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This paper aims to assess whether the current eResearch Knowledge Centre’s (eRKC) research support practices align with researchers’ requirements for achieving their research objectives. The study’s objectives were to assess the current eRKC research support services and to determine which are adequate and which are not in supporting the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) researchers.

This study uses interviews as part of the qualitative approach. The researcher chose to use interviews, as some aspects warranted further explanation during the interview. The interviews were scheduled using Zoom’s scheduling assistant. The interviews were semi-structured, guided by a flexible interview procedure and supplemented by follow-up questions, probes and comments. The research life cycle questions guided the interviews. The data obtained were coded and transcribed using MS Excel. The interview data were analysed, using NVivo, according to the themes identified in the research questions and aligned with the theory behind the study. Pre-determined codes were created in line with the six stages of the research life cycle and applied to group the data and extract meaning from each category. Interviewee responses were assigned to groups in line with the stages of the research life cycle.

The current eRKC research support services are aligned with the needs of HSRC researchers and highlight services that could be expanded or promoted more effectively to HSRC researchers. It proposes a new service, data analysis, and suggests that the eRKC could play a more prominent role in research impact, research data management and fostering collaboration with HSRC research divisions.

This study is limited to assessing the eRKC’s support practices at the HSRC in Pretoria, South Africa. A more comprehensive study is needed for HSRC research services, capabilities and capacity.

Assessment of eRKC followed a comprehensive interviewee schedule that followed Raju and Schoombee’s research life cycle model.

Zoom’s scheduling assistant may have generated Zoom fatigue and reduced productivity. Technical issues, losing time, communication gaps and distant time zones may have affected face-to-face interaction.

eRKC research support practices are rare in South Africa and most parts of the world. This study bridges the gap between theory and practice in assessing eRKC research support practices.

The purpose of this project was to develop research support services that address local and external research data management (RDM) support drivers within the existing organizational culture at the University of Florida. The goal was to prompt organization change to support a campus-wide electronic lab notebook.

This project used a mixed-methods research approach to cultivate an organizational change program that support technological infrastructure to benefit researchers. The mixed-methods research involved participation action research integrated with a stakeholder approach.

The development of the grant proposal which was unfunded led to development of continued project goals. This project confirmed the development for support for an institution-wide electronic research notebook (ERN) solution requires adherence to the summary of five key actions for developing RDM services. Failure to complete all of the key actions engenders fragmentation culture.

This project includes implications for institutions to develop grant proposals with integrated budgets for research support services of funded projects; and to use the summary of key actions for developing RDM services articulated by Jones et al. (2013) in “How to Develop RDM Services – a guide for HEIs.” Both are need to support findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable data for researchers.

This project has practical implications for higher education institutions interested in leveraging socio-technical processes to advance the role of libraries as collaborator, partner and stakeholder in developing institution-wide adoption, support and training for ERN as a research support service to RDM.

This paper contributes to the body of developing literature on ERN as support services to RDM lead by academic research libraries.

This project contributed to the change in organization culture resulting in the successful collaboration between the Research Office and College of Medicine to support an institution-wide ERN technological infrastructure for one year as a pilot at a large academic research institution in the southeast USA.

To research involvement of healthcare staff in the UK and identify practical organisational and policy solutions to improve and boost capacity of the existing workforce to conduct research.

A mixed-method study presenting three work packages here: secondary analysis of levels of staff research activity, funding, academic outputs and workforce among healthcare organisations in the United Kingdom; 39 Research and Development lead and funder interviews; an online survey of 11 healthcare organisations across the UK, with 1,016 responses from healthcare staff included for analysis; and 51 interviews of healthcare staff in different roles from six UK healthcare organisations.

Interest in research involvement is strong and widespread but hampered by a lack of systematic organisational support despite national policies and strategies to increase staff engagement in research. While useful, these external strategies have limited universal success due to lack of organisational support. Healthcare organisations should embed research within organisational and human resources policies and increase the visibility of research through strategic organisational goals and governance processes. A systems-based approach is needed.

The research gathered data from a limited number of NHS trusts but these were purposively sampled to provide a range of different acute/community health service organisations in different areas. But data was therefore more detailed and nuanced due to a more in-depth approach.

The findings are relevant for developing policies and practice within healthcare organisations to support research engagement. The findings also set out key policy and strategic recommendations that will support greater research engagement.

Increased research activity and engagement in healthcare providers improves healthcare outcomes for patients.

This is a large scale (UK-wide) study involving a broad range of healthcare staff, with good engagement of nurses, midwives and Allied Healthcare Professionals who have not been previously achieved. This allowed valuable analysis of under-researched groups and comparisons by professional groups. The findings highlight the need for tailored action to embed research reporting, skills, professional development and infrastructure into organisational policies, strategies and systems, along with broader system-wide development.

This paper aims at understanding the current situation of research support services offered by academic libraries in world-leading universities and providing useful implications and insights for other academic libraries.

Of the top 100 universities listed in the QS World University Rankings in 2017, 76 libraries were selected as samples and a website investigation was conducted to explore the research support services. The statistical method and visualization software was used to generalize the key services, and the text analysis and case analysis were applied to reveal the corresponding implementation.

Research support service has become one of the significant services of academic libraries in the context of e-research and data-intensive research. The research support services can be generally divided into seven aspects, as follows: research data management (62, 81.58 per cent), open access (64, 84.21 per cent), scholarly publishing (59, 77.63 per cent), research impact measurement (32, 42.11 per cent), research guides (47, 61.84 per cent), research consultation (59, 77.63 per cent) and research tools recommendation (38, 50.00 per cent).

This paper makes a comprehensive investigation of research support services in academic libraries of top-ranking universities worldwide. The findings will help academic libraries improve research support services; thus, advancing the work of researchers and promoting scientific discovery.

This paper aims at examining graduate research supervisors' perceptions of organizational and job supervisors' support and their influence on research completion rate. While research supervision has been mainly examined from pedagogical perspectives, little emphasis has been placed on the human resource management (HRM) activity for academics. This review paper draws from organizational support and social exchange theories (SET) to examine the influence of perceived organizational support (POS) and perceived supervisor support (PSS) in research supervision work.

The paper is a narrative literature review of identified relevant readings on organizational support and social exchange, research supervisors' perceived support and their implications for research.

Research supervisors examine their perceptions of administrative, professional, financial and socio-emotional support from their universities and job supervisors. They in turn feel obligated to reciprocate, for example, through commitment, engagement and performance, towards meeting their goals with the organization, the job supervisor and the student.

The study relied on a literature review; hence, the findings may not reflect actual expressions of research supervisors' perceptions.

The paper shows the application of organizational support and social exchange theories in academic work. It emphasizes the importance of support, perception and reciprocation through an exchange relationship. The research support framework is a guide to managing the relationships among the parties involved in research work.

The paper considers research supervisors as key human resources (HRs) that espouse supportive HRM practices from both the organization and the job supervisor. This is unlike most studies that have employed only pedagogical approaches in explaining research. It further develops a research supervision support framework.

How academic libraries support the research of their parent institutions has changed as a result of forces such as changing scholarly communication practices, technological developments, reduced purchasing power and changes in academic culture. The purpose of this paper is to examine the professional and educational implications of current and emerging research support environments for academic libraries, particularly with regard to research data management and bibliometrics and discuss how do professionals and educators “make space” as new service demands arise?

The present paper uses data from a recent survey of research support provision by academic libraries in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Ireland, (authors 2013), and provides additional in depth analysis of the textual responses to extend the analysis in the light of forces for change in higher education. The original online questionnaire surveyed current and planned research support in academic libraries, and constraints or support needs related to service developments. It was distributed to 219 institutions in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Ireland, and obtained 140 valid responses (response rate of 63.9 percent). Results were analyzed using descriptive statistics with thematic categorization and coding for the textual responses.

Most academic libraries surveyed are already providing or planning services in the focal areas of bibliometrics and data management. There was also increasing demand for other research support services, not the focus of the study, such as eresearch support, journal publishing platforms, and grant writing support. The authors found that while many academic libraries perceive increasing research support services as a “huge opportunity” they were constrained by gaps in staff skills, knowledge, and confidence and resourcing issues. With regard to staff education and training, it was reported they require a broader understanding of the changing research and scholarly landscape, the research cultures of different disciplines, and technological change. There was a near-universal support for development of more comprehensive, specialized, LIS education to prepare professionals for broader research support roles.

