Guest post by Sara Kjellberg, coordinator research support services at Library and ICT Services.
I visited recently a day organized for PhD students at the Faculty of Health and Society. The presentation I held was about what we from Library and ICT Services* can provide in terms of support for researchers and PhD students at Malmö University. I asked the PhD students what kind of obstacles or challenges they find in their everyday work as researchers’ or in relation to the research process. One very common answer was the lack of time. The things that came up as hindering the research process was everything from that it´s hard to handle all the stages in the publishing process to that you have to wait for other people or find and get answers from possible informants. Of course we can´t save time for you in every stage of your research process, but I think that we provide services that might help you overcome some obstacles. We support different parts of your work as a PhD student. I will give some examples here, these are picked to highlight aspects where we think it can help you specifically as researchers, but of course there are lots more.
Liaison librarians (In Swedish)
A librarian is associated with every department at Malmö University, this is to facilitate for you to have one person to interact with and who can guide you further.
Creating literature overviews, keeping up to date and current awareness
We help you with information seeking and different ways of finding, accessing, and organizing information.
- Book a Librarian
Free individual 60 minute session of guided information searching. - Bibliometrics (In Swedish)
Bibliometrics involves quantitative studies of scientific publications, for example, with respect to: the production and productivity; impact; collaboration patterns and disciplinary structures. For example we can show you how you as a researcher can use Citation databases to learn more about your area.
Use of software and different ICT tools
In a research project it can be useful to handle your references in an organized way or to have possibilities to collaborate with others online. Some examples of tools that we provide:
- Box (In Swedish)
Save files in the cloud and access them from any computer. You use your Malmö University computer account. - RefWorks
Use a reference management program to organize your research, include citations while you write, build your own bibliography and create bibliographies in documents.
Publishing research
In the publishing process you need to handle a lot of different things in different stages, one is the question of open access and making your research results available.
- MUEP (Malmö University’s open access repository)
Malmö University Electronic Publishing (MUEP) is where faculty staff and students deposit their scholarly output. - Copyright and open access
We can help you with copyright issues in relation to your publications, e.g. what are the publishers’ copyright policies and what rights to you have as a writer.
Workshops and other activities
We have workshops, seminars and training for use of software, information seeking, publishing and more.
- Research breakfast seminars
- IT-courses (In Swedish)
Research services (In Swedish)
The Library and ICT Services are part of the network of people supporting researchers at Malmö University and connected by Research services at the common administration unit. Research services helps with advice and guidance on external funding, but also other questions related to project administration.
I hope you will find these tips useful and feel free to contact me or us at any time and discuss what you need. We would like to know more of how you work and do your research and your different everyday questions that can pop up, and that way support you in better ways.
And of course you will find a lot more at our web sites:
- Library
- IT Support
- Software and Services (In Swedish)
* Library and ICT Services, Bibliotek och IT in Swedish and often shortened BIT.