The Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE) and University Libraries have designed the Research Ready Series to support graduate students and other members of the BGSU teaching community engaged in research and scholarship. If you attend three sessions in this series, you will be eligible to receive the Research Ready email signature stamp.

To learn more about upcoming sessions in this series, please see the listings below. Listings are in chronological order by date.

Advance registration is required for all events. Registration will close one business day before the scheduled event. Please register for an event by clicking on the registration link below. Please indicate your interest in receiving the stamp on the registration form. Registration is open to all members of the BGSU teaching community, including faculty, instructors, graduate students, and staff.

To individuals with disabilities, please indicate if you need special services, assistance or appropriate modifications to fully participate in the workshop either on the registration form or by contacting Accessibility Services at access@bgsu.edu or 419-372-8495. Please notify Accessibility Services and/or the CFE office prior to the event. 

Facilitators: 

• Tamia Jackson, Assistant Teaching Professor/Reference & Instruction Librarian
• Meli Taylor, Assistant Teaching Professor/Reference & Instruction Librarian

Research can be stressful, but University Libraries have the resources and information experts to make the process less painful. In this session, librarians will demonstrate the basics of conducting research through the library collections and databases. They will also discuss the many services and resources available to both on-campus and distance graduate students.  

In this session, you will learn how to:

• Identify the library and research services available to graduate students and other members of the BGSU teaching and learning community.
• Locate the variety of information tools available on the library website.

Facilitator: Laura Sheets, Assistant Professor/Library Instruction Coordinator, Library Teaching & Learning

One of the easiest ways to stress less about properly citing your sources is to get organized by using citation management software. Through the University Libraries, you have a free subscription to RefWorks, one of the main citation management software programs. RefWorks organizes information sources for multiple research projects and creates bibliographies, in-text citations, footnotes and endnotes in several citation styles. By using RefWorks, you will save yourself a lot of time and frustration. 

In this session, you will learn how to:

• Import information sources from library databases. 
• Create and edit projects and folders in RefWorks.  
• Create a bibliography using RefWorks. 

Facilitator: Emily Gattozzi, Scholarly Communication Strategist, University Libraries

Copyright doesn’t have to be scary! Join your peers for an introduction to U.S. copyright law, including an overview of the exceptions most relevant to research and teaching. Bring your questions to share during a friendly discussion at the end of the session.

In this session, you will:

• Define the exclusive rights granted to copyright holders, including you as a creator. 
• Identify what exceptions apply when you’re using the copyrighted works of others. 
• Determine when to secure permission to use copyrighted works.

Facilitators: Laura Sheets, Assistant Professor/Instruction Services Librarian, Library Teaching & Learning

Strategies for researching a literature review for a thesis, dissertation, or article for publication are different than general research strategies. How do you know you have enough sources to sound credible? Have you exhausted all your information paths? In this workshop, we will discuss how to get started, time-saving strategies for searching, and the appropriate information resources to trace known citations.

In this session, you will learn how to: 

• Draft a search statement to use in library databases and search engines. 
• Define backward and forward citation chaining. 
• Demonstrate backward and forward citation chaining in Web of Science and Google Scholar. 

Facilitator: Rebecca Stanwick, Assistant Teaching Professor/Reference & Instruction Librarian

Writing a literature review for an article, thesis, or dissertation can be daunting, especially if you’ve never written one before. Where do you even start? What should you include? In this workshop, we’ll discuss how to determine an appropriate scope for your literature review, how to organize your sources to make writing a breeze, and strategies for identifying themes in your sources.  

In this session, you will learn how to: 

• Categorize sources by theme to organize your literature review. 
• Determine an appropriate source for your literature review. 
• Identify the scope of your literature review.

Facilitators: 

• Edith Scarletto, Associate Professor/Reference & Instruction Librarian, Library Teaching & Learning
• Beth Fridrick, Assistant Professor/Collections & Electronic Resources Librarian, Library Teaching & Learning

Joining the scholarly conversation in your field can be intimidating. Where should you submit your article manuscript? Are some journals better than others? What about the emails you get from random journals asking you to submit your work? Using library databases such as Journal Citation Reports and Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory, the facilitator will demonstrate how to find and evaluate scholarly journals in your field and discuss the indicators of deceptive publishing practices.

In this session, you will learn how to:

• Use library databases and online resources to identify scholarly journals in your field(s). 
• Identify the red flags of deceptive publishing practices. 
• Evaluate scholarly journals based on various identifiers, such as impact factors and journal citation indicators.