Monthly Archives: February 2018

University Mental Health Day: event for OU postgraduate research students

Many postgraduate research students experience common mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression, but may not acknowledge it or know where to seek support. University Mental Health Day is Thursday, 1 March, and this year universities across the UK will be focussing on how they can build a more supportive environment for students’ mental health and well-being. The OU Graduate School will host a number of activities on social media and across the Milton Keynes campus. Please join the discussion on @OUGradSch #UniMentalHealthDay and/or drop by anytime 12:00-15:00 for free activities, refreshments and snacks (locations listed below).

Event timetable

12:00-15:00 OU Grad School library whiteboard takeover with free goody bags, refreshments and mindful colouring, Library foyer and atrium (ground floor)

The Graduate School will be taking over the library whiteboard to generate ideas for ‘what we can do to create a more supportive community’. The first 20 research students to contribute will also get a super-exciting relaxation goody bag. Representatives of the Graduate School, Library and Students Association will be there for a chat.

13:00-13:50 ‘Co-design for mental health’ workshop with Erika Renedo-Illaregi, PhD Student, STEM, Library Presentation Room (ground floor)

Bidean is a social enterprise that generates concepts to support wellbeing and recovery by co-designing with those who are experiencing mental distress. Co-founder Erika will facilitate a couple of activities that will serve as tasters to experience how we can all participate in design for wellbeing. Your participation will also help her journey as a research student as this is a key element of the PhD!

This will be broadcast to Stadium.

14:00-15:00 (14:00, 14:15, 14:30, 14:45) 15-minute Tai Chi taster sessions, Digilab, Library ground floor

Open to all staff and students. Fancy trying some Tai Chi? Then come along to the Digilab and join in! Hosted by Gill Hughes who runs Tai Chi for OU Club, this will be an opportunity to spend 15 minutes doing some specialist relaxation. No equipment or special clothes needed. This is just one of the OU Clubs you can join on campus – a great way of taking part in the wider community – see the full list here.

Join in by tweeting with #UniMentalHealthDay on the day: the theme is ‘how do we build a supportive community. You can also take a look at some of the GSN’s Wellbeing resources.

How to register:

Please signal interest for any of the Graduate School events via Facebook.

Automated ORO deposit – Jisc Publications Router

Jisc Publications Router

We have integrated the Jisc Publications Router service into ORO.  This means that bibliographic information (and some full text) of many new publications will automatically be added to ORO without the need for the author to manually add the record to ORO.

Pipes by Chris Smart CC BY NC-ND (https://www.flickr.com/photos/sigma/5865519128)

We are doing this to:

  • Reduce the workload of the ORO user
  • Increase the coverage of the repository (we know not everything OU researchers publish reaches ORO)
  • Increase the timely deposit of research publications (to support our attempts to meet the REF Open Access Policy)

So what does it mean for an ORO user?

Many publications will be added to ORO before you might normally add themunless you are adding them to ORO very quickly (i.e. immediately on acceptance).

However, not all items will be captured by this automated service – so unless you have had confirmation of an addition to ORO, continue to add new publications as usual.

You will still need to add the full text (Author’s Accepted Manuscript)

Normally, the full text will not have been added so you will still need to add the full text (Author’s Accepted Manuscript).  When you receive an email informing of automated deposit you can:

  • Reply to the email attaching the full text which we will upload to ORO on your behalf.
  • Select the Submit Changes (Authors/Depositor only) option in the middle of an item page and adding the full text using the usual ORO edit pages:

Learn about research metrics across disciplines with The Metrics Toolkit

The Metrics Toolkit is a new resource that allows you to learn more about a wide variety of research metrics (a.k.a quantitative research indicators). It will also help you decide which ones to use in particular cases, according to the type of impact you hope to measure, the kind of research output involved (e.g. journal articles, books, datasets) and the academic discipline in which you are working.

