The Saint Louis University Office of the Vice President for Research hosts Research Resources Week in preparation for the start of each semester. This week includes workshops, informational sessions and discussions highlighting SLU's diverse resources and aims to aid research practices, collaborations and outcomes among faculty, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students.
Offerings differ based on applicability and interest; however, with more than 20 sessions, there will be something for researchers of any discipline and level of experience. The sessions are open to all, although participants are asked to register.
OVPR Research Resources Week – Jan. 8-12, 2024
In preparation for the spring semester and the second half of the academic year, the Office of the Vice President for Research announces the Spring 2024 Research Resources Week. Offering workshops, informational sessions, and discussions, the programming during the week aims to aid research practices, outcomes, and more among faculty, graduate students and postdocs.
Do you know how to find reputable journals? Know what an APC is? Do you know how to read a contract to see if you keep the copyright? We will review ways to find reputable journals and some publisher sites to give you the basics.
- Facilitator: Angela Spencer, health sciences reference librarian, assistant professor, angela.spencer@slu.edu
- When: 9 to 10 a.m., Monday, Jan. 8
- Audience: Faculty, resident physicians and graduate students
- Location: Virtual (Zoom)
Private funding, whether from foundations or corporations, is an excellent resource for direct service projects and research and may provide the springboard to help gain federal grants. This session will describe the array of services provided to faculty, how private grants differ from government grants, and how we coordinate with OVPR.
- Facilitator: Wendy Schlesinger, executive development director, wendy.schlesinger@slu.edu
- When: 10 to 11 a.m., Monday, Jan. 8
- Audience: Faculty and staff
- Location: Virtual (Zoom)
This 90-minute informational session will cover internal funding opportunities and mechanisms at SLU through the Office of the Vice President for Research. Learn to discover new opportunities, take advantage of existing funding and more. There will also be information and time for Q&A on preparing proposals for the Beaumont Scholarship Research Awards, Health Research Grants and President's Research Fund programs, all of which are due on Jan. 16 this year.
- Facilitator: David Borgmeyer, director of research development, david.borgmeyer@slu.edu
- When: 11 a.m. to noon, Monday, Jan. 8
- Audience: Faculty and staff
- Location: DuBourg Hall, Room 450/Hybrid (Zoom)
There is a growing chorus of calls to make all dimensions of research "open." What is the difference between open source, open science, open scholarship and the other "open" best practices? There are multiple grant-giving organizations and guidelines, some seemingly conflicting with each other, about the responsibilities of individual researchers and institutions to align with "open." This workshop will cover the motivations behind emerging funding and practice guidelines, and go over resources available to researchers at SLU to address these concerns.
Open Source with SLU is a University program that understands all these topics. We are uncovering better ways of addressing all things open. As the University's center of gravity for open-source software development, open science, and open scholarship, we are delivering sustainable value for researchers. Find out how Open Source with SLU is helping researchers address these challenges in innovative ways.
- Facilitator: Daniel Shown, program director, Open Source Software Center, daniel.shown@slu.edu
- When: 1-2:30 p.m., Monday, Jan. 8
- Audience: Faculty, staff, postdocs and graduate students
- Location: Virtual (Zoom)
A brief introduction to SLU's new faculty profile and research tool, Symplectic Elements (currently being installed). Elements will allow SLU faculty to showcase their research internally and externally, find collaborators, generate reports and documents (CVs, etc) based on their profiles and more. Because Elements is a smart system that automatically harvests publication and grant data from numerous public sources, the burden on faculty is significantly reduced relative to alternative methods. This session will introduce Elements and give faculty the opportunity to ask questions, address concerns and more.
- Facilitators: Joel Mort, research strategist, Office of the Vice President for Research, joel.mort@slu.edu; Jaffre Athman, business development director, Institute for Drug and Biotherapeutic Innovation, jaffre.athman@slu.edu
- When: 9-10 a.m., Tuesday, Jan. 9
- Audience: Faculty, staff and postdocs
- Location: Virtual (Zoom)
Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT are the classic means of creating an advanced search string in the library databases. However, for some deeper research questions, nested searches utilizing AND and OR can result in too many false results while NOT can unintentionally remove relevant ones. Learn how proximity searching can be used in some of the popular health databases to increase search effectiveness and efficiency.
- Facilitator: Katy Smith, health sciences librarian and assistant professor, Medical Center Library, katy.smith@slu.edu
- When: 10-11 a.m., Tuesday, Jan. 9
- Audience: Faculty and graduate students
- Location: Virtual (Zoom)
Learn the who, what, when, where, why and how of the Saint Louis University Conflict of Interest in Research Program.
- Facilitator: Kerry Borawski, director, Conflict of Interest in Research, Office of Research Integrity, kerry.borawski@health.slu.edu
- When: 11-11:30 a.m., Tuesday, Jan. 9
- Audience: Faculty and staff
- Location: Virtual (Zoom)
Primary source materials, like special collections, archives and digital collections, are important tools in performing research in several disciplines. This session, expanded from the annual Introduction to Primary Source Materials session run by the SLU Archives, will cover how to locate, handle and teach with these valuable research tools.
- Facilitator: Caitlin Stamm, University Archivist, caitlin.stamm@slu.edu
- When: 1-2 p.m., Tuesday, January 9
- Audience: Faculty, staff and graduate students
- Location: Virtual (Zoom)
In this half-hour workshop, learn tips and tricks for finding newspapers online, in SLU's Special Collections and those of other local institutions.
- Facilitator: Sarah Reando, librarian, Pius Memorial Library, sarah.reando@slu.edu
- When: 2-2:30 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 9
- Audience: Faculty, staff and graduate students
- Location: DuBourg Hall 450
A brief introduction to SLU's new faculty profile and research tool, Symplectic Elements (currently being installed). Elements will allow SLU faculty to showcase their research internally and externally, find collaborators, generate reports and documents (CVs, etc) based on their profiles, and more. Since Elements is a smart system that automatically harvests publication and grant data from numerous public sources, the burden on faculty is significantly reduced relative to alternative methods. This session will introduce Elements and give faculty the opportunity to ask questions, address concerns, etc.
- Facilitators: Joel Mort, research strategist, Office of the Vice President for Research, joel.mort@slu.edu; Jaffre Athman, business development director, Institute for Drug and Biotherapeutic Innovation, jaffre.athman@slu.edu
- When: 9-10 a.m., Wednesday, Jan. 10
- Audience: Faculty, staff and postdocs
- Location: Virtual (Zoom)
This hour-long informational session will allow faculty to learn about the pre- and post-award services provided by the Grant Operation Center, which serves all departments outside the School of Medicine. Faculty who attend will understand the GO Center’s role in the research enterprise at SLU and know who to contact for assistance with grant applications, grant project expenses, and much more.
- Facilitator: Matt Renaud, director, GO Center matt.renaud@slu.edu
- When: 9-10 a.m., Wednesday, Jan. 10
- Audience: Faculty
- Location: Virtual (Zoom)
Workday for Researchers will cover essential topics that a Principal Investigator needs to know to effectively administer a grant. Topics covered will include how to use Workday to start the proposal process, how to review key components of your award in Workday, how to manage Workday inbox tasks and discuss key HR components of Workday.
- Facilitators: Matt Renaud, director, GO Center, matt.renaud@slu.edu; Kellisa Fiala, post-award specialist, GO Center, kellisa.fiala@slu.edu
- When: 11 a.m. to noon, Wednesday, Jan. 10
- Audience: Faculty
- Location: Virtual (Zoom)
This will be an information session introducing several training workshops offered by SLU OVPR. The workshops focus on skills and tools for developing successful research plans and research proposals. Four workshops will be introduced:
- Developing a successful research plan — appropriate for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and early career faculty;
- Preparing a competitive research proposal — appropriate for faculty at all levels;
- Evaluating reviews and revising proposals — appropriate for faculty who have not been successful in obtaining external funds; and
- Funding opportunities for early career researchers. An approximate schedule for each of these full workshops (one-half to one day in duration) during the 2024 calendar year will be provided.
The session will be 60 to 90 minutes long, depending on questions and discussions, and it will be offered in hybrid (in-person and online) form.
- Facilitators: Saran Twombly, OVPR consultant and workshop lead, saran.twombly@slu.edu
- When: 1-2:30 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 10
- Audience: Faculty, staff and graduate students
- Location: DuBourg Hall, Room 450/Hybrid (Zoom)
The Research Computing Group (RCG) builds on Saint Louis University's ambition to develop and improve computing infrastructure, technology, services and research support. It results from a collaboration between the Office of the Vice President for Research and Information Technology Services. The group offers an array of research computing services to SLU's faculty and students. Learn how Research Computing can assist with your research ambitions and needs.
- Facilitator: Shruthi Sreenivasa Murthy, assistant director, Research Computing, shruthi.sreenivasamurthy@health.slu.edu
- When: 2-3 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 10
- Audience: Faculty
- Location: DuBourg Hall, Room 450
A brief introduction to SLU's new faculty profile and research tool, Symplectic Elements (currently being installed). Elements will allow SLU faculty to showcase their research internally and externally, find collaborators, generate reports and documents (CVs, etc) based on their profiles, and more. Since Elements is a smart system that automatically harvests publication and grant data from numerous public sources, the burden on faculty is significantly reduced relative to alternative methods. This session will introduce Elements and give faculty the opportunity to ask questions, address concerns, etc.
- Facilitators: Joel Mort, research strategist, Office of the Vice President for Research, joel.mort@slu.edu; Jaffre Athman, business development director, Institute for Drug and Biotherapeutic Innovation, jaffre.athman@slu.edu
- When: 3-4 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 10
- Audience: Faculty, staff and postdocs
- Location: Virtual (Zoom)
Research in the 21st century requires software. Research software tends to fall in three categories: acquisition, automation, or analysis. Doing acquisition involves capturing, cleaning, and managing data; automation involves making processes repeatable and scalable; analysis involves quantitative and qualitative processing, modeling, and exploration of the data sets. Sometimes existing software works (or works well enough) to meet the needs of researchers, but often advanced research requires specialized tools. Developing specialized tools comes with a whole range of challenges (cost, efficiency, quality, etc.) and sustaining that software for ongoing use and scientific reproducibility introduces even more.
Open Source with SLU is a university program that understands these challenges. We are uncovering better ways of addressing these challenges. As the university's center of gravity for open source software development, open science, and open scholarship we are delivering sustainable value for researchers. Find out how Open Source with SLU is helping researchers solve these challenges in innovative ways.
- Facilitator: Daniel Shown, program director, Open Source Software Center, daniel.shown@slu.edu
- When: 9-10 a.m., Thursday, Jan. 11
- Audience: Faculty, staff, postdocs and graduate students
- Location: Virtual (Zoom)
This session serves as an introduction of the SLU IRB, why it exists, and how it can help facilitate your research. The session will also cover where to submit materials to the IRB, and provide resources and a Q&A session.
- Facilitator: Mirela Grabic, quality assurance and education associate director, Office of Research Integrity, mirela.grabic@slu.edu
- When: 11-11:30 a.m., Friday, Jan. 12
- Audience: Faculty and staff
- Location: To be determined