Celebrating the Culture of Research

The UP Diliman University Library through its Library Research Committee brings together database experts, professors, librarians, and students for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic drastically limited the conduct of physical events. As it is vital to continue to open doors to new forms of celebrating milestones, the four-part event is remarkable as thirteen professionals with expertise on database management, education, and librarianship came together to share their insights on research relative to their work. With the umbrella theme: ”Saliksik, Suri, at Sulat: Cultivating Research Culture and Excellence in the University Library,” the audience listened to talks on experiences related to technical writing, publication of journal articles, and evaluating them.

Posters to the first and second part of the series Saliksik, Suri, at Sulat: Cultivating Research Culture and Excellence in the University Library.

Delivered by the current Dean of the UP SLIS, Prof. Rhea Rowena U. Apolinario, Moving Beyond Writer’s Block: Strategies on Overcoming It engages its audience to get better by challenging the barriers the entire writing process brings. A daunting task for some, but not for the speaker. Writing is simply building the confidence of the writer by knowing one’s motivation and setting achievable goals. An hour later, the presentation Taking your Research Paper to the Next Level: Navigating Research Writing and Publishing Process of Johan Jang, the Customer Consultant of Elsevier Southeast Asia digs out the writing process so well that its stages which include prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing were featured. This event was held on April 18, 2023 and sealed first part of the series.

Part two kicked off on July 4, 2023, with Mastering Research Discovery and Assessment with Web of Science, Journal Citation Reports, and InCites: A Hands-on Training for Library Staff, being the first among the three talks set for the day. Senior Customer Success Manager of Clarivate, Dju-Lyn Chng highlighted Web of Science, Journal Citation Reports, and InCites. As journal articles are primary to higher education and publishing them is getting competitive, the speaker introduced the audience to the tools publishers employ against the changes affecting research publication. Towards the end of the event, Dju-Lyn Chng broke ranks by detailing what Clarivate resources fit the needs of the UP System and how the resources work together to further research. Making the research workflow more efficient””From idea to publication is the theme of the third talk.

Between Chng’s presentations, Prof. Dan Anthony D. Dorado led a discussion foregrounding research data management with data organization, documentation, and storage as its foundation. Further exploring Building a Strong Foundation: A Beginner’s Guide to Research Data Management through data repositories, metadata standards, and data visualization software contributed to the best practices. After describing and analyzing, the Director of the Diliman Learning Resource Center of UP Diliman established the importance of pursuing research projects. Unlike the former, this event had the presentations in HyFlex learning setting.

A handful of resource persons shared their expertise, solutions, and insights in the promotion of research at the library during the third and final part of the series.

The last part of the series occurred one after the other, during the morning and afternoon of September 5, 2023. While research is getting through the limited few, the Taylor & Francis Group, represented by Stephanie Oeben, proposed to open research findings to the public not just to the academic community where access is less stringent compared to most IP-based subscriptions. The Open Research Landscape 2023 revealed the options to open access research, policies on data sharing, and the tools supporting this initiative to share articles in open access. To further cultivate the culture of research, Alex Lazzari, the Head of the Humanities and Social Sciences International Journals Portfolio of Taylor & Francis Group, shared the hacks on how to get one’s article published in academic journals. The speaker for Publishing in Academic Journals stressed the fitness of the article to the theme set by the editorial board, professionalism, and patience are among the many criteria that will surely help one to grab a space in an academic journal.

Highlights from the SMU ASEAN Summer School by Elvira Lapuz talks about open access. As a member of the academe, the University Librarian also welcomed and introduced the series of topics to be presented, pivot on open access. The Open Access (OA) publishing option is supported by three factors: article publishing charge, sponsorship, and institutional agreement. Alongside elaborating on the role of research in the academe, the speaker highlighted her observations while at work with fellow Asian academics.

The Taylor & Francis Group announced their commitment to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals through their Sales Executive, Peregrin Carlos. In this series, the audience knew about their advocacy on disseminating information about the goals through the SDG Online platform. Its content has articles and chapters talking about the challenges the world is experiencing, and materials helping lecturers teach sustainability. To remain true to their advocacy, the Academic Library’s Vital Role in Achieving UN SDGs presented how the Taylor & Francis Group is committed to helping academic libraries promote the UN SDGs.

To wrap the day up are the talks of Cham Tat Huei and William Loh, respectively. These are Mastering the Art of Crafting Convincing Problem Statements in Research and Navigating Research and Publications: Strategies for Meeting Your Publications KPIs. Both speakers agreed that the critical part of writing is thinking about the motivation for doing so. It is in the initial stage that thinking about the effect of research matters. UCSI University Graduate School of Business Deputy Dean Cham Tat Huei believed that many writers are more than prepared to write for academic journals. William Loh of Emerald Publishing reinforced the talk by leading the audience to participate in the Call for Paper initiatives. To raise the bar in the conduct of lectures for libraries, the day was spent with the lecturers coming from across the globe utilizing the Internet in presenting their respective presentations while the some of the audience listened from their respective work stations-others on the venue.

”Saliksik, Suri, at Sulat: Cultivating Research Culture and Excellence in the University Library” champions the culture of research by strengthening the skills in addition to building the confidence of librarians and library staff to embark on writing research proposals to further knowledge production among the community. It is a collaborative effort of the UP Diliman University Library through its Library Research Committee, Clarivate, EBSCO, Elsevier, Emerald, and Taylor & Francis.