The Metrics toolkit was developed by two academic librarians and a director of a metrics company, in conjunction with an advisory board of four researchers and one academic librarian. The project is supported by Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis, Altmetric and FORCE11.

Planning for Research Data Management: workshop slides

Yesterday I ran a session on Planning for Research Data Management as part of the Core Skills series.

We talked about the current RDM landscape and looked in detail at Data Management Plans using a DMP template, and ended with a game of DMP Bingo.

The slides are available here:

Thanks to everyone who took part!

A reminder too that we’ll be delivering an online session on the legal and ethical issues around data sharing next week.

This will be run using Adobe Connect; joining instructions can be found on the event pages on My Learning Centre, but if in doubt please email us at library-research-support@open.ac.uk

Research Data Resolutions

At the end of January we held our Research Data Resolutions event, where we invited researchers and anyone who supports research at the OU to join us for an open discussion of the issues around research data management (RDM).

What was the aim of the session?

We offer RDM support to the whole University through our website, training, repository and enquiries, but contact with researchers and those supporting them is largely limited to those who get in touch or attend our sessions, and often that it is to meet a particular need (which is great and we’re very happy to do), but we found ourselves wondering how could widen our knowledge of RDM at the OU?

It seems natural for us to focus on the mandated and defined goals of data management planning and meeting funder requirements – they are of course important – but are they the things that are most important to researchers? Are there other issues that we, as a support team, could know more about?

So, we decided to have an informal and open forum for an hour to hear what the important issues are at the University, and to encourage a sharing of experiences and ideas. If we learned anything that would help us understand better how OU research colleagues work, and how we can best support them, then all the better.

What did we talk about?

Without an agenda or structure, we set about seeing where the conversation took us, which touched on, and often returned to, several themes:

Data sharing

  • Why share? – publisher and funder requirements – what are the motivators?
  • What to share – selecting and preparing data to be shared – What’s relevant to support a particular publication? What will be useful to others? How much work is it to get it ready?
  • Sharing responsibly – How to effectively anonymise – The risks of data sharing when the potential of future technologies to aggregate data is unknown.

Informing participants and gaining consent

  • How to be clear and granular when communicating with participants how data will be gathered, stored and shared – The difficulty in balancing giving enough detail and being too complicated to understand and abide by.
  • Managing participants’ rights without compromising the research process.

Data management planning

  • Even if you know what you are doing you need to explain it well for others to understand.
  • The need for clear guidance and to know what’s expected.
  • How long should we retain data?

Storage and tools

  • Balancing convenience with security – Where is the data stored and backed-up? Is it compliant with data protection, and what about GDPR?
  • Can one system fit all? Can the university support everyone’s needs?
  • Using open source software to build our own tools – can we adapt existing software to give the functionality and security we want?

These are the main topics but even during the short time we had, we touched on many more too.

What did we learn?

As expected, there were certainly more questions than definitive answers, but the conversations illustrated a couple of things I think we already knew:

  • That research at the OU is varied and different disciplines, methods, and groups have different needs and require different solutions and approaches.
  • That everything is connected. The topics we talked about overlapped and connected in many ways.

It also indicated, from a relatively modestly sized group of ten, that there is an appetite to discuss RDM amongst OU colleagues.

It was certainly very helpful for us to hear how researchers work, and we hope those taking part enjoyed sharing their experiences too.

Next steps

As it was the first of this kind of event we’ll reflect on how it went and think whether we should do it again, and in what form? If you have any feedback, are interested in joining another session, or would like to suggest a particular research data issue for discussion, please get in touch – and watch this space!

And many thanks to everyone who took part and contributed to the discussion, either at the event or by sending their ideas in advance.

Written by Dan Crane, Research Support Librarian

Online training – Data sharing: How, what and why?

Yesterday I ran an online training session on sharing research data. This session covered:

  • Data sharing policies
  • Benefits of data sharing
  • Data repositories
  • Preparing data for sharing
  • Re-using data

The slides from the session are below. OU staff and students can access a recording of the session on Adobe Connect and anyone can access it on You Tube.

