Winners of the SAGE Higher Degree Research Student Publication Prize Announced

Posted by Sandra on 13 September, 2019

A paper on the challenges of visual place recognition for autonomous vehicles has taken out first place in the SAGE Higher Degree Research Student Publication Prize. Sourav Garg was awarded first prize and $1500 for his article, Semantic-geometric visual place recognition: a new perspective for reconciling opposing views, published in The International Journal of Robotics Research.

QUT Library has partnered with SAGE Publishing since 2014 to offer the SAGE Higher Degree Research Student Publication Prize. The prize is awarded to a Higher Degree Research (HDR) student, who is the lead author on a paper published in a peer reviewed journal with a Q1 or Q2 ranking. Aik Kai Tok, Library Sales Marketing Executive at SAGE Publishing said of their support for the award, “SAGE is globally committed to fostering healthy minds and cultures and to supporting both access to and output of the research community. In addition, SAGE invests time and funds in supporting the research community through sponsored awards and research outputs.”

QUT Library received a record number of entries to the prize this year. A panel of five judges, two academics and three librarians, evaluated the submissions on originality of the research, readability, and contribution of the applicant to the publication. Research Support Manager (Acting), Jennifer Hall, said that the calibre of entrants to the competition was extremely impressive, and that selecting the top three papers was no easy task for the judging panel.

Second place and $900 was awarded to Zhongtian Li for his paper, Corporate social responsibility employment narratives: a linguistic analysis, published in Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal. B.M.C. Randika Wimalasiri-Yapa was awarded third place and received $500 for her paper, Chikungunya virus in Asia-Pacific: a systematic review, published in the Open Access journal Emerging Microbes & Infections.

The awards were presented to the winners on 10 September. Sourav Garg, stuck at the airport in Tokyo due to monsoonal weather, attended via Skype. Sourav’s supervisor, Professor Michael Milford, accepted the award on his behalf.

QUT Library would like to thank SAGE for its ongoing sponsorship of the Higher Degree Research Student Publication Prize.

Authorship, Publication and Peer Review training

Posted by Sandra on 7 May, 2019

QUT Library and the Office of Research Ethics and Integrity (OREI) are once again offering training sessions for HDR students and Early Career Researchers on Authorship and Publication and Journal Peer Review.

Session 1: Monday 13 May 2019 – 9.30am – 11.30am

Authorship and Publication will cover the fundamentals of publishing in a series of tight 3 minute talks and videos. Topics to be covered include:

Developing a Data Management Plan
Open Scholarship Practices: Open Access
Originality and plagiarism
Promoting your work

Session 2: Tuesday 14 May 2019 – 1.00pm – 2.30pm

Journal Peer Review will cover different aspects of journal peer review. We will have speakers covering various topics along with videos. Topics to be covered include:

Forms of peer review
Conducting peer review
Responding to peer review
Emerging trends in peer review

Follow the links to register for one or both sessions.

Sign up for Session 1: Authorship & Publication (watch short video) – Monday 13 May 2019 – 9.30am – 11.30am

Sign up for Session 2: Journal Peer Review (watch short video) – Tuesday 14 May 2019 – 1.00pm – 2.30pm

Feedback from previous participants:

This was a great session. I learnt more about the publishing process this morning than I have in [my] whole time at [university]. I will be recommending [this] session to all early career academics.
A well organised, succinct morning. The format was great – moved along well and didn’t get bogged down …. All speakers were well prepared and their slides were clear and concise.
I would like to thank and congratulate the team for the organisation of both seminars! They were great! Excellent topics and speakers!!! The videos were great too! Thank you so much for the opportunity of learning such important topics and for having many doubts clarified. You are the best!
The format was great, and I found the structuring of the whole session around the map very helpful.
Both workshops were excellent, I got so much out of them and all the information was just perfect…. Short presentations from a variety of speakers who were all so engaging. These were some of the best run and most informative workshops I have done with QUT, thank you.

SAGE Higher Degree Research Student Publication Prize

Posted by Sandra on 3 April, 2019

SAGE Publishing is offering cash prizes ($1500 First Prize, $900 Second Prize and $500 Third Prize) for the top three papers accepted for publication, by a Higher Degree Research (HDR) student.

You have until 19^th July 2019 to enter, so sharpen those pencils! The awards will go to HDR students who are the lead author on a manuscript judged to be among the top three papers, and accepted by a peer reviewed journal, with a Q1 or Q2 ranking in Scimago or Journal Citation Reports. The paper must have been accepted for publication between the 1^st December 2018 and 30^th June 2019.

Papers will be judged according to the following criteria:

The originality of the research
Readability: The paper is well written and easy to understand
Contribution of the applicant to the publication.

To be eligible to enter, you must:

Be a current QUT Higher Degree Research (HDR) Student (QUT MOPP).
Be the lead author and have played a significant role in data collection, data analysis, and preparation of a manuscript accepted for publication in a refereed (peer-reviewed) journal, allocated a Quartile 1 (Q1) or Quartile 2 (Q2) (ranking in Scimago or Journal Citation Reports in any subject area, between 1^st December 2018 and 30^th June 2019.
Email library.research@qut.edu.au to advise of manuscript acceptance and publication details by 19^th July 2019.

