Demonstrate your research by accurately acknowledging sources and develop your ideas into appropriate outputs, from module assignments to doctoral theses.
Communication is the skill employed when using research sources and shaping material into an output; this ranges from adherence to the conventions of scholarly communication and acknowledgement of sources, through to formulating a publication strategy.
Teaching this skill? Read on to see the learning objectives associated with each level, or click here to skip straight to our teaching case studies.
Select the boxes below to view the learning objectives for each level.
Learning objectives
Attribute and document research
Understand what Copyright is and adhere to copyright regulations.
Explain the purpose of Citation in academic work, including how it communicates the sources of ideas and information and distinguishes them from the author’s own contribution.
Recognise that different disciplines and departments use different referencing styles and locate and follow the relevant departmental style guidance.
Cite sources accurately and systematically using the required style, including sources in languages other than English and translations, where appropriate.
Recognise the difference between Common knowledge and information that should be supported with a citation, and seek guidance if unsure.
Follow institutional guidance on the use of AI in assessed work and, where use is permitted, declare its use accurately and transparently.
Explain what Plagiarism is, locate the institution’s academic integrity policy and guidance, and apply this when using and acknowledging sources.
Develop research outputs
Select appropriate digital tools to create research outputs, such as assignments, including word processing and presentation software. Know where to find support for using digital tools.
Recognise the limitations and risks of using AI for the purposes of creating research outputs, including inaccuracy, Hallucination, Bias, weak attribution, copyright concerns, and risks to privacy when material is uploaded.
Find your department’s preferred referencing style. Look at the guidance in Cite Them Right to familiarise yourself with the form of citations and bibliographies in that style.
Read this information about academic integrity and consider how you will uphold standards of integrity in your academic work.
Read this page to learn about ‘common knowledge’ and how to decide when to reference.
Look at LinkedIn Learning to find courses on using Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Canva.
Read the home page and the students page of the Library’s Copyright guide.
Look at the Library’s guide to Artificial Intelligence for guidance on citation and declaration of AI use.
Try this now!
Choose two sources of different kinds that you might want to cite in an a future assignment, such as a journal article and a book, and practice citing them in the style required by your department. Find the relevant source type in Cite Them Right and use the ‘try now’ window to check that your reference is formatted like the examples.
Learning objectives
Attribute and document research
Interpret and apply copyright requirements when using or reusing research materials, including text, images, data, and other media.
Explain the purpose and implications of Alternative licencing, including Creative commons licences, and select or follow an appropriate licence where relevant.
Locate and use authoritative guidance to select and apply appropriate referencing styles, adapting referencing practice to different source types.
Use scholarly, digital, and grey literature, ethically and responsibly, representing their content accurately and following academic integrity requirements.
Apply academic integrity principles consistently across different forms of research output as appropriate to the discipline, including essays, reports, research posters, or video essays.
Select, label, and reference figures, tables, images, and other visual elements accurately, while meeting relevant legal, ethical, and accessibility requirements.
Develop research outputs
Understand that standards of academic integrity apply regardless of the form of the research output (whether it is an essay, a report, a research poster, or a video essay).
Explain the basic principles of Open research and identify relevant open research practices, such as Preregistration, open access, open data, and the sharing of research materials where appropriate.
Resources and activities
Refer to the copyright guide to understand the copyright guidance you must interpret when using research materials.
Read about Creative Commons on their website to understand the purpose of alternative licenses.
Explore the referencing requirements for less common source types in Cite Them Right.
Browse the Library’s topic guides on news, artificial intelligence, and research data management, as relevant to your project, to explore what the requirements might be and know where to seek further support.
Check back for more activities and resources coming soon!
Try this now!
Find a source of a kind that you have never cited before, such as a report, video essay, or statute. Locate relevant style guidance for that type of source.
Learning objectives
Attribute and document research
Strategically use reference management software to manage references and generate citations and bibliographies, recognising its limitations and verifying the accuracy of its outputs.
Interpret and apply copyright, licensing, and attribution requirements to research materials and outputs, including third-party material used in a thesis. Identify where permission is required and comply with relevant contractual, funder, and institutional requirements. Understand the position of the thesis author as a copyright holder.
