The Library is here to help all postgraduate researchers with a series of information skills workshops which will take place on the 11th, 12th and 13th of February.
There are three workshops on offer, each lasting two hours:
Literature searching – Part 1: Getting started
Literature searching – Part 2: Using databases
Literature searching – Part 3: Managing references using RefWorks
Across the three workshops we will look at: planning a search, looking for books, using databases of academic literature, getting the best out of Google and managing references with RefWorks.
Please note that the session on RefWorks is not suitable for postgraduates in the School of Law.
For more information and to book a place on these sessions, please visit: www.abdn.ac.uk/coursebooking and look for ‘Library Information Skills’ classes.
Library and IT induction sessions for new PhD students and members of University staff are now available for booking on the University’s course booking system. Held in The Sir Duncan Rice Library, these small group sessions are designed for academic staff and research postgraduate students new to the University of Aberdeen and provide a general introduction to The Sir Duncan Rice Library (TSDRL) on the Old Aberdeen campus and Digital Research services.
There are three sessions on offer before the Christmas holidays but more will run monthly until June.
Tuesday 19 November: 10:00 – 11:30
Tuesday 26 November: 10:00 – 11:30
Thursday 12 December: 14:00 – 15:30
During the introduction we will cover:
How to get the best from our data storage, data management planning, high-performance computing (HPC) survey and collaboration tools
How the Library works, e.g. borrowing and requesting materials
Primo, the gateway to all the library resources here at UoA
Specialised academic databases suitable for your research
What library staff can do to support you in your research
This informal induction and tour provide an opportunity to meet with the Library’s Information Consultants and members of staff from Digital Research – ask any questions you may have about computing services or access to suitable library materials. For more detailed information on literature searching, book onto separate 2-hour workshops which run at key points through the year (normally November, February, April and June).
We look forward to meeting with any new PhD students or staff, to help you get the best out of our extensive resources while you carry out your research.
This coming Monday and Tuesday we will be showing hundreds of new students around The Sir Duncan Rice Library on the Library & IT Essentials Talk and Tour. This very popular event within the University of Aberdeen’s Welcome Week is fully booked. We will be running more tours on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of next week, for which there is no need to book. More details on these additional tours will be publicised soon but all new students are very welcome to come in and have a look around the stunning building anytime we are open.
Plan S was launched in September 2018 by cOAlition S (a global coalition of research funders) in order to effect a decisive shift to Open Access (OA) for the research that they fund. Despite a number of initiatives in recent years, these have been at the national level and different approaches have made them hard for researchers to understand. They have not provided sufficient incentives for researchers, institutions, funders and publishers to make all the changes necessary to make a full transition to OA. Members of cOAlition S include the European Research Council, UKRI, Wellcome and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Plan S has two primary objectives: to recognise the importance of open research (often referred to as open science, but intended to apply more widely to academic research) and ensure that funder policies require and support it; and to address longstanding and substantial financial pressures caused by the combination of year on year journal subscription increases and the emergence of article processing charges (APCs), known as Gold OA, as the preferred option.
The release of the first draft of Plan S in 2018 caused concern amongst researchers, publishers and universities as the proposals had the potential to be very expensive, and to create unintended consequences. There were particular misgivings in relation to the possible impact on small and society publishers, the implications for research outputs in other forms (particularly monographs), and the potentially significant expense associated with moving to full Gold OA by removing ‘hybrid’ journals (where both subscription and OA options are offered). The University of Aberdeen emphasised these risks in its response to the consultation.
Revisions
The revised proposals respond to key concerns from the community. In particular, they address the need for more time by extending the timeline by 12 months to 2021, so research outputs resulting from funding calls from 1 January 2021 will need to comply. Additionally, publishers now have until the end of 2024 to make the transition from subscription business models to full OA.
