Theme: Biological Sciences Research Skills

This session will help researchers go further with their literature review through exploring key skills such as critical evaluation, structural reading, effective note-taking, and getting started with writing your literature review.

This session equips participants with all the fundamental skills that they need to build and execute effective search strategies to locate relevant materials for literature reviews, projects and other related research activities. The session will explore key searching techniques, where to search, how to troubleshoot common searching problems, as well as keeping up to date with the latest research.

This session will include live demonstrations of scientific databases to demonstrate the key principles covered in action.

This session introduces participants to the concept of research data, all the forms that it can take as well as negotiating the management of different data depending on their type.

Topics such as effective storage, handling sensitive data, and developing best practice approaches to avoid data loss during a project will be covered. The session will also explore how to create a data management plan (DMP) and the support available, as well as providing an overview of useful tools and services both within the University of Cambridge and beyond.

This session will introduce participants to different methods of communicating research before moving on to a discussion around best practice and techniques when preparing a presentation. Participants will be introduced to concepts around good design, accessibility, data presentation, and accessing Creative Commons licensed materials for their work.

The session will conclude with an exploration of good delivery techniques with additional advice on what to do if it all goes wrong.

Need to create a conference poster but are not sure where to start? This session will introduce participants to the fundamentals of designing an effective and engaging poster that is perfect for communicating research ideas. The session will look at good design practice, where to source free high quality graphics, as well as deciding what you should (and maybe shouldn't) include in your final poster.

This course is based on a typical literature review lifecycle. You start by planning your search. You then carry out your search. Once you've found some results, you evaluate what you have found to see if it is relevant to your needs. You manage your results by saving them to a suitable place so you can come back to them. If you are interested in tracking changes in your field, you enact approaches to keep up to date with new research. And as your research evolves, you refine your search to reflect new concepts and new terms. And so the cycle continues.

While you may not be as focused on the longer term tracking of new research in your field, being able to plan, search, evaluate and manage effectively are additional skills which we will cover in this course. The course will be structured around the first four stages described above, with optional additional information about the last two stages for those who are interested.

This course is supplemented by live workshop opportunities throughout the academic year.

Being a researcher can mean juggling lots of different things. You might be wrestling with funding, or promoting your work, or finding the most up-to-date research, or even where to begin with writing up that data management plan you probably should have done a few weeks ago!

This course will introduce you to each of these concepts through a short video, a bit of reading, and a quick exercise to give you some time to explore and reflect on your own research needs. By the end of the course you will hopefully have a better idea of what your funder wants from you, how you can begin promoting your work, what techniques you can use to get that really useful research, as well as having already started writing up your data management plan.

All of our content will be self-guided but the Biological Sciences Libraries Team (email: sbslibraries@lib.cam.ac.uk) will be on hand throughout to have an online chat with you if you have any further questions or want to explore something further. If you have any technical issues or need any course content in a different format, you can contact George Cronin (Library Manager for Biological Sciences) at gmp36@cam.ac.uk who will be able to help.

You own your own research right? Well it depends...

This session will explore the sometimes complicated world of copyright and what can happen when publishing work through formal routes such as journals or through more informal routes such as pre-print servers. The session will also introduce concepts such as third party copyright and rights retention, as well as how licensing tools such as Creative Commons can be used to not only help maximise the reach of research but also navigating reusing other people's work.

This session discusses the benefits and challenges of maintaining an online presence as a researcher. Part of two sessions on this topic, this second session looks at using social media as a researcher. We will look at the practicalities and pros and cons of online engagement through tools such as Twitter/X, Mastodon, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Participants should expect to have the opportunity to critically evaluate the various options presented in this session with the overall aim of being better informed when deciding where to invest their time and efforts when building an academic presence online.