Reproducibility is important to the future of research, and is all about working collaboratively, and openly with others. In this workshop we will introduce concepts and tools that researchers are developing and using which aim to make their research more reproducible – so that others can examine their processes, and build on top of findings more easily.

7 steps for reproducible research:

1. Planning to be organised
2. Keeping your files tidy and organised
3. Methodology and protocols
4. Documentation and writing it down
5. Testing and controls
6. Automation
7. Publishing, persistent identifiers and preparing for reuse

You'll come away from this workshop with useful tips and tools you can start using straight away to improve your research practices.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this workshop you will be able to:

• Describe what is meant by reproducibility and why it matters
• Implement a number of approaches and resources to help you build reproducibility in your everyday workflows, and to make your work easier and more efficient.
• Utilise reproducibility techniques in ways to manage your project

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers at all stages and from all disciplines, and ECRs from all disciplines, broadly encompassing research assistants, postdoctoral researchers and research fellows at grades 6-8.

About the facilitator

This session is run by the Library Digital Development and Systems team who support researchers with their research data management.

Data management plans (DMPs) are vital to help you efficiently manage your data during your research. It’s also a requirement to write a DMP to take to your progress review. These sessions are designed to give you time to work on your DMP with Library staff on hand to give advice.

You are welcome to join the session whatever stage your DMP is at – we can help you to get started or you can bring a draft DMP for discussion.

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers at all stages of their research degree and from all disciplines.

About the facilitators

This session is run by the Library Digital Development and Systems team who support researchers with their research data management.

This workshop introduces core techniques for literature searching. We'll start by exploring connections between research outputs and authors to uncover new sources. Building on this, we’ll demonstrate how to carry out structured, systematic searches, getting you familiar with the advanced techniques that can be applied across different academic databases.

The session will also include activities to help you refine your own literature searching approach.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the workshop, you will be able to:

• Construct and refine literature searches using effective strategies that move from unstructured exploration to structured database searching.
• Apply advanced search techniques across a range of databases and resources to locate relevant literature.
• Evaluate the reliability, relevance, and authority of sources retrieved through different search methods.
• Implement effective techniques for monitoring and staying up-to-date with newly published research.

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers in the early stages of their research degree and from all disciplines.

About the facilitators

The Library Research Support team support researchers at all levels across the University. They offer bookable one-to-one sessions tailored to suit your specific research needs, run various group training workshops, and organise seminars and events to engage with the research community on campus.

Are you close to a full draft of your book, article, or thesis chapter? Does it resemble a baggy monster that needs taming? If so, this workshop is for you. Through activities and tutorials, you’ll learn techniques for getting your writing into shape. After the workshop, you will have a polished chunk of writing and a clear strategy for tackling the rest of your publication.

Each topic comprises a facilitator-led tutorial and discussion, followed by an opportunity for participants to apply the learning on their own writing. Everyone swaps drafts during the final session to practice giving and receiving constructive feedback.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the workshop you will:

• Know how much time you need for editing
• Improve your structure
• Learn to signpost your argument
• Learn maintaining consistency, clarity and connections
• Manage wrangling with grammar and style
• Proofread your own work
• Solicit and implement feedback

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers in the mid-late stage of their degree from all disciplines, and ECRs (research assistants, postdoctoral researchers and research fellows) from all disciplines.

About the facilitator

Tamsin Hinton-Smith is a Professor of the Sociology of Gender and Education in the School of Education and Social Work. Her current role is as Associate Dean for Culture, Equality and Inclusion for the Faculty of Social Sciences. Tamsin has extensive experience supervising and examining PhDs across different social science disciplines.

This hands-on workshop will help you to stay organised and reference accurately using Zotero. You will learn how to add items to your Zotero Library, how to start creating collections, how to automatically add citations from Zotero to your work, and more.This session will focus on using Zotero to reference common academic sources: journal articles, books and book chapters.

Important: there is an expectation that attendees will have made an account with Zotero and installed the desktop app, the web importer and the Word plug-in. For guidance on these steps, see the Getting Setup section of the Library's Zotero guide.
We will not be covering these setup activites during the session.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the workshop you will have:

• Learnt how to add items to your Zotero library
• Learnt how to create collections
• Learnt how to add citations from Zotero into your work

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers in the early stages of their research degree and from all disciplines.