Apply relevant principles and disciplinary guidance when making decisions about authorship and acknowledgment in collaborative research and publication.
Make informed decisions about whether and how research data should be shared openly, applying appropriate standards for documentation, anonymisation, access, and reuse, including adherence to FAIR data principles.
Follow institutional and disciplinary guidance on the use of AI in writing and research communication, recognising risks relating to accuracy, attribution, confidentiality, copyright, and authorship.
Develop research outputs
Develop a publication and dissemination strategy informed by the Open research landscape, disciplinary conventions, funder requirements, applicable licenses, and the intended audiences for the research.
Navigate the processes associated with different research outputs, such as preparing a conference abstract, responding to peer review, submitting a journal article, or developing a monograph proposal.
Critically evaluate publication opportunities, recognising different types of Peer reviews, responsibly interpreting research metrics, and identifying indicators of Predatory publishing.
Develop and maintain an online researcher profile via university-provided and discipline-appropriate platforms, including persistent identifiers such as ORCID.
Evaluate how publisher policies, rights-retention strategies, and licensing affect open access publication and the sharing of research outputs.
Select and undertake appropriate open access routes for sharing research outputs, including the ‘gold’ and ‘green’ routes to open access, following funder requirements as necessary.
Explain the role of preprints, accepted manuscripts, and versions of record in the publication lifecycle, and select appropriate routes for sharing different forms of a research output.
Resources and activities
Attend an EndNote or Zotero training session to get an introduction to reference management software.
Read this page on Warwick theses to learn more about some of the considerations you should make when submitting your thesis.
Attend the Publishing Strategically, Profiles for Researchers, Open Research Essentials, Research Data Management Essentials, and Critical AI Use for Researchers training sessions.
Read here to learn more about the routes to open access, including gold and green, read and publish agreements, and open access funding.
Read about responsible metrics here, and attend the Investigating Research Metrics training.
Look at the Research Data Management topic guide to learn more about managing and sharing research data, as appropriate. Read more about the FAIR data principles here.
Think about the most important contributions to your research area. Where are they published? How are they published? Consider how this knowledge might inform your publication strategy.
Teaching staff
The skills of communicating research, by citing it, and forming it into an output, are most effectively nurtured when developed within the context of a student’s discipline and assessed work – by showing students examples that are relevant to their context and demonstrating citation (or, at the appropriate level, publication strategies) as appropriate to the discipline. The case studies below provide examples of where these skills, and library instruction, have been integrated into modular teaching and departmental skills provision.
The Research and Academic Services division can work with you to identify the searching skills most relevant to your students, design activities using subject-specific examples and resources, and embed teaching within your module or programme.
As part of the first year module Encounters with Material Culture, Classics students produce an academic poster as part of their assessment. The Library provides a session, embedded within the module, that covers designing a poster and the use of images for communicating ideas and research in academic work.
As well as introducing students to sourcing images, this session also provides an opportunity to learn about citation and its importance in the sharing of research along with the principles of copyright and licensing through models such as creative commons. Students need to demonstrate an understanding of these ideas through their selection and use of images in the final poster, which act as a useful surrogate for information sources more generally.
As part of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies’ Dissertation programme, the CIM Librarian delivered sessions on finding materials for your dissertation, which covered literature searching, and the Research Data Officer delivered a session on managing research data.
The Librarian for Law participated in a'Where to Publish' Seminar for Warwick Law School, discussing publication strategies, metrics, and open access. The discussion covered read and publish agreements, the potential benefits of gold open access, what journal metrics are and how to find them, and common pitfalls.
As part of a series of development sessions for postgraduate researchers, the Librarian for the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies delivered a session on searching for literature and this was followed by a session on managing and sharing research data given by the Research Data Officer.
As part of a joint Warwick Medical School-Life Sciences postgraduate researcher skills programme, a session was delivered on literature searching and publication strategies.
Contact us
We are developing the teaching provision (and case studies) arising from this framework on an ongoing basis. Please get in touch if you have any feedback, or would like to propose a session as part of your programme: contact us.