Additionally, the revisions address the following points:
More options for transformative arrangements are
supported, making it easier for publishers, libraries and Jisc (as negotiating
agent) to work together on sensible and affordable journal deals;
Plan S is clearer about its support for a
variety of models for OA, and stresses that Open Access does not have to be
accomplished through individual APCs;
The technical requirements expected of
repositories to support the Green route to OA (deposit of final accepted
manuscript in a local repository) have been made less stringent. However, where
Green OA is selected, manuscripts must be made available immediately, with no
embargo;
A commitment by funders to value the intrinsic
merit of the work and not consider the publication channel, its impact factor
(or other journal metrics), or the publisher. This is in line with the San Francisco Declaration
on Research Assessment (DORA), which the University of Aberdeen is
now considering adopting;
Monographs are excluded and will form a separate
process (still to be announced);
While the default reuse licence option remains CC BY (the most liberal licence), funders can permit a more restrictive when it can be justified. This responds to the concerns of a number of publishers and researchers about reuse permissions. The proposal is very clear that copyright should remain with the author or the institution, and should not be signed over to a third party.
It is expected that cOAlition S members will make their own decisions on the way that they choose to implement Plan S. UKRI announced in April that there will be a public consultation later this year as part of a review of their OA policy and have previously indicated that they do not feel bound to implement it exactly as it is written.
On 31 May 2019, The Wellcome Trust announced that they will align their policy with Plan S and as a consequence have extended their own deadline by 12 months in the same way. This is helpful both in terms of allowing more time and by reducing the issues caused by multiple funder policies with differing implementation dates.
The University Library will continue to work with Jisc and other research libraries to engage funders and publishers as policies continue to evolve.
Digital & Information Services, in conjunction with Research & Innovation, are pleased to announce the launch of a Scholarly Communications Service which will provide support and advice in relation to all aspects of scholarly publishing. Questions and comments about this briefing, and any other related matters, are very welcome at scholcomms@abdn.ac.uk.
The Library is here to help all postgraduate researchers as they begin, or continue their in-depth research, with a short series of Information Skills workshops designed to their needs.
The workshops will take place on the 11th, 12th and 13th of Juneand will help you understand the resources available to you as researchers here at the University of Aberdeen, and how to get the best out of them.
There are three workshops on offer, each lasting three hours:
Literature searching – Part 1: Getting started
Literature searching – Part 2: Using databases
Literature searching – Part 3: Managing your references using RefWorks*
Across the three workshops we will look at:
Planning your search
Looking for books: using Primo and e-books
Databases of academic literature
Getting the best out of Google
Managing your references with RefWorks
Formatting Word documents with in-text citations and bibliographies
*IMPORTANT NOTE: The workshop focusing on the management of references (Part 3) is not suitable for research postgraduates in the School of Law, as the software used does not support the OSCOLA referencing style required for legal theses.
To find out more, and to book onto the different workshops please visit www.abdn.ac.uk/coursebooking and look for Library Information Skills classes.
Applications are invited for the Friends of Aberdeen University Library Postgraduate Research Bursary awards 2019/20. Applicants must hold an offer of study from the University to begin in September 2019 or be less than 50% through their period of study at that time.
This award of £3000 is offered to a candidate in the early stages of a supervised postgraduate research degree (PhD or Masters by Research). It is a one-off bursary payment designed to support research based on and making particular use of rare and distinctive materials held in University of Aberdeen’s Libraries, Museums, or Special Collections.
The Library is here to help all postgraduate researchers as they begin, or continue their in-depth research, with a short series of Information Skills workshops designed to their needs.
The workshops will take place on the 16th, 17th & 18th of April and will help you understand the resources available to you as researchers here at the University of Aberdeen, and how to get the best out of them.
There are three workshops on offer, each lasting two hours:
Literature searching – Part 1: Getting started
Literature searching – Part 2: Using databases
Literature searching – Part 3: Managing your references using RefWorks*
Across the three workshops we will look at:
Planning your search
Looking for books: using Primo and e-books
Databases of academic literature
Getting the best out of Google
Managing your references with RefWorks
Formatting Word documents with in-text citations and bibliographies
*IMPORTANT NOTE: The workshop focusing on the management of references
(Part 3) is not suitable for research postgraduates in the School of Law, as the software used does not support the OSCOLA referencing style required for legal theses.
To find out more, and to book onto the different workshops please visit www.abdn.ac.uk/coursebooking and look for Library Information Skills classes.