Here are the other sessions we’ll be delivering over the next month:

These sessions will be run using Adobe Connect; joining instructions can be found on the event pages on My Learning Centre, but if in doubt please email us at library-research-support@open.ac.uk

If there’s any other training you’d like us to deliver online, feel free to let us know by emailing or commenting below

ORO – Displaying Bibliometric & Altmetric Information

ORO now displays bibliometrics information for individual items alongside the (already existing) Altmetrics.  So what do they mean!

Altmetrics from Altmetric

Altmetrics (Alternative Metrics – geddit?) are a suite of metrics that can be used to measure the level of attention a research paper has gained across a range of platforms.  These include:

  • Citations in Wikipedia and policy documents
  • Mentions on blogs
  • Mainstream media coverage
  • Bookmarks on Mendeley
  • Mentions on Twitter

Altmetrics provide a useful insight on where research outputs are gaining attention outside of the scholarly literature.

Altmetric use a characteristic Donut Badge which is used to visualise the metrics.  Clicking on the Altmetric Donut in ORO  will send you to the Altmetric page for the paper where you can identify each of the mentions the research output has accrued.

Citations from Dimensions

Four different types of citation metrics are displayed:

  1. Total Citations – different datasets have different coverage and the total citations in  one dataset will differ from another.  The total citations from the Dimensions dataset will differ from other datasets (e.g. Google Scholar or Scopus)
  2. Recent Citations – the number of citations received in the last 2 calender years
  3. Field Citation Ratio (FCR) – a measure of the relative citation performance of a paper in its field, as categorised using the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC).  Where the normalized value is 1. i.e. if a paper has a FCR of over 1 it has a higher than average number of citations for it’s group. Papers less than 2 years old do not have an FCR.
  4. Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) – a measure of the relative citation performance of a paper in its field as measured by the subject area of the papers that cite it.  Where the normalized value is 1. i.e. if a paper has a RCR of over 1 it has a higher than average number of citations for it’s group. Papers less than 2 years old do not have an RCR.

Clicking on the Dimensions badge will send you to the Dimensions page for that paper where you can see where the citations have come from and further detail and contextualisation.

Note: Both Altmetric and Dimensions are companies owned by Digital Science which is a subsidiary of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.  Access to the APIs the ORO service use to display these data is free.

New MOOC for early careers researchers

You may be interested to know that a new free MOOC (massive open online course) for research students and research staff has just opened for bookings.  Called Career Management for Early Career Academic Researchers, it aims to support researchers to explore their career options and make career plans:

“Being an early career academic researcher, whether you’re a doctoral student or research staff, can be challenging: should you pursue further academic research? What skills will help you progress in an academic career? What other career options are open to you?

On this course you will answer these questions and more, considering how to manage you career and reflecting on what you want out of a career. You will be encouraged to consider different career options, both within and outside academic research, and build your confidence in marketing yourself in applications and interviews.”

The MOOC is a collaboration between the University of Glasgow, University of Edinburgh, and University of Sheffield, and has been developed by careers professionals who are experienced in working with research students and research staff.

The first course will start on 5th March 2018. For more information and sign up details go to:

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/career-management

Online training – Working with research data

Yesterday I ran an online training session on working with research data. This session covered:

  • how good data management can help you
  • information security
  • data storage options
  • file management
  • file naming
  • working with sensitive data

Please find below the slides from the webinar. OU staff and students can access a recording of the session on Adobe Connect. I will upload this recording to YouTube shortly so that the non-OU audience can also access it (update: this is now available on YouTube).

Here are the other sessions we’ll be delivering over the next couple of months:

These sessions will be run using Adobe Connect; joining instructions can be found on the event pages on My Learning Centre, but if in doubt please email us at library-research-support@open.ac.uk

If there’s any other training you’d like us to deliver online, feel free to let us know by emailing or commenting below