You’ve already done the hard work of writing the paper; enter now with the chance to further highlight your research!

For the full terms and conditions and to apply, click here. If you’d like more information contact library.research@qut.edu.au.

It’s Christmas time, and there’s no need to be afraid…

Posted by Sandra on 18 December, 2018

Around the world and across Australia the Christian celebration of Christmas is in the air (and on our screens, in our ears and along our streets).

For many it’s a time to catch up with friends and family, to have some time off work or study, to go to the beach, and to relax with a good book.

With such a vibrant international staff and student community at QUT we thought we’d provide a quick guide to Aussie Christmas protocols to help those who aren’t so familiar with the Aussie yule time traditions.

Do the Brisbane City Council Christmas lights tour – wandering through the suburbs and strangers’ backyards to see the houses and streets decorated for Christmas
Eat a hot roast lunch with heavy puddings served in scorching temperatures (you can replace with seafood and salads, but many don’t)
Play a backyard cricket match after lunch (over the fence is six and out, and you can’t get out on the first ball). Alternatively, collapse into a chair and vow never to eat again.
Head to the beach– possibly the best way to spend the day.
Watch on as uncles and father’s make their way to the hospital emergency department on Christmas afternoon after “demonstrating” how to ride a child’s new skateboard.

We know for many, having Christmas in Summer is just plain weird, but whatever you get up to over the break you can still access all of our QUT Library resources online, including a range of Christmas-themed books, eBooks and videos from children’s literature to Christmas cooking, to streaming Christmas movies.

All campus libraries will be closed from Saturday 21st December until Tuesday 2nd January. Have a safe and relaxing break – we’ll see you in the new year.

Brisbane City Council Christmas parade

International Human Rights Day

Posted by Sandra on 9 December, 2018

On Monday 10 December we celebrate International Human Rights Day. While it will be celebrated in different ways by different people, the message around the world is the same.

This year the Universal Declaration of Human Rights turns 70. The document, which proclaimed the inalienable right to which all human beings are entitled — regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status, is the most translated in the world.

A really lovely representation of these principals, and a great way to share them with a younger audience is the illustrated edition of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s published by the United Nations in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.

QUT is heavily involved in research into the area of human rights. Here’s some of our most recently published works about the current challenges and issues in the area — available in QUT’s ePrints repository.

O’Brien, Erin (2019) Challenging the Human Trafficking Narrative: Victims, Villains, and Heroes.

Kauli, Jackie & Thomas, Verena (2018) Communicating the law: A participatory communication toolkit for human rights defenders in Papua New Guinea.

Huggins, Anna & Lewis, Bridget (2018) The Paris Agreement: Development, the North-South divide and human rights.

Mann, Monique, Warren, Ian, & Kennedy, Sally (2018) The legal geographies of transnational cyber-prosecutions: extradition, human rights and forum shifting.

#StandUp4HumanRights

Open access week on tour at QUT

Posted by Sandra on 15 October, 2018

Guest blog by Ginny Barbour, Director of the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group & Professor at the Division of Research and Commercialisation,
Office of Research Ethics & Integrity QUT

As we head towards the end of October – we turn our focus to a week dedicated to open access (OA). Now in its 10th year, OA week has grown into a truly national and global celebration. It is an opportunity for everyone working in OA to reflect on successes and recent developments, announce new initiatives, and to consider the future.

What is the week about, and what does it mean for QUT staff and academics? This year signals a return to a core purpose of open access; to reduce inequity in access to information. The year’s theme is: “designing the equitable foundations for open knowledge”. The theme indicates a need for purposeful thinking about the next steps for OA, to ensure that everyone benefits – authors, readers, the wider academic community and beyond. Open access is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end – that of an equitable, efficient and FAIR means of sharing scholarly information.

QUT has had a truly momentous year with its repository passing 25 million downloads. QUT’s ePrints repository is the most successful repository in Australia. It has more than 86,000 items, more than 70% of which are full text. Depositing records and full text is the most important way that QUT researchers can comply with QUT’s open access policy and that of the two big Australian funders — all for free. But more than that, QUT’s repository allows anyone anywhere to access its research. The 25th millionth download highlights the equitable theme of OA Week, with the download coming from Namibia.

QUT also supports the work of the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group (AOASG), a group which QUT co-founded and which works for national strategies on OA as well as supporting the OA community in Australasia.

For academics who publish openly the benefits are concrete. A better readership for open articles is not surprising, but the benefit of increased academic usage are also becoming clearer through more citations. Critically, depositing in an OA repository such as QUT’s ePrints, is demonstrated to be the best way to boost citations. Furthermore, open articles are better connected into global systems for sharing information, which means that ultimately they can have wider societal impact.

