishing platforms, preprints, and open peer review; Showcasing your open research activities using ORCiD.
We’ll provide a broad overview of these practices and ideas and encourage consideration of ways your own research project could be made more ‘open’ - including quick wins such as registering and using an ORCiD ID. We’ll also highlight sources of additional information and training for those interested in finding out more about specific aspects of open research.
Session dates and times (Autumn semester):
- Thursday 7th December 2023 (09.30-11.30) - online
Research data management and writing a DMP
This interactive workshop will help you to get the most out of your research data. You will learn how to organise, store and share your data while keeping them safe and secure, and look at using existing data in your research. You will also find out how to create a data management plan (DMP), which is a submission requirement of the confirmation review.
This workshop is recommended for all non-final-year research students, ideally between 6 and 12 months into their course.
You can find details of other research data management training here.
See recordings of previous sessions
Tools for literature searching
This workshop introduces the literature searching tools provided by the University Library and provides opportunities to use and evaluate them with support from Library staff. Search tools included are StarPlus (the Library catalogue), multidisciplinary citation databases (such as Web of Science and Scopus) and subject-specific databases.
Session dates and times:
- Wednesday 6th December - 11.00-12.30
- Monday 15th January - 11.00-12.30
- Wednesday 21st February - 11.00-12.30
See recordings of previous sessions
'Sensitive’ Data Management
Managing sensitive data throughout your research is an important and involved process. In this session we will cover exactly what counts as 'sensitive' data, and how this can be different to personal data, why it's important to look after sensitive data, the extra procedures and documents that you might need to do follow and write around sensitive data, including the legal basis, and what to do with your data at the end of your research project.
- Thursday 15th February 14:00 - 15:00 (in person)
Qualitative Data Management
Fully managing qualitative data can often seem simple at the start of a project but unwieldy by the end. In this session we will cover some best practice for keeping your qualitative data manageable and in good shape, the overlap between qualitative data and sensitive data, and what you can do throughout your project to ensure that at the end of your study your data sharable and reusable by other researchers, maximising the value and usefulness of your data.
- Tuesday 20th February 12:00 - 13:00 (in person)