August 13, 2018, by Julie Baldwin

What does the Research Support Team really do?

Researchers at the University are constantly travelling a circuit (often more than one circuit at a time) as they endeavour to create new knowledge. Tony Simmonds, Senior Research Librarian for Social Sciences, explains how the Libraries team can help you on your journey(s)!

So what does the Research Support Team do? In a nutshell, we provide services and expertise that aid Nottingham researchers at each stage of this cycle.

To do that, folk in the Libraries Research Support Team refer to visualisations like this when we’re planning our activity:

Copyright: Regents of the University of Michigan. Made available under a CC BY licence.

Planning

At the planning stage we might answer enquiries about access to specialist information resources, or how to complete a data management plan required by a research funder.

Implementation

At the implementation stage we might offer advice on copyright rules around text mining, or on advanced literature searching for a systematic review.

Publishing

When it comes to publishing your work, we help you navigate the full range of options that confront you. They may be a PhD student anxious about damaging chances of a publishing contract by making their thesis open access, or an early career researcher choosing between journal venues for their article, or a professor puzzled by Creative Commons licensing options offered by their publisher.

Impact

Maximising the impact of research involves claiming it, sharing it and tracking it. As a team we provide advice and training in all these areas: for example, claiming by deploying standard identifiers, such as an ORCID iD; sharing by exploiting social media, or the different avenues to open access (to data as well as publications); and tracking by understanding the abundance of metrics that digital platforms present.

Preservation

Finally, we enable sustainable re-use of the outputs of research by advising on standards and platforms to ensure long-term preservation. Central to this undertaking at Nottingham are our repositories, such as the RIS Repository (for publications by staff), Nottingham eTheses (for PhD theses) and the Research Data Repository.

RIS repository

With over 15,500 articles in the Research Information System (RIS), our researchers are making swathes of high-quality research freely and instantly available to be read by a world-wide audience. This commitment to the open sharing of knowledge is something in which everyone in Libraries should take pride. If you are involved in research you can email openaccess@nottingham.ac.uk for informed and friendly guidance from the team.

Publication Framework

Lastly, the Research Support Team makes an important contribution to the University’s Publication Framework, particularly overseeing and updating its Researcher Guidance. This includes a one-page publication checklist that draws together many of the strands I’ve touched on, dealing with open access, along with a range of other challenges associated with making publications count such as managing data assets, exploiting ORCID iDs and building a scholarly profile.

If you’re curious to find out more about any aspect of what we do, please ask! Contact us at: library-researchsupport@nottingham.ac.uk

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