Slides | Targeting the librarian’s role in research services

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
Supporting faculty in their pursuit of funded research
Nina Exner, Researcher & grant support services librarian
North Carolina A&T State University

www.ncat.edu
Why research support?
Universities often have three pillars: teaching, research, and service. Faculty are
evaluated on teaching, research, and service. That is how they think about and
organize their work lives.
So if you work with faculty, addressing research is a great relationship builder.
 Provides more routes to engage with faculty and keep the conversation going
» Research is an alternate way to reach faculty who don’t use library
instructional services
 Great for liaisons, scholarly communications librarians… and anyone
interested in building relationships and creating a broader view of libraries!

www.ncat.edu
Just a few ways to start
There are many types of assistance that librarians can offer:
 Grant database search skills training
 Researcher profiles
 Dissemination support
 Data management planning
 Citation management training and consultation
 The Track Record - metrics for publishing trajectory

www.ncat.edu
Grant search database training
Search tools for finding funding opportunities are an easy and common way to
start! Often both the grants office and the library teach these skills.
Grant databases work the same way as article databases. Often the grant
databases are older-style interfaces without discovery, automatic stemming, or
strong keyword indexing. So bringing your “old school search” skills can help.
Faculty approach: “Have you been able to find funding opportunities that
match your research well? Maybe I can help you with your searching?”

www.ncat.edu
Researcher profiles
Many funding agencies have an online CV system (the CCV, the Biosketch, etc.)
 Uses standard field structures. Easy for us!
» Not always so easy for faculty that don't work with bibliographic fields
 In the U.S. it is integrated with Pubmed and other NLM tools
Faculty can build a set of citations (their own and others) to draw from. Then they
must select the ones that are relevant to the grant they are applying for.
Faculty approach “Have you set up your online CV/Biosketch? Anything I
can do to help you with setting it up or updating it?”

www.ncat.edu
Dissemination support
Dissemination includes publishing and presenting. But it can also include sharing
OERs, reports, and other results of funded research.
 Open access is a valuable strategy for wider dissemination
 Metrics can be used to prove the quality of dissemination venues
 Assistance with disciplinary and funder repositories
» Open access registration and repositing
» Locating, selecting, and repositing in “trusted repositories”
Faculty approach: “Do you have a findings dissemination strategy beyond
conference presentations? I can help you with broader dissemination.”

www.ncat.edu
Data management training
This is one of the more common ways to support faculty, but still
important. Not everyone knows even DMPtool.org, much less how to use
appropriate metadata structures!
 New U.S. regulations since the start of the year extended public
access of data to (almost) all funded agencies
» A lot of other changes happened, so people may not know!
» New for a lot of faculty that weren’t affected by DMPs before
Faculty approach: “Do you know whether this year’s new open
access data requirements affect you? I can help with your DMP.”

www.ncat.edu
Citation management support and training
As Amanda will explain, citation management helps faculty with publishing. It’s
also valuable for grants and building an overall strategy around research.
 Mendeley, Endnote, Zotero, etc. support most funders’ styles
 The funding agencies care about “the picky details” more than publishers
 Faculty should build a collection of literature, to save effort on future projects
 Many citation tools can be used to improve planning, multi-investigator
coordination, team-based knowledge management, etc.
Faculty approach: “Are you using tools to organize your references?
Have you tried the sharing features with your lab or co-PIs?”

www.ncat.edu
The track record
There’s a back-and-forth between research funding and publishing. Researchers’
track record should show higher-value publications as they pursue bigger grants.
Mark will talk about the big picture of faculty impact-building, and you can offer
help with metrics for faculty to track milestones and demonstrate impact.
 Use impact measures to help (especially new) faculty
» Scopus, JCR, and various altmetrics tools
» Consider http://scimagojr.com if you don’t have other metrics services
» Google Scholar, Mendeley, Research Gate, and other free tools
Faculty approach: “Have you established a track record to support your
proposals? If not, can I help you plan how to start with mid-level but
reputable journals that are less competition to publish in, then move up?”

www.ncat.edu
Many other possibilities
I’ve offered many services beyond these ideas! You can help with:
 Alerting services (article and grant alerts);
 Partnerships with ethics teams (IRB, IACUC, RCR, and more)
 Data visualization for better communication in grants;
 Literature reviews for out-of-discipline topics;
 Gap analyses in the literature;
…and probably tons of things I’ve never thought of!
ESSENTIAL: Ask in the terms that faculty or the grants office normally use.
And avoid vague “Can I help?” questions.