QUT Library will be taking a roadshow around the QUT campuses in OA week to spread the word. Find out when the Open Access Bike will be coming to a campus near you!

Perils & pitfalls for early career researchers

Posted by Sandra on 27 September, 2018

Predatory publishing continues to be a trap for young players with more and more early career researchers falling victim. When this happens, not only do they effectively lose ownership and copyright of their hard work (with that the ability to publish it elsewhere), they often lose confidence, they can lose standing in their field, and they most certainly lose the potential for their research to be cited and shared with other researchers and future collaborators.

Looking for a publisher for your research should be a more of an experience like buying a new laptop or a car. Hopefully you don’t buy the first shiny thing you see. Hopefully you rely on people whose opinion you respect. Hopefully you check out the product reviews and comparison websites to see what your options are. Hopefully you don’t send a cash deposit after receiving a spam email from a car dealer.

Your diligence when looking for a potential publisher should likewise be seen as an investment in your future. Look to the journals the experts in your field are publishing in. Look to the journals your peers are publishing in. As an early career researcher, reputable journals will not send you email invitations to publish with them so don’t be tempted by vanity publishers. Don’t let your desperation for publication override your common sense.

Follow the Think Check Submit protocols. If you are still not certain, ask your faculty or liaison librarian to help you.

Predatory conferences, like predatory journals can also be difficult to spot, and without due diligence you can end up at a dodgy hotel, in a scary part of town, signing your authorship rights away and delivering a paper to six people, who will likely be the only people who ever hear about your research. You can check the Pivot database on the QUT Library’s databases page for legitimate calls for submissions for conference papers.

Proud to celebrate Pride

Posted by Sandra on 19 September, 2018

QUT Library is celebrating Pride month with a display of LGBTIQA+ literature at Kelvin Grove library.

We have a selection of LGBTIQA+ children’s and young adult literature in our collection and many of our librarians are members of QUT’s Ally Network.

Allies are QUT staff trained to understand sexuality and gender issues and to provide ‘safe zones’, support and referral for staff and students who identify as LGBTIQA+.

At this weekend’s Brisbane Pride Rally & march QUT staff, students and supporters will be marching under a University Unity banner. Join with your work mates, friends or family and march to demonstrate acceptance, unity, inclusivity and support for the LGBTIQA+ community.

The parade kicks off at 10am on Saturday 22 September 2018. Gather from 9:30am at Brunswick Street between Ann Street and McLachlan Street. After some short speeches, the march will make its way down Brunswick Street through the Valley to New Farm Park, and the Fair Day festivities.

What the world needs now…

Posted by Sandra on 3 September, 2018

The Brisbane Writers Festival begins this month with a plethora of events and activities happening around the city.

This year’s theme is What the world needs now and in keeping with that, QUT Library wants to celebrate with a little bit of understanding and history.

We thought we’d put the spotlight on some of our own Brisbane authors, and showcase what it was like growing up here in Brisvegas. If you didn’t start your life here, get a great picture by reading some of our top Brisbane author picks:

Rebecca Sparrow (2003) The Girl most Likely: A Novel

Nick Earls (1996) Zigzag Street

David Malouf (1975) Johnno

Nicole Watson (2011) The Boundary

If fashion is your passion, don’t miss out on seeing QUT’s Vice Chancellor (Learning and Teaching) Professor Suzi Darbyshire who will be chairing an ‘in conversation’ Brisbane Writers Festival event at the State Library with author of The Devil Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger on Friday 7th September.

Paperbark: First Nation Narratives with Dr Anita Heiss

Posted by Sandra on 30 July, 2018

QUT Murri-Ailan Way is proud to present Paperbark: First Nation Narratives with Dr Anita Heiss.

Dr Heiss is a member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales and is one of Australia’s most prolific and well-known authors of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature.

A poet, satirist and social commentator, Dr Heiss will be speaking about her work and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander pioneers in literature who have inspired her next Wednesday 8 August at QUT Kelvin Grove Library next week (SOLD OUT see below for waiting list email).

If you didn’t manage to get a ticket, we have a number of Dr Heiss’s books available to borrow from the QUT Library including:

Avoiding Mr Right (2008) Offered the professional opportunity of a lifetime, Peta leaves her coastal life and doting boyfriend James in Sydney for a 12 month stint in the ‘fashion capital of Australia’.

Am I black enough for you? (2012) Anita Heiss gives a first-hand account of her experiences as a woman with an Aboriginal mother and Austrian father, and explains the development of her activist consciousness. Read her story and ask: what does it take for someone to be black enough for you?

I’m not racist but– : a collection of social observations. (2017) This collection of social observations, thoughts and conversations will challenge the reader to consider issues of imposed and real Aboriginal identity, the process of reconciliation and issues around saying ‘sorry’, notions of ‘truth’ and integrity, biculturalism and invisible whiteness, entrenched racism and political correctness.

Please email: k.csatlos@qut.edu.au to go on to the waiting list for this event