Information skills for researchers

Postgraduate researchers will find many skills development activities within the Graduate School Network.

Guidance and information on services provided for Research Data Management, Open Access publishing and Bibliometrics can be found on Library Research Support website.

There are additional sources of advice and guidance on the Library and Digital Skills for Study (DiSS) websites under the following headings:

Plagiarism guidance for Postgraduate Researchers

This plagiarism activity will help postgraduate researchers to recognise instances of plagiarism, including self-plagiarism, cite and reference sources correctly, and use study skills and tools to avoid plagiarism during the production of their thesis. 

Reference management software

A wide range of products are now available to help researchers manage literature searching and found references. We have previous recordings of our Introduction to reference management tools session which takes you through some of the things to consider when selecting and using reference management tools. There are also many freely available bibliographic management software tools.

Searching the literature

Keep up to date advises how to stay on top of the literature in your field using automatic alerts, RSS feeds and tracking engines.

Citation searching

How do I do a citation search? explains why citation searching is useful and guides you through a sample search.

Advanced searching

Advanced search techniques outlines some of the advanced search techniques that you need to use when searching databases and search engines.

Advanced evaluation

The ability to critically evaluate information is an essential research skill. Advanced evaluation uses ‘PROMPT’, a structured approach to critical evaluation of information (Provenance, Relevance, Objectivity, Method, Presentation, and Timeliness).