IoPPN Research Culture Insights: Dan Crane & Chris Fripp

What does the Open Research team in Libraries & Collections do?

Our team provides support and services in the areas of open access publication, research data management, PhD theses publication, and copyright advice.

Within those broad topics, support and services are provided for different activities – for example, under the term ‘open access’ we support routes to open access publication via academic publishers and the King’s research repository, Pure; research data management includes support for writing data management plans and sharing datasets via data repositories, including the King’s research data repository, KORDS. 

How does the work your team do contribute to research culture at King’s?

There is a need to relate our support and services to compliance with policies and other requirements from research funders, publishers, and King’s itself, and therefore our training and webpages does lean into following process and using systems to do this.

But we make a real effort to frame this work - supporting open and transparent practice and outputs - as contributing positively to open research and a research culture that other contributors to this blog series have so eloquently described and discussed.

What training do you offer that you think the IoPPN community should be aware of?

As part of our work, we offer training and briefings – both regularly scheduled sessions and sessions delivered on request. Our regular sessions are as follows:

• ‘Open Access Publishing - what researchers and authors need to know (LIB840)’ - we introduce open access and the benefits of it to authors and the wider public, do some jargon busting, and talk about how to publish open access at King’s.
• ‘Managing Research Data (LIB842)’ – In part one we introduce ‘Research Data Management’, why to do it , and how to get started by writing a data management plan. We then cover guidance for data management during a project in part two, before moving on to data archiving and sharing when publishing results or wrapping-up a project in the third part. Again, we highlight how these things can be done at King’s and flag the other support teams at King’s.
• ‘Pure Drop-In Sessions (LIB1004)’ – a member of the Research Support team is on-hand to answer your questions related to self-archiving research outputs in King’s institutional repository, Pure, and making them Open Access/REF compliant.

These are bookable through Skillsforge and delivered online and in-person. We rotate the campus for the in-person sessions, so that we deliver at Denmark Hill, Waterloo, Guy’s and Strand. We also vary the days sessions are scheduled, to make them as access as possible.

This is the routine offer, but we’re happy to offer other sessions on request. As examples, we’ve delivered short briefings about our services and funder policies at faculty research meetings and away days, created sessions for research groups on their funder’s requirements for publications and data, and spoken to training and development programmes (we were delighted to be invited to speak at the recent Open Science Summer School, and previously at the Senior THRIVE programme). Essentially, with a bit of notice and planning, we’re happy to come and talk and listen to anyone.

What have you learned/observed? Are there gaps? What's done well?

As a relatively small team offering support to the entire King’s research community, our regular training has to be broad and somewhat generic in content. We’re aware that attendees will be from a wide range of research disciplines across faculties, may be at different stages of their research careers, and have different depths of existing knowledge about the topics we’re discussing. We aim to have something for everyone but know that some will take away more than others. That said, the feedback we receive is usually very positive, and constructive where attendees found room for improvement.

Another acknowledged gap is that we don’t have recorded or asynchronous sessions yet, which we appreciate would make our training more accessible.

How do you determine what training is relevant, at what stage?

All staff and PGR students are very welcome to attend any of our sessions at any time, but it might be helpful to think about attending when the content is going to be most relevant to you. For example, in our ‘Managing Research Data’ training, those new to King’s or about to start a project may find the first and second parts particularly relevant, but the third part on data archiving and sharing less so – so could attend that part later. Although, as we say there, if you’re intending to share your data, you should plan for that from the start. With open access, the content be most relevant when you are close to submitting for publication, but there are things useful to know well in advance – for example, knowing how any costs for publishing open access can be met when considering where to publish.

If you’re unsure and want to make sure you know the basics from the start, we don’t mind repeat attendance.

You can find out more on our webpages, including how to get in touch. 

This blog is part of a ongoing series looking at research culture at IoPPN. If you would be interested in contributing, please contact aneita.pringle@kcl.ac.uk.