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✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Training: How Do You Do (It)? A behind-the-scenes look at research workflows (KU Leuven)

作者Laura Mesotten
2025年9月25日 16:03

This event is only open to KU Leuven researchers and staff.

The Artes Research team from KU Leuven Libraries Artes and the ABAP council will kick off the new academic year with a special “How Do You Do (It)?” (HDYDI) session dedicated to research data workflows. This special session will coincide with the start of the Digital Scholarship Module taught by the Artes Research team. It will take place on Thursday 6 November, 14:00-16:30, in the Justus Lipsiuszaal (Erasmushuis, Leuven).

Everyone is welcome to attend, you do not need to register!

Program

14:00-15:00

To help you through the afternoon slump, we will start with coffee and cookies which will be served in the main entrance hall of the Erasmushuis.

15:00-16h30

We will then move up to the 8th floor (Justus Lipsiuszaal) to start the session which will feature talks from researchers at the Faculty of Arts who outline their research workflows: how do they approach their research, what tools do they use, with what kind of data are they working, etc. We will get a behind-the-scenes look from:

There will be lots of time for questions and getting to know each other’s workflows.

The event will take place in Leuven, but if you would like to join online you can let us know at artesresearch@kuleuven.be and we will provide you with the link.

Practical details

  • When: Thursday 6 November, from 14:00 to 16:30
  • Where: coffee in main entrance hall and session in Justus Lipsiuszaal (Erasmushuis, Leuven) with online option: if you would like to join online you can let us know at artesresearch@kuleuven.be and we will provide you with the link
  • Price: free
  • Registration: no registration required
✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Event Series: DH@rts Drop-in Sessions (Fall 2024)

作者Laura Mesotten
2024年10月14日 18:48

Have you been meaning to set up an appointment to ask about research data management for your project, an aspect of your research workflow, or a specific DH tool or method? You can now come to one of our drop-in sessions and we will help you on the spot! No need to make an appointment!

The sessions are designed to support researchers, students, and staff members in all areas of digital scholarship. The initiative is a collaboration between Artes Research, DH-support staff and researchers at the Faculty of Arts, and ICTS at the Faculty of Arts.

Some areas that we can help with:

  • Getting started with Zotero or optimizing Zotero use with an existing Zotero library
  • Suggesting DH tools or methods for your specific research questions
    • Relational databases in FileMaker
    • Social Network Analysis and network visualizations
    • Computational tools for working with texts
  • Providing resources for various DH and RDM tools
  • Advice on DMPs
  • Advice on scholarly communication
  • Advice on Lirias
  • … and much more!

Don’t have a question about any of the above but want to learn more about DH? No problem! Come and use our space for co-working! It’s a great moment to develop digital skills by starting a Programming Historian tutorial, for instance!

Stop by on one of the following dates and we will be glad to help you:

  • Thursday 7 November, 14h-16h, the Salon (LETT 00.24)
  • Thursday 5 December, 14h-16h, the Salon (LETT 00.24)
✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Training: Structured Note-taking with Digital Tools

作者Laura Mesotten
2024年4月8日 17:18

The Artes Research team from KU Leuven Libraries Artes will organize a training on structured note-taking with digital tools on Thursday 13 June, 10h to 12h at Agora Learning Centre, collaborative learning space (M00.E67). Everyone is welcome to attend but registration is required.

Program

Would you like to find a better way to organize your thoughts, research notes, and writing process? Structured note-taking applications can be an invaluable tool to help you get a grip on your ideas and deal with information overload effectively. These applications can enable you to boost your productivity by streamlining your workflow and making your notes more accessible in the long run.

During the training you will be introduced to various structured note-taking applications. Learn about how to use them, their pros and cons, and how to choose an application that suits your needs.

Practicalities

✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Training: Relational Databases – Advanced

作者Laura Mesotten
2024年3月26日 22:25

The Artes Research team from KU Leuven Libraries Artes and the Faculty of Arts will organize a training on relational databases, given by Tom Gheldof, on Thursday 18 April, from 13h30 to 16h30, in the Colloquium (University Library, Leuven). Everyone is welcome to attend, but you do need to register.

