Staff and PhD workshops and events
Sign up to one of our workshops or webinars if you need help with literature searching, open access, research data management, using EndNote, or increasing the visibility of your research.
If you are looking for help with academic skills, writing your PhD thesis, research ethics, data protection, career development, getting funding and getting published, then take a look at the OD&PL courses for research staff and students.
Workshops and webinars
We offer a set of workshops and webinars to help you with your research.
Our full range of courses is listed below. Courses are announced on research mailing lists and Twitter @OpenResLeeds as they become available.
Open Research and research visibility
Open Research includes open access to a broad range of research outputs, from journal articles and their underlying data, to protocols, results (including negative results), software and tools. Open Research enables collaboration, improves transparency and reproducibility of research and underpins research integrity.
Our courses on open research and research visibility include:
- Increase your research visibility: for PGRs (1.5 hours). Suitable for postgraduate researchers.
- Increase your research visibility: for research staff (1.5 hours). Suitable for research staff.
- How practicing Open Research can benefit you (1 hour). Suitable for postgraduate researchers and research staff.
- Using Symplectic to increase the visibility of your research outputs (1 hour). Suitable for postgraduate researchers and research staff.
- Introduction to bibliometrics for research staff (1.5 hours). Suitable for research staff.
- Publishing your PhD as a monograph (1 hour). Suitable for postgraduate researchers and research staff.
Research data management
Research data forms an important part of the scholarly record. Storing, organising and documenting your materials will help keep them safe, save you time in the long run and reduce the risk of data loss. The University – alongside many funders and journal publishers – requires that research data is shared wherever possible. Sharing data does not equate to "open" access to data in every case. Some data may be confidential, sensitive, or subject to a non-disclosure agreement.
Our courses on research data management include:
- Data management essentials (2.5 hours). Suitable for postgraduate researchers and research staff.
- Safeguarding sensitive data: for your research degree (2.5 hours). Suitable for postgraduate researchers.
- Safeguarding sensitive data: for research staff (2.5 hours). Suitable for research staff.
Finding information
Our workshops on finding information introduce you to some the key tools and techniques to help you carry out comprehensive literature searches:
- Literature searching for your research project (2 hours). Suitable for postgraduate researchers and research staff.
- Finding open content for your research (1 hour). Suitable for postgraduate researchers and research staff.
Reference management
Have you ever spent hours toiling over your reference lists? If the answer is "yes", join our webinar to find out more about using EndNote to manage your references:
- EndNote training webinar (1 hour). Suitable for anyone who wants to learn the basics of EndNote.
Writing
If you get distracted easily, find that you are a professional procrastinator, or struggle to focus in your office environment, Shut Up and Write sessions provide a quiet, supportive space to get down to work:
- Shut up and write (3 hours). Suitable for postgraduate researchers and research staff.
Training on request
If you or researchers within your School have specific needs, or cannot attend one of our workshops, contact us and we will try to arrange a session for your group.
We offer training on:
- Open access
- Raising research visibility
- Research data management
- Bibliometrics
Contact us to arrange a session.
We can deliver sessions to specific Schools, Research Groups or Research Support Teams. Schools or Faculties can book open access sessions for their researchers.
We can do a short session (such as a 10-minute slot as part of another event) or a longer session (such as a whole lunchtime or a local delivery of the 2 hour Research Data Essentials course).
We will aim to make data management sessions relevant for your discipline, although there will be some content that is generic. If discipline-specific training is required, we will need to design and deliver the session in conjunction with a researcher or specialist from your School/Faculty.
University-wide workshops
Training is also available from other University departments.
IT courses
IT run courses covering a wide range of research-related subjects.
- IT training for researchers: online courses and face-to-face workshops for researchers, including Excel for research and using Word to produce long documents.
- Classroom-based courses for researchers: IT training for research staff and postgraduates, including Microsoft Office and specialist courses such as parallel programming, NVivo and SPSS courses.
Academic skills help for International students
International students can also get support from the Language Centre on academic reading, writing and speaking. Courses and one-to-one appointments are available.
Useful online resources
Further advice and training on research data management is available from the following sources:
- UK data archive: training courses and webinars from the largest collection of digital social and economic research data.
- Digital Curation Centre: training events and useful resources available from the experts in both digital curation and building capability and skills for research data management.
- Research Data Management and Sharing MOOC: an online course created by the University of Edinburgh and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that is designed to introduce research data and how to manage and share it effectively.
- MANTRA Research Data Management training: self-paced online course aimed at post-graduate students and early career researchers.