Yesterday I participated in a meeting organised by the RIN, tasked to look at ways to move forward from the situation painted in the RIN Mind the Skills Gap report. There were representatives there from many of the organisations who have an interest in supporting researcher development: Vitae, HEFCE, RCUK, RLUK, SCONUL, CILIP, BAILER, IOP and more. We had some very fruitful discussions about strategic engagement, matching training to needs and practical training issues, with the aim of identifying some practical outcomes which can be taken forward. Notes from the discussions will be made more widely available via RIN soon.

More rhododenrons from Lea Gardens

Pat Gannon-Leary and I gave a talk recently at the DARTS2 conference, based on our “one thing” research, where we asked editors, experienced researchers, research students and library staff what the “one thing” was they would say to people who want to write for publication.
You can see a copy of our presentation here:

During our talk, we asked all the participants to tell us “one thing” they were going to take away from the session, or “one thing” they wanted to share. I promised to post the summary of their responses on the blog, so here they are, with apologies for the delay:

And here am I giving the presentation:

I was very pleased to be asked to talk at the AHIS (Animal Health Information Specialists) conference at the beginning of June. The theme was library support for research (again!) and in particular writing for publication, but in addition to the talk I’ve done in the past, I added some thoughts about how libraries can facilitate publication by supporting a CoW – a Community of Writers.

Slides are here: