Bodleian iSkills workshops aim to develop your skills in information discovery and scholarly communications, covering a variety of resources across a wide range of disciplines. They are primarily aimed at University of Oxford students and staff. Some workshops take place face-to-face, whilst others are run online.

The workshops are FREE but online booking is essential. A list of the sessions taking place this term can be found on the iSkills Workshops webpage.

Tuesday 11th March 2025 10:00-11:30

Open Scholarship: Preregistration and registered reports: What, why, and how

How do you ensure that your research is credible, to yourself and others? Preregistration means specifying in advance your hypotheses, methods, and/or analyses for a study, in a time-stamped file that others can access. Many fields, including behavioural and medical sciences, are increasingly using preregistration or Registered Reports (where a journal accepts your study at preregistration phase, and guarantees to publish the results if you follow the registered plan). If you’ve never preregistered a study before (or even if you have!) it can be complicated and hard to do well. In this workshop, we will go over the ‘what,’ ‘why,’ and ‘how’ of preregistration, and after some practice exercises, you will start drafting your own preregistration. We will also discuss some of the common challenges of preregistration, and its limitations. After the course, you will be able to:

• Describe what preregistration and Registered Reports are (and how they differ)
• Explain the benefits (and drawbacks) of preregistration and Registered Reports
• Identify what types of research are most suited for preregistration and Registered Reports
• Recognise the common pitfalls in writing a preregistration
• Identify the logistics of preregistering: which format and platform to use
• Demonstrate the ability to write an effective preregistration, with an appropriate balance of specificity and concision

Format: Online presentation with interactive exercises and time for questions.

Location: Microsoft Teams

Thursday 13th March 2025 14:00-15:30

Open Scholarship: Introduction to Open Science Framework at Oxford

Despite its name, the Open Science Framework (OSF) is an online tool for managing academic projects in any discipline. Rather than trying to reinvent tools and systems that scholars already use, OSF integrates with a growing list of existing services and provides a single place where researchers can see and manage all the components that make up their project – including files, software, data and publications. This course will introduce you to the Open Science Framework at Oxford. It will explain how to get access to OSF using your Oxford SSO, give an overview of what it can and cannot do, and provide some examples of how it can be used with other research services.

Format: Online presentation with time for questions.

Location: Microsoft Teams

Friday 14th March 2025 09:30-11:00

iSkills for Medicine: Introduction to Zotero

In this online workshop you will be shown the functionality of Zotero, which is a free-to-use software programme used to manage references and create bibliographies. Zotero will be demonstrated on a Windows PC but users of MacOS or Linux computers will be able to follow the demonstration. The workshop will cover:

• Understanding the main features and benefits of Zotero
• Setting up a Zotero account
• Importing references from different sources into Zotero
• Organising your references in Zotero
• Inserting citations into documents
• Creating a bibliography/reference list

Format: Online demonstration with time for questions.

Location: Microsoft Teams