About the facilitators

The Library Research Support team support researchers at all levels across the University. They offer bookable one-to-one sessions tailored to suit your specific research needs, run various group training workshops, and organise seminars and events to engage with the research community on campus.

Writing a data management plan (DMP) is useful for researchers in all disciplines. Research data is produced by most projects, and can be anything: interview recordings, sensor data, economic models and more. A DMP covers how data will be collected, organised, managed, stored, secured, backed-up, preserved, and where applicable, shared. Writing a DMP will help you to anticipate any challenges for working with your data and make the research process much smoother.

Learning outcomes

This workshop will introduce you to the essential elements of a DMP, covering:

• What is a DMP and how can it help you?
• What are the core elements of a DMP and how can you start to write one?
• Using DMPOnline to structure your DMP
• Resources to inform the content of your DMP

We will allow some time for you to start your own DMP.

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers at all stages and from all disciplines, and ECRs from all disciplines, broadly encompassing research assistants, postdoctoral researchers and research fellows at grades 6-8.

About the facilitators

This session is run by the Library Digital Development and Systems team who support researchers with their research data management.

How safe is your research data? What would happen if you lost it all? This session will help you consider how to keep your research data organised and secure.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this session, you will be able to:

• Implement effective file naming conventions to improve the organisation and retrieval of your research data.
• Develop a backup strategy to minimise the risk of data loss.
• Evaluate the security strengths and weaknesses of various data storage options (e.g., cloud, local, institutional).
• Adopt secure working practices to prevent putting data and participants at risk

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers at all stages and from all disciplines, and ECRs from all disciplines, broadly encompassing research assistants, postdoctoral researchers and research fellows at grades 6-8.

About the facilitators

This session is run by the Library Digital Development and Systems team who support researchers with their research data management.

Qualitative data has rich potential for re-use in future research, but it can be challenging to navigate routes for data sharing. This session will support attendees with data management planning that will help embed consideration of data sharing principles throughout the research process.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this session you will be able to:

• Understand best practice in using consent forms and participant information sheets to seek consent for data sharing
• Identify common pitfalls in phrasing that prevent data sharing
• Consider a range of options for sharing qualitative data, including using embargos or restricted access

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers at all stages and from all disciplines, and ECRs from all disciplines, broadly encompassing research assistants, postdoctoral researchers and research fellows at grades 6-8.

About the facilitators

This session is run by the Library Digital Development and Systems team who support researchers with their research data management.

Your online researcher profile is a key tool for increasing the visbility of your research, connecting with collaborators and demonstrating research impact. This workshop introduces the main platforms for creating and managing your online researcher profile, and focusing on Elements, the University of Sussex's platform for capturing and sharing research-related activities, will demonstrate how to build your Elements profile to present your research, professional and teaching activities effectively. There will be an opportunity to update your own profile.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the workshop you will have:

• Recognise the role of online profiles in enhacing research visibiilty and credibiity
• Identify key platforms for creating and managing an online researcher profile
• Create an ORCID ID
• Apply best practices in curating your University of Sussex Elements profile
• Locate sources of guidance and support

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers at all stages and from all disciplines.

About the facilitators

The Library Research Support team support researchers at all levels across the University. They offer bookable one-to-one sessions tailored to suit your specific research needs, run various group training workshops, and organise seminars and events to engage with the research community on campus.

What is open research and why does it matter? This workshop will look at the concept of open research, and explore opportunities for implementing open research principles into your own practice. Content will include open access publishing, open data, open science, open source software, open peer review and tools and techniques for the discovery of open access materials.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the workshop, you will be able to

• Define key concepts of open research
• Describe the benefits of open research for researchers, institutions and society
• Assess how open reseach practices align with and support your chosen research methodology
• Identify and apply relevant open research practices and locate sources of support and guidance to help you implement them effectively.

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers at all stages and from all disciplines, and ECRs from all disciplines, broadly encompassing research assistants, postdoctoral researchers and research fellows at grades 6-8.

About the facilitators

The Library Research Support team support researchers at all levels across the University. They offer bookable one-to-one sessions tailored to suit your specific research needs, run various group training workshops, and organise seminars and events to engage with the research community on campus.