Thanks for listening!
I’m always happy to answer questions or visit U.S. libraries for professional development.
Nina Exner, ninae@ncat.edu

Supporting the
Research Process
AMANDA HORSMAN

My situation
Academic Medical Librarian
Small Francophone University in Atlantic Canada
A satellite medical program (parent site in another province)

Clientele
Employees
Researchers
Students
Professors

Basic services
One-on-one training
Regular consultations
Reference/Library guides available

Marketing
In-Person
Posters
E-mails

Level of Involvement
Part of the team or expert consultant
◦ You can become tied to the project
◦ If librarian is highly involved, talk about co-authorship

Types of projects
Literature Review
◦ General overview of articles available on a particular subject
Scoping Review
◦ Detailed, rigourous overview of (scientific) articles available on a
particular subject
Systematic Reviews
◦ Detailed, rigourous search of ALL (scientific) articles available on a
particular subject
◦ Performed in teams

Building the Foundation
Search Strategy
◦ Boolean operators and other useful tags
◦ Building the keyword list
◦ Playing with the protocol
Database orientation
◦ Teach the ins and outs of specific databases as needed

Protocol Development
A search protocol is integral to a successful review
It is the exact search strategy employed
Just developing the protocol can take on average 3 to 6
months
Take the time to do this! (It can save a lot of headache later)

Data and Citation Management
Excel
◦ Tracking sheet
Date | Database | Search Strategy | # Results | # Kept
Mendeley
◦ Import articles and citations
◦ Manage and organize articles and citations
◦ In-text citations and bibliography
◦ Creating groups

Signs of success
Return clients
Busy
New clients via referral

5 ways
to fast track your
research impact

How do you make an impact?
The missing link: people
need to learn about your
findings
Public
Stakeholder
Engagement

To have an impact, you need to be great at
knowledge exchange

Millennium Point, 7th February 2013
5 Principles

1 Design
Know the impacts you want to achieve and design impact
into research from the start

1 Design
 Set impact and knowledge exchange
goals from the outset
 Make a detailed impact plan
 Build in flexibility to your plans so they
can respond to changing user needs and
priorities
 Find skilled people (and where possible
financial resources) to support your
impact

2 Represent
Systematically represent the needs and
priorities of those who will use your research

2 Represent
 Systematically identify those likely to be
interested in, use or benefit from your research
 Identify other stakeholders who could help or
block you, or who might be disadvantaged by
your work
 Revisit who you’re working with as your
context and stakeholder needs change
 Embed key stakeholders in your research
 Consider ethical implications of engaging at
different stages of the research cycle

3 Engage
Build long-term, two-way, trusting relationships
with those who will use your research and co-
generate new knowledge together

3 Engage
 Have two-way dialogue as equals with likely
users of your research
 Build long-term relationships with the users
of your research
 Work with knowledge brokers and
professional facilitators
 Understand what will motivate research
users to get involved
 Work with stakeholders to interpret findings
and co-design communication products

4 Early impact
Deliver tangible results as soon as possible to keep
people engaged with your work

4 Early impact
 Identify quick wins where tangible
impacts can be delivered as early as
possible in the research process, to
reward and keep likely users of research
engaged with the research process
 Regular stakeholder briefings/updates
 Early publication of literature reviews
 Co-ordinate milestone timings with policy
teams & stakeholders to match decision-
maker needs

5 Reflect & Sustain
Keep track of what works, so you can improve
your knowledge exchange, and continue
nurturing relationships and generating impacts in
the long-term

5 Reflect & Sustain
 Track your impacts
 Regularly reflect on your knowledge
exchange with research team &
stakeholders
 Learn from peers and share good practice
 Identify what knowledge exchange needs to
continue after projects end and consider
how to generate long-term impacts

1 Design
2 Represent
3 Engage
4 Early impact
5 Reflect &
sustain

www.fasttrackimpact.com
@fasttrackimpact

Slides | Targeting the librarian’s role in research services

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Slides | Targeting the librarian’s role in research services