Research Support at Nottingham Trent

Here's a guest blog one of our associates, Ruth Stubbings who writes about how the Nottingham Trent University Library supports researchers and the reasons for getting involved with the 'Making Sense OA pathfinder project'.
Stop Press - the team is growing  - Research Data Manager wanted, closing date 23 August. more details

As in other Alliance Universities, the research agenda has continued to grow in prominence at NTU.  Support for research staff is offered through a range of teams and roles – the Pro Vice Chancellor for Research, the Associate Deans for Research, Head of the Graduate School, School Research Coordinators, the College Research Support Teams, the Grant capture Team, the Graduate School, the Centre for Professional Learning and Development (CPLD), and Library & Learning Resources.

Within the library there has been a growing recognition that the research agenda at NTU was going to continue to develop, so in July 2014 a Library Research Team was created to provide dedicated support to research active staff.  Members of the Library Research Team were drawn from what was originally the Academic Liaison Team who had been responsible for supporting learning, teaching and research.

The Library Research Team consists of four members of staff who provide specialist support and advice to researchers in the following areas:

•  How to find and trace subject specific information;
• Managing research information, including the management of bibliographic references; standards for citing references and ethical use of information;
• Managing their online identity:
• Finding other research groups to collaborate with;
• Advice on maximising and measuring the intellectual, scientific, economic, social and cultural impact of their research outputs

The Library Research Team work closely with:

• Senior members of the university to develop new policies and procedures, especially in relation to open access publishing, measuring impact and research data management;
• Other research support teams to provide support and guidance to research staff;
• Researchers, both on a one-to-one, but also through research committees

Support is provided through:

• Training sessions and workshops offered through the Research Continuing Professional Development Framework (NTU version of the RDF) and the Professional Research Practice Course for PGR students. Bespoke workshops and training sessions developed for Schools, Divisions and Research Groups, or cohorts of PGR students
• One-to-one guidance
• Library web pages aimed at Researchers: http://ntu.ac.uk/library/staff_researchers/research/index.html

The specialist support offered by the Library Research Team is held in high regard,
illustrated by a comment from Steph Walker, an Associate Dean for Research in November 2014 -

 “It is about relationship/partnership-building – I can see that my academic colleagues are beginning to see their Research Support Librarian as being an integrated part of their (research-oriented) team – and this can only be a very positive step as we move towards increasing our research-related activities”

 We wanted to be part of the Jisc Making sense project, because although we have a strong collaborative working relationship with research staff, we wished to develop a more in-depth understanding of how NTU researchers select where to publish, their views on Open Access (OA) and their publishing practices in relation to OA.  We believe the outcomes of the project will influence the development of tools and work flows to assist our researchers make their research outputs more readily available through OA publishing.