Booking information

For online workshops, the link to join the session will be shared to your Sussex email address one working day before the event.

Are you struggling to get started with your academic writing? Or have you hit a block? If so, this intensive one-day writing retreat can help you get back on track and make significant progress with your chapter, article or book. You get the time and space to focus. With guidance from an experienced facilitator, you’ll set realistic goals and achieve them in a supportive environment.

It's important to note this is an intensive writing environment and the focus is on productivity, not on style. If you want more general help with improving your academic writing, one of the RDP writing sessions would be more appropriate for you.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the retreat you will have:

• a better understanding of your writing process and habits
• strategies for improving your focus
• techniques for planning and measuring progress
• a peer group
• a big chunk of writing!

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers at all stages and from all disciplines, and ECRs from all disciplines, broadly encompassing research assistants, postdoctoral researchers and research fellows.

About the facilitators

This retreat is facilitated by Dr Perpetua Kirby and Dr Emily Danvers, from the School of Education and Social Work.

This session provides advice and guidance on a variety of approaches to writing a thesis. As well as content on planning and structures, there will be space to write and to reflect together as part of a supportive writers' network.

This practical workshop is suitable for postgraduate researchers who are at any stage, but some of the guidance will be geared towards those in the latter stages of thesis construction.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the workshop you will:

• Appreciate the requirements and elements of a postgraduate thesis
• Reflect on what you've already achieved, set goals for the next steps and feel energised about the next stages of writing
• Receive guidance on a variety of approaches to structuring the content of your thesis
• Share tips for planning and scheduling the writing (and finishing) of your thesis

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers in the early-mid stage of their research degree and from any Arts and Humanities or Social Science discipline.

About the facilitator

Tamsin Hinton-Smith is a Professor of the Sociology of Gender and Education in the School of Education and Social Work. Her current role is as Associate Dean for Culture, Equality and Inclusion for the Faculty of Social Sciences. Tamsin has extensive experience supervising and examining PhDs across different social science disciplines.

Booking information

For online workshops, the link to join the session will be shared to your Sussex email address one working day before the event.

The viva can be a daunting experience for which you need to be well-prepared. This workshop will de-mystify the viva process and requirements, and provide you with useful guidance on preparing for the big day. You'll also hear examples of real questions and experiences from recent successful vivas across different Schools, and benefit from the opportunity to participate in a mock viva.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the workshop you will:

• Understand the viva process and possible outcomes
• Have received practical guidance on familiarising yourself with your thesis and preparing for potential questions
• Have gained useful insights on what to expect and how to get ready for your viva

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers in the mid-late stage of their research degree and from any Arts and Humanities or Social Science discipline.

About the facilitator

This workshop is facilitated by Dr Martin Brown and Prof Tamsin Hinton-Smith, from the School of Education and Social Work.

The viva can be a daunting event for postgraduate researchers. This workshop will de-mystify the viva process rules and requirements and provide you with useful guidance about how you can prepare for the big day throughout your PGR journey. You will also learn how to craft effective preparation questions that fit your PGR project, receive tips on how to interact with your examiners, and benefit from an opportunity to participate in a mock viva.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the workshop you will:

• Understand the viva process and possible outcomes
• Have received practical guidance on familiarising yourself with your thesis and preparing for potential questions.
• Have gained useful insights on what to expect and how to get ready for your viva.

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers in the mid/late stage of their research degree from any Science discipline.

About the facilitators

This workshop is designed and delivered by Dr Ronald Grau, Senior Lecturer in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (Informatics), from the School of Engineering and Informatics

The literature review forms a substantial part of your postgraduate thesis and is also an ongoing process. Through clear examples, individual exercises, and group discussion, this workshop gets you started with your review. You will also be signposed to training facilitated by the Library's Research Support team to help you with your literature searching.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the workshop you will:

• Understand the purpose of the literature review and the process behind it
• Have developed your research questions and identified keywords
• Have discovered the tools available for your literature search and techniques for effective notetaking

Target audience

Postgraduate researchers in the early stages of their research degree from any discipline.

About the facilitators

This workshop is designed and delivered by Dr Sophie Valeix, Digit Centre Administrator (Management) at the University of Sussex Business School.