This training is a follow-up session from the relational databases basics training that took place in November 2023. That workshop provided an introduction on how to model information, what a relational database is and how it works, and finally, how to get started creating a relational database (using the Claris FileMaker environment).

Program

The relational databases advanced training session allows participants to further develop their skills. If you participated in the basics training or if you have already started creating a relational database using FileMaker but would like guidance or to learn how to optimize your database, the advanced training might be a good fit for you!

Practicalities

✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Event Series: Digital Scholarship Drop-in Sessions with Artes Research (winter/spring 2024)

作者Laura Mesotten
2023年12月21日 21:21

Have you been meaning to set up an appointment with Artes Research to ask about research data management for your project, an aspect of your research workflow, or a specific DH tool? You can now come to one of our drop-in sessions, and we will help you on the spot! No need to make an appointment!

Some areas that we can help with:

    • Getting started with Zotero
    • Optimizing Zotero use with an existing Zotero library
    • Suggesting DH tools or methods for your specific research questions
    • Providing resources for various DH and RDM tools
    • Advice on DMPs
    • Advice on scholarly communication
    • Advice on Lirias
    • … and much more!

Don’t have a question about any of the above but want to learn more about DH? No problem! Come and use our space for co-working! It’s a great moment to develop digital skills by starting a Programming Historian tutorial, for instance!

Stop by on one of the following dates and we will be glad to help you:

    • Thursday 25 January from 10h30-12h30, Erasmushuis (LETT 01.16)
    • Thursday 22 February from 10h30-12h30, Erasmushuis (LETT 01.16)
    • Thursday 18 April from 10h30-12h30, Erasmushuis (LETT 01.16)
    • Thursday 30 May from 10h30-12h30, Erasmushuis (LETT 01.16)
✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Recap: How do you do it? A behind-the-scenes look at research workflows (2023)

作者Laura Mesotten
2023年12月6日 17:55

Each academic year, we, at Artes Research, kick-off the Digital Scholarship Module – a training for first-year PhD researchers at the Faculty of Arts – with a session dedicated to research data workflows. Three researchers from the Faculty of Arts offer a behind-the-scenes look at their research workflows by outlining how they approach and structure their research, the tools they use, and with what kind of data they are working. The goal of this session is to provide examples of more advanced workflows for the first-year PhD researchers as they embark on their research journey. Hopefully this recap of the session can spark some inspiration for you!

Vicente Parrilla López – Plain text and structured notetaking

Vicente’s research, which is in the field of musicology, focuses on reviving the Renaissance practice of improvised counterpoint. Apart from a PhD researcher, he is also a musician and recorder player himself. In his research workflow, Vicente consistently seeks out tools to enhance efficiency and further streamline the structure of his work.

Vicente introduced us to the versatility and accessibility of plain text files, highlighting the benefit of this file format, as it is universally usable across various computers and software platforms. One drawback, however, lies in readability due to the absence of text formatting and smaller typography. Fortunately, applications like iA Writer, which allow users to use markdown to apply additional formatting, address this issue.

There are a wide array of digital tools for structured notetaking out there. In addition to iA Writer, other examples include Obsidian and Notion. The key is to choose the tool that suits your needs and preferences best.

Vicente highlights the advantages of using plain text files for structured notetaking in conjunction with applications like iA Writer:

  • Distraction-free writing: plain text notetaking ensures an undisturbed writing experience with basic formatting; once you are finished you can preview your text for example as HTML or PDF output.
  • Versatility: plain text files are very adaptable; they can be exported to various formats such as HTML for websites, DOC for Microsoft Word, PDF, and even transform into programming language files like Python, Java, JSON, CSS, XML, LaTeX, among others.
  • Interconnectedness: notetaking tools like these often incorporate a tagging system that facilitate connections between concepts and ideas.
  • Search capability: these tools also offer robust search functionalities, ensuring swift and efficient retrieval of desired information.
 

An important aspect of Vicente’s notetaking workflow is the integration of structured metadata. Vicente implements a dedicated metadata section at the beginning of each note, enhancing the categorization and contextualization of his notes. In general, adding metadata in a systematic way offers several advantages. By recording key details like creation date, authorship, and related keywords, metadata enriches a note by adding surrounding context. Additionally, metadata enhances searchability by allowing the user to search for specific information or themes across an entire note repository. Lastly, structured metadata can foster collaboration between various users but also across different projects.

Vicente also introduced us to the concept of text expanders. The purpose of this type of software is to replace designated keystrokes, known as ‘shortcuts’ or ‘abbreviations,’ with expanded text segments. Its strength lies in expediting the writing process by swiftly inserting frequently used words or phrases into articles, grant applications, and more. It can also help to easily integrate standardized metadata and bibliographic entries. Using the text expander software allows Vicente to have a streamlined writing experience. When used systematically, it also helps him create consistency across various documents. Moreover, the program saves him the time that would be spent on manually inserting phrases or words he uses frequently in his research and writing.

Stijn Carpentier – Digitized source material and distant reading

Within the Negotiating Solidarity project, Stijn’s research aims to uncover and contextualize the wide variety of contacts between actors within Belgian civil society and the rapidly growing influx of foreign guest workers from the 1960s to the 1990s. Despite labeling himself as a hobbyist in the Digital Humanities realm, Stijn presented to us an inspirational workflow where he merges historical research with digital tools.  

Stijn’s journey into DH was triggered by his source material. For his research, he wanted to explore how guest workers in Belgium were communicating about their activities and their ideas through periodicals and other types of serial sources. As the term suggests, serial sources are published at regular intervals, resulting in an overwhelming volume of material that cannot always be read entirely during the timeframe of a PhD project. Consequently, Stijn sought an efficient method to comprehensively analyze this extensive array of sources without having to read them all in full.

The first step to achieve this goal was digitization. Stijn encountered both undigitized and poorly OCR’d digitized sources, prompting him to undertake the digitization process himself. However, digitization is time-consuming; hence, Stijn emphasizes the importance of collaboration with the archives or institutions housing the materials. They may offer assistance in digitizing the content or provide access to their scanning equipment and OCR software. Stijn stresses that while digitized sources offer many advantages such as searchability, it remains crucial to engage with the physical materials. Understanding the contextual nuances of their creation and preservation is imperative, rather than treating them merely as isolated PDF files.

Once he tackled the first hurdle of digitization, Stijn delved into distant reading, a text analysis method enabling insights into vast corpora without the need for exhaustive reading. To conduct this analysis, he used the software AntConc.

AntConc is a free, cross-platform tool for corpus analysis. There are also other tools with similar features such as Voyant, Hyberbase, and Sketch Engine.

Upon uploading his documents to AntConc, Stijn could perform basic word searches and proximity-based word analysis. The tool also enables tracking keyword mentions over time, which helps to get an overview of patterns and how they evolved. As a result, Stijn could efficiently extract core ideas from an extensive corpus, a task that would have been impossible for him to complete during his PhD if he were using close reading methods. Such tools not only extract information but also foster creativity in research, encouraging novel perspectives on the research material that might otherwise remain unexplored.

Stijn concluded by comparing Digital Humanities to a Swiss army knife: it is like a versatile tool that doesn’t necessarily need to be the focal point of your project but serves as a valuable instrument for exploring both your sources and your research domain. Beyond that, DH facilitates connections with peers. Belgium boasts a vibrant Digital Humanities community, offering ample opportunities for networking and learning from a diverse group of experts and enthusiasts.

If you want to get involved in the DH community in Belgium you can join the DH Virtual Discussion group for Early Career Researchers. The discussion group meets on a monthly basis via MS Teams. Each meeting features a presentation from a member of the Belgian DH community, a moment to share DH-related news, and a chance to network.

Tom Gheldof – A day in the (tool) life

Tom Gheldof is the CLARIAH-VL coordinator at the Faculty of Arts. Throughout the years, he was involved in several projects in the field of Digital Humanities such as the Trismegistos project at the Research Unit of Ancient History. Currently, he is a scientific researcher of the ‘CLARIAH-VL: Advancing the Open Humanities Service Infrastructure’ project that aims at developing and enhancing digital tools, practices, resources, and services for researchers in many fields of the humanities.

Tom provided an insider’s view of his typical day, shedding light on the various tools he employs:

  • Identification: to introduce himself, Tom showcased his ORCID iD, a persistent digital identifier that sets researchers apart regardless of name similarities. It serves as a central hub to which you can link all of your research output. Not only does it boost the visibility of your work, it also streamlines administrative tasks, as you only need to update one platform that you can then connect with your funder, publishers, etc.
  • Text recognition: given that Tom’s research relies on manuscripts, he has familiarized himself with automated text recognition. His primary tool for this is Transkribus, a platform that uses machine learning technology to automatically decipher handwritten and printed texts. Through a transcription editor, users within the Transkribus community transcribe historical documents, training the system to recognize diverse text forms – be it handwritten, typewritten, or printed – across various languages, predominantly European.
  • Annotation: Tom relies on Recogito for his research on place names. This online annotation tool offers a user-friendly interface for both texts and images. Recogito provides a personalized workspace to upload, collect, and organize diverse source materials such as texts, images, and tabular data. Moreover, it facilitates collaborative annotation and interpretation of these resources.
  • Coding: for coding tasks, Tom uses Visual Studio Code, a free coding editor compatible with multiple programming languages. To collaborate and access code with open licenses, he turns to GitHub, a repository where people share their code, fostering a collaborative coding environment.
  • Relational databases: Tom has a lot of expertise when it comes to building relational databases. A relational database allows you to represent complex datasets and the connections between and within different types of data. He uses the FileMaker environment, which has broad functionalities and permits export of the data to any other format.
Tom has given trainings about relational databases in general, and FileMaker in particular, in the past. An overview of existing training material can be found on the DH@rts website.

To familiarize yourself with these and similar tools and methods, Tom recommends exploring the tutorials that are available at The Programming Historian, a DH journal that offers novice-friendly, peer-reviewed instructional guides.

Through trial-and-error, the presenters have figured out their workflow, which can hopefully inspire you to tailor your personalized data management processes. However, they all emphasized that the best research workflow is the one that works for you. For further inspiration when it comes to DH and research data, consider joining DH Benelux 2024, hosted by KU Leuven. This year’s conference, with the theme “Breaking Silos, Connecting Data: Advancing Integration and Collaboration in Digital Humanities”, is sure to bring much more inspiration when it comes to organizing, manipulating, and sharing research data.

✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Training: Website Building

作者Laura Mesotten
2023年12月5日 17:43

This event is only open to KU Leuven researchers and staff.

The Artes Research team from KU Leuven Libraries Artes and the Faculty of Arts will organize a training on website building given by Hans Coppens. It will take place on Tuesday 23 January, 14h-15h30, in the collaborative working space (Agora, Leuven). Everyone is welcome to attend, but you do need to register.

Program

This workshop provides an introduction to building websites. It is geared towards researchers who would like to build a personal academic or project website, which is typically done through the use of a Content Management System (CMS). The training will have three distinct parts:

  1. It will start with an overview of platform options, exploring the functionalities and building blocks of each. This part of the training will help researchers learn how to choose the right platform for their specific needs.
  2. Next, the training will cover the practical steps for building a website: what infrastructure is needed, and are specific technical skills necessary to get started? To gain a basic understanding of web architecture, a few key principles and important factors to keep in mind when building a website will be discussed.
  3. Finally, participants will look at a concrete example of how a website can be built starting from zero to gain inspiration for getting started on their own web platforms.

Practicalities

✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Call for posters/demos: KU Leuven Open Science Day 2024

作者Laura Mesotten
2023年12月5日 17:25

Do you want to know more about Open Science or maybe you have ideas or expertise that you wish to share? Or you just want to take part in the debate? Participate in the KU Leuven Open Science Day and submit your own contribution. Accepted proposals will be published in the proceedings of the KU Leuven Open Science Day.

  • Formats: posters and demos
  • Language: English
  • Submission: submissions can be made here
  • Abstract submission deadline: Wednesday 31 January 2024 (23:59 CET)
  • Notification of acceptance: end of March 2024

You can find the full details here. For any queries, please contact openscience@kuleuven.be.

✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Training: How Do You Do (It)? A behind-the-scenes look at research workflows (KU Leuven)

作者Laura Mesotten
2023年10月13日 17:17

This event is only open to KU Leuven researchers and staff.

The Artes Research team from KU Leuven Libraries Artes and the ABAP council will kick off the new academic year with a special “How Do You Do (It)?” (HDYDI) session dedicated to research data workflows. This special session will coincide with the start of the Digital Scholarship Module taught by the Artes Research team. It will take place on Tuesday 7 November, 13h30-15h30, in the Justus Lipsiuszaal (Erasmushuis, Leuven). Everyone is welcome to attend, you do not need to register!

Program

13h30-14h

To help you through the afternoon slump, we will start with coffee and cookies which will be served in the main entrance hall of the Erasmushuis.

14h10-15h30

We will then move up to the 8th floor (Justus Lipsiuszaal) to start the session which will feature talks from researchers at the Faculty of Arts who outline their research workflows: how do they approach their research, what tools do they use, with what kind of data are they working, etc. We will get a behind-the-scenes look from:

There will be lots of time for questions and getting to know each other’s workflows.

The event will take place in Leuven, but if you would like to join online you can let us know at artesresearch@kuleuven.be and we will provide you with the link.

Keep an eye out for the next HDYDI event that will take place in Spring!

Practical details

  • When: Tuesday 7 November, from 13h30 to 15h30
  • Where: coffee in main entrance hall and session in Justus Lipsiuszaal (Erasmushuis, Leuven) with online option: if you would like to join online you can let us know at artesresearch@kuleuven.be and we will provide you with the link
  • Price: free
  • Registration: no registration required
✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Training: Research Survival Game

作者Laura Mesotten
2023年9月22日 19:45

KU Leuven Libraries has developed a game focused on the possibilities, requirements, and best practices regarding Open Access, Research Data Management, and in the future also Information Retrieval.

The Research Survival Game follows a researcher who is stranded on a desert island and can only leave by acquiring knowledge. This knowledge is obtained by correctly answering and subsequently collecting the Q&A cards. As the players advance along the gameboard, both the spaces they land on and the Q&A cards will help familiarize them with some of the key concepts of a research project. The game is won by collecting the most cards, as this means enough skills have been obtained to properly conduct the research and the researcher is thus ready to leave the island.

  • Who can play the game? The target audience is both researchers, in any stage of their career, and research support staff. But anyone who is interested can get in touch!
  • How can I reserve the game? You can request a game session with one of our staff members via the Open Science Helpdesk.
  • How to play the game? Check out the website to find out more about the game!
✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Getting started with data visualization by Houda Lamqaddam

作者Laura Mesotten
2023年5月19日 16:13

During her time as postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Arts, Houda Lamqaddam prepared introductory materials for data visualization. You can find them on the DH@rts website. Have fun exploring these materials!

A short description of the material by Houda herself: 

Introduction to information visualization techniques for humanistic scholarship

🔗 https://zenodo.org/record/7734200: This series is an introduction to the fundamentals of information visualization, particularly as it concerns humanistic scholarship. The series consists of four chapters that cover the following topics: (1) Why visualize?, (2) Getting to data, (3) Choosing and creating a visualization, and (4) Do’s and don’ts of designing data visualizations.  In each chapter, we define fundamental concepts, share examples, simple tips, and additional resources for more in-depth explorations.

Tableau Tutorial

🔗 https://zenodo.org/record/7733937: In this tutorial, we see how we can use the tool Tableau to create visualizations going from simple line charts to complex dashboards. We use a step-by-step approach, starting from uploading and formatting the data to creating linked dashboards. We also provide additional links to external resources and forums that can help you build your Tableau knowledge.

Observable notebook 

🔗 https://observablehq.com/d/7827a6a46922e25a: This interactive Observable notebook shows you how you can use a live notebook and Javascript code to develop simple – yet powerful – visualizations of your data. