Research Announcement September 2019

Updates on the UCT research landscape

27 September 2019

Dear colleagues

This announcement aims to keep members of the research community informed about news and updates in the research space.


2019 publication count cycle is open

The 2019 publication count cycle opened 1 August 2019. The successful reporting of qualifying research publications is critical for UCT, as the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) distributes research income to universities according to their measure of research output reported in the annual publication count. The bulk of this money is allocated to faculties as operations budget in direct relation to the proportion of units produced. It is therefore in your, and your faculty’s, interests to correctly capture your research publications.
 
All qualifying research publications must be captured on the eRA system, as has been done for the last several years. In addition, hardcopies of the qualifying publications are collated by the departmental coordinator and are checked and passed on to the faculty coordinator assigned to manage the publication count, for onward submission to the Research Office (RO). It is a requirement of the DHET policy that RO receive hard copies of qualifying publications.

We ask that you please work with your departmental coordinator to ensure all your qualifying research publications are reported on.
 
Please contact your faculty or departmental coordinators regarding internal faculty deadlines.


Click here to see a list of the faculty coordinators.

And click here to find out more about the annual publication count.


Get your legal and finance questions answered at the RC&I hot desk

RC&I in partnership with Research Finance are launching a hot desk initiative where representatives from the three areas: research contracts, finance and innovation will be coming to departments and faculties to answer your questions. 
 
The plan is to find several hot spots where the team will spend a couple of hours on a regular basis. You will be informed through your department or faculty when we will be hot desking near you.
 
Come find out more about (among others):

  • intellectual property protection;
  • commercialisation of UCT research and spin-off company formation;
  • the intellectual property policy;
  • material transfer agreements;
  •  fund management;
  • full cost; costing templates and overhead recovery.

 
If you would like the team to come to your department, please email Yandi Sopete.


Make sure your research data is properly managed with UCT DMP

Creating a data management plan (DMP) at the proposal stage of your research project will not only benefit your academic career in the long run, but also ensure you don’t find yourself on the wrong side of funder mandates or national legislation.
 
To help you with this Digital Library Services offers an online tool called UCT DMP (formerly UCT DMPonline) which offers a wide array of new features to help you create, review and collaborate on your DMP.
 
Some of the features on UCT DMP:

  • New create plan’ wizard:
    • simplified set of questions to get started;
    • accessible dropdown boxes.
  • Sharing DMPs:
    • plans are private by default, but can be shared with collaborators. 
    • plans can now be made public / published.
  • Evaluating DMPs: 
    • improved ‘request feedback’ workflow.

Click here to find out more about research data management at UCT.


eRA pre-awards module successfully piloted, ready to rollout

Over 250 pre-awards approvals  have been successfully captured into the electronic Research Administration (eRA) system. Around 160 of those have been finalised, approved and submitted to the funder and 80 of those submitted have been awarded by the funder.

These approvals are from the Faculty of Health Sciences and various pilots in other faculties. 
 
Based on the success of the pilots, the eRA pre-awards module will be rolled out to the rest of the university from the 1 October 2019.

 
Click here to read more about the eRA pre-awards module rollout.


Giving credit where credit is due

The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) would like to remind the research community of the institutional Authorship Practices Policy.
 
Authorship allocates credit to those involved in the research and also allocates responsibility for the integrity of the research and its publication. Authorship practices should reflect the integrity of the research process by honestly indicating the actual contributions to the publication.
 
Publications must give appropriate credit to all authors for their roles in the research.
 
For more information contact ORI here

 


Maximise your research visibility with an ORCID iD

‘Enter once, reuse often’ is the goal of the Open Research and Contributor ID (ORCID), a 16-digit unique identifier which you can use to clearly distinguish yourself from other researchers, particularly researchers with the same name, and connect with all your professional affiliations and contributions. 
 A number of online systems, including our own electronic Research Administration (eRA) system, are connected with ORCID which means you can manage your research publications through your single ORCID iD number: enter your publications once, reuse your ORCID iD as often as needed across a number of systems. 
 
An ORCID iD is already a requirement of the NRF and other funders. 
  
It is free and takes less than five minutes to register. 
 
Register for free with ORCID here.  


Umthombo: UCT's research magazine

Umthombo, prepared by the Research Office’s Global Strategy and Visibility team, showcases the wide range of research undertaken at UCT. While the publication is written with an international audience in mind, there is much to interest local readers.
 
Click here to read the online version of issue 3, which highlights both the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance and the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), of which UCT is a member.
 
Umthombo issue 4 will be available in November. Click here to subscribe to the mailing list to make sure you don’t miss it.
 
If you believe your research should be featured in Umthombo or elsewhere, contact Lisa Boonzaier.


The Research Announcement is produced by the Research Office, University of Cape Town.

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