STEMM Research Skills Training Programme 2018-2019

This session will give a brief overview of several tools that can be used for collaborative research. Participants will be introduced to Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs), collaborative online writing tools such as Overleaf, OneNote and Evernote, before finishing with a look at GitHub.

This session will cover the things you need to consider in order to reach your audience effectively through publication. It will introduce how you should decide which academic journal is most appropriate for your research, including considerations such as journal rankings, publication times, fees and your own publication history. It will also cover the concept of using pre-print servers before publication - when and where to post your work and the benefits it can bring.

Please bring your own internet-enabled device to this session.

What would happen to your research data if your lab exploded, or your laptop was stolen, or your cloud storage account was hacked? How could you prevent data loss in these situations? Managing your data effectively is vital to help you do this.

This workshop will introduce the basic principles of Research Data Management (RDM) and how they are relevant throughout the research life cycle.

Intended for those who are new to RDM, this course will firstly explain what RDM is, and then go on to cover basic data back-up and storage options, file sharing tools, and strategies for organising your data, as well as providing guidance on managing personal or sensitive data. You will also learn about the range of support services available to you within the University for managing your data.

If you already have a basic understanding of RDM then the advanced course is probably more appropriate for you to attend.

This session explores why you should share your all research as widely as possible and how you can go about doing so. It will demonstrate the potential that Open Research can have in maximising exposure for your work and how you can track and trace how your research is being shared online.

Please bring your own internet-enabled device to this session.

Referencing where you got ideas and inspiration from for your research is a core skill for any good researcher. In this session, you will learn about the University of Cambridge's approach to plagiarism, as well as giving tips and tricks on how to avoid being caught out through bad referencing techniques. You will also be shown handy tools that can do a lot of the work for you as well as managing your literature reading list throughout your work and beyond.

Bring along your laptop, tablet or mobile phone to join in with our interactive referencing quiz and put your knowledge to the test! You might even win a prize!

This session will introduce participants to the wide range of platforms and services that are available to help you manage your online presence as a researcher. We'll look at academic tools like ORCID, Google Scholar and ResearchGate/Academia.edu, as well as an overview of some of the more popular social media platforms. We'll also have discussions around issues such as the risks of sharing research through these platforms and reaching wider audiences. We will also show participants how to flip these tools and use them to access research for their own work too.

This session will help prepare you to begin your literature review. You will learn strategies for searching for relevant material, how to troubleshoot common search problems, and how to stay up to date with new publications in your field.

Please bring a laptop, tablet or other web-enabled device with you to the session.

This session will develop skills that will help you get the most out of your literature review. From a foundation of effective search strategies, you will learn how to critically appraise academic literature, techniques for getting through sources quickly and evaluating their relevance, engaging with key material and beginning to write your literature review itself, as well as ensuring accuracy in your citations and references.

Please bring a laptop, tablet or other web-enabled device with you to the session.

You own your own research right? Well it depends. In this session we will explore the sometimes very complicated world of copyright and what can happen when you publish your work. We'll also introduce you to concepts such as third party copyright, and how you can use existing licencing tools to maximise the reach of your research as well as using other peoples work to advance your own, but legally.