This further analysis of the implications of our survey in relation to influences such as economics, academic culture, technology, raises questions for both educators and practitioners about the future direction of the profession and how the authors collectively “make space” as new potential services arise.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the mechanisms used by Flinders University Library to sustain a culture of research. Flinders University Library has been supporting its librarians to undertake research projects using a formal support group mechanism, known as the Research Working Group (RWG), sanctioned and resourced by library executive since 2010. This established a culture of practitioner-based research in the library, with the librarians developing a greater understanding of both the theory and practice of qualitative and quantitative methods by undertaking their own research projects. However, sustaining a research this culture brings new challenges which this paper now explores.

This case study describes the methods used at Flinders University Library in sustaining a culture of practitioner-research. This arose from a review of the formal support structure, as well as a previous study that surveyed staff responses to the RWG.

As academic libraries face ongoing challenges and engage more broadly with research support, librarians need experiential knowledge of research. In the case of Flinders University Library, the author has found that, in seeking to sustain a research culture, the author has needed to adapt the support mechanisms, including a greater emphasis on peer support, a different model of resourcing and more inclusivity for all staff to engage with research work.

This paper is limited by its scope as a single-institution case study; however, there are opportunities for other academic libraries to learn from this experience.

Establishing a culture of practice-based research is not an easy undertaking, requiring dedication from all parties whether management, practitioner-researchers or mentors. While there are many examples in the literature of case studies examining the establishment of research culture, few if any take the next steps to explore how to maintain it. This paper seeks to fill that gap.

This qualitative study explores the issue of library management support in providing a self-directed learning environment for research-support librarians which is an under-explored feature of librarianship in Malaysian public university libraries.

A total of nine research-support librarians purposely selected from these libraries took part in in-depth interview sessions. The responses were analysed using Miles and Huberman's technique, which involves data reduction, data display, conclusion-drawing and verification.

Five emerging themes and 31 sub-themes were identified. There was a general consensus among the respondents that their library management does provide research-support librarians with a self-directed learning environment to enhance their competencies as academic librarians. Nevertheless, these librarians also highlighted some challenges, issues and barriers related to the initiative and support received. Some suggestions are advanced for improvements to support self-directed learning by research-support librarians working in public university libraries.

Empirically, this study attempts to fill the gap in the knowledge that needs to be addressed from the perspective of Malaysian librarians, especially the research-support librarians, who serve in public universities in Malaysia, who have received little attention from local librarianship researchers.

This paper aims to outline principal implications for institutions, particularly universities, in supporting the increasingly complex tools which are used in the data lifecycle.

The discussion paper draws upon the experience of authors in this domain at the institutional, national and international levels.

Support for research tools by universities has high-level implications, ranging from financial, strategic and compliance through to capacity, capability and connectivity. The large number of existing tools highlights the need to evaluate them against standardised checklists to determine suitability and levels of resources required for support. Librarians and other information professionals need to expand their current support for research tools beyond the discovery phase to the entire data lifecycle.

Universities can use this paper to assess their maturity in supporting tools in the data lifecycle. Librarians, in particular, can broaden their knowledge of the various categories of tools which support specific aspects of that lifecycle.

While much attention is currently being focused on supporting researchers with their data management requirements, there is a general lack of literature on how to support tools as a critical element in enhancing research outcomes.

Depending on their institutional context, for new faculty members to successfully manage their transition from doctoral studies to early career, they must show potential as researchers. The purpose of this study was to learn about supports and barriers to researcher development in new faculty members.

The investigators solicited open-ended responses from early career faculty members (N = 49) in an online survey. Content analysis was used to provide an initial categorization of supports and barriers identified by the participants.

Ten barrier categories (e.g. lack of resources, previous training, lack of mentoring, workload) and eight support categories (e.g. effective research collaborations, supportive university environment, funding) were identified.

Findings were framed with a social cognitive conceptual model, which parallels previous studies in doctoral research training environments and research productivity and builds on our knowledge of early career faculty development. The study was limited in terms of number of participants and online response format.

Practical implications to minimize barriers and enhance supports for new faculty researcher development were identified (also drawing from the conceptual model, SCCT).

Thus, the study has value for university policymakers, administrators, faculty peers, research mentors and assistant professors or doctoral students seeking to develop as researchers.