Methodologies and practices
Meaningful, quality research with the potential to make the world a better place requires properly using the right methodologies and technologies, and following the highest possible standard of integrity.
This page provides information on some resources available at Queen's to help you do that. Most of your specialist technical knowledge and skills will however be provided at Faculty-, School- and Group-level, by your PI, teammates, collaborators and colleagues.
This section includes:
- Research integrity, ethics and data management
- Core Technology Units
- Literature and sources
- Funding research training and development
- IT skills
You may also be interested in:
- Open Access practices (visit the Research Dissemination page)
- Personal effectiveness, project management and self-leadership (visit the Leadership and Vision page)
Research integrity
As a researcher, you are responsible for ensuring that your research and data meet agreed standards of ethics and integrity, notably protecting participants, animals and the environment.
The Research Governance team supports researchers with ethics and research practice. The Governance, Ethics And Integrity website provides all the relevant information, procedures and guidance in that area.
The Open Access team provides support with research data management and can advise on how to collect, define and store your data so that it can be safely maintained over time, understood and re-used by other researchers in the future.
Relevant training and resources:
- Good Research Practice online training: all researchers should ensure they understand what quality is expected of them and complete the modules that apply to their research. Modules include: Good Research Conduct, Irresponsible Research Practices, Planning Your Research, Managing and Recording Your Research, Data Selection, Analysis and Presentation, Scholarly Publication, Professional Responsibilities, Communication, Social Responsibility and Impact, Conflicts of Interest, Responsible Conduct of Research with Human Participants, The Care and Use of Animals in Research, Intellectual Property and Export Control
- Good Clinical Practice online training: The Research Governance team can provide you access to it upon request
- Human Tissue Act training: this is required to work with HTA-relevant samples (blood etc.)
- Ethical approval: a range of research, notably involving participants or animals, requires to be approved by an ethics board before it can be carried out
- Research Data Management guidance
- "Managing Research Data" and "Data Analysis" Nature Masterclasses (online)
- UK Research Integrity Office webinars "Introduction to research integrity" (UKRIO webinars on YouTube)
- MRCT center resources on Diversity, Inclusion and Equity in Clinical Research: includes guidance, toolkits, webinars and case studies to design more representative clinical trials
- FAIR data bitesize: An introduction to research data management for staff
- Let's get persistent with your research
- Finding and sharing research data
Safe research for all also requires following Health and Safety rules. Health and Safety training relevant to your discipline will be provided at School level.
Core Technology Units (CTUs)
Literature and sources
All good research is based on the work of others. The library helps you search and access former research.
In addition to providing an impressive number of specialist books and archives on multiple sites, Queen's library manages access to journals, articles and subject-specific databases.
Relevant training and resources:
- Library training: The subject librarians provide training, notably to learn how to use the library, how to search relevant databases or how to reference your sources
- Subject librarians: they are experts from your area who are here to help you with your search
- Libguides: the libguides contain helpful information relative to subjects and support available, as well as research-related topics such as Open Access, Persistent identifiers (e.g. ORCID), Reference management, Research data management or Systematic reviews.
Funding research training and development
Any technical training and secondment your may need to develop the research skills required for your project should normally be funded by the grant funding your research, your PI/group and your School.
External funders, including professional societies, may offer some funding for short-term secondments that can be used to develop skills. These can look really good on your CV so have a look at what is available and apply! Some tools to identify funding opportunities are listed on our Funding page.
The University may also fund some training and development activities via the Agility Fund, for which research staff are eligible to apply.
Depending on the context and discipline, one of the University's Impact Accelerator Account (IAAs) may offer relevant funding to carry out short placements/fellowships with external organisations (other sectors), and other training opportunities related to research impact.
IT skills
The IT (Information Technology) department provides help with informatic systems as well as workshops and self-guided learning resources in the areas of data analysis (SPSS, databases...), software courses (Microsoft Office, Office365, Photoshop...) and social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook).
Worth higlighting:
- List of IT courses
- IT helpdesk
- External training platforms such as LinkedIn Learning or MOOC also provide a range of data analysis training