Category: Library

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Figshare awarded grant to further enhance functionality for the research community

Figshare, the organisation behind UWC’s institutional repository, Kikapu, has been awarded an NIH Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI) grant. GREI is led by the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS) and provides funding for repositories to grow their functionality and better meet the needs of research communities and the NIH Desirable Characteristics for Data Repositories. 

The award granted to Figshare will support ongoing efforts to advance Figshare’s repository infrastructure to make research data better documented for findability and reuse. Figshare also plans to expand their support for metadata standards to enhance discoverability and tracking of open research, and broadening their metadata support for research funders and grants. 

Read more about the award.

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Webinar: RDM and Kikapu

A webinar on Monday 30 August discussed RDM (research data management) at UWC and Kikapu, our institutional research data repository. Practicing RDM has become an integral part of doing research, and good data management needs to be practiced throughout the research lifecycle. Mark Snyders (UWC Library) and Sarah Schafer (UWC eResearch Office) presented on various aspects of RDM and Kikapu.

Watch the recording

Relevant documents:

UWC’s RDM Policy

Kikapu Data Deposit Guidelines

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Creating a Data Management Plan (DMP) Workshop

UWC’s Division for Postgraduate Studies (DPGS), eResearch Office and Library Research Support & Scholarly Communications hosted a workshop on creating Data Management Plans (DMPs) on 16 August 2021.

Along with UWC’s Research Data Management (RDM) Policy and the Protection of Private Information Act (POPIA), DMPs are central to the research process. The workshop provided an overview of RDM and Data Management Planning, and demonstrated some practical advice on how to craft a DMP.

Watch the recording.

Data Management Planning is ultimately most useful for the researcher, and it helps achieve the benefits that come with managing and sharing data. Increasingly, funding bodies and publishers mandate the submission of a DMP to ensure that data can be preserved and shared. UWC’s Research Data Management Policy encourages all UWC researchers to submit a data management plan in the course of their research.

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Upcoming Kikapu Webinar

The Library and the eResearch Office will be hosting a webinar that focuses on our Institutional Data Repository, Kikapu.

The webinar will take place on 30 August at 11am.
Register here.

Kikapu is UWC’s online institutional research data repository. It is a versatile platform for publishing and accessing research data and scholarly outputs, and accepts a wide variety of non-traditional research outputs and file formats. Research data and any associated documents can be stored and shared in either primary or refined versions.

Read more about Kikapu.

Introduction to Research Data Management and Kikapu

The webinar will cover the following:

Introduction to Research Data Management (RDM) and Kikapu:
– What is research data 
– Why publish research data
– Open Access
– FAIR Data principles


Introduction to Kipaku – UWC’s Institutional Research Data Repository
– Creating an account
– Uploading content (datasets)
– Publishing uploaded content (datasets)
– Citing published content
– Tracking record statistics

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Webinar: RDM Tools available at UWC and Unpacking UWC’s RDM Policy

On Wednesday 21 April, a webinar was hosted by the eResearch Office and UWC Library, titled RDM Tools available at UWC and Unpacking UWC’s RDM Policy.

Mark Snyders, Manager of Scholarly Communication at the Library, spoke in detail about UWCs new RDM Policy, and how it affects researchers at UWC. Sarah Schäfer, Research Data Specialist at the eResearch Office presented on the different RDM tools and resources that are available to the UWC research community.

The session was hosted by eResearch Office Director, Prof Mattia Vaccari and Deputy Director of UWC Library Services Alfred Nqotole. The presentations were followed by questions and a discussion.

Please send any further questions to rdm-support@uwc.ac.za

Watch a recording of the webinar.
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Webinar: Crafting a Data Management Plan

The UWC Library Research Support & Scholarly Communications hosted the Crafting Data Management Plans (DMPs) webinar on 6 April 2021. Mark Snyders, Manager of Scholarly Communication at the Library provided some background to Research Data Management (RDM) at UWC, and demonstrated how to create a Data Management Plan.

Watch the recording of the webinar:

The UWC DMP template can be accessed here.

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The State of Open Data

On 25 February, Figshare hosted The State of Open Data 2020. The webinar’s focus was on the annual State of Open Data Report, and included presentations from three speakers. It gives an overview of the results of the study, and insight into what librarians, publishers and research data managers can do to help make data sharing an integral part of research.

A recording of the webinar can be viewed here.

Speakers included Dr Leslie McIntosh ( CEO of Ripeta); Dr Mark Hahnel (founder of Figshare), and Mariëtte van Selm (Information Specialist, University of Amsterdam).

The State of Open Data report includes survey results from 4500 participants and a collection of articles from global industry experts. It is the longest-running longitudinal study on the subject, which was created in 2016 to examine attitudes and experiences of researchers working with open data – sharing it, reusing it, and redistributing it.

Access the dataset here – https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13274744

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African Research Visibility and Repositories

On 3 February, the TCC hosted a webinar titled Enhancing African Research Visibility Through Use of Repositories. UWC Library’s Mark Snyders was a panelist, and others included Jo Havemann of AfricArxiv, Mark Hahnel of Figshare and Stephanie Kitchen of African Digital Research Repositories.

Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 13.5% of the global population, but less than 1% of global research output, and part of this problem is that there is low visibility of its research output. Open access repositories are creating a paradigm shift in enhancing African research output. The panelists looked at how African researchers can make use of these repositories to increase their visibility, and where these repositories are, and how researchers can take advantage of them.

Watch a recording of the webinar.

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REDCap

The UWC eResearch Office, in collaboration with ICS and the Library is pleased to announce that UWC is now a partner in the REDCap Consortium, and UWC researchers can benefit from the broad range of data collection functionality that REDCap offers. At its most simple, REDCap is a web-based interface that empowers researchers to take control of their data collection work. Find out more about REDCap here.

REDCap is an application that was originally created in 2004 to support a small group of clinical researchers who needed a secure data collection tool (that met HIPAA compliance standards). The REDCap Consortium was launched in 2006, and today it is used as a secure method of flexible yet robust data collection by thousands of researchers at institutions around the world. REDCap is a neutral data collection platform, able to capture any type of data, for any purpose.

To access REDCap, go to https://redcap.uwc.ac.za/ and use your UWC Network (Novell) login details (i.e. the same ones you would use to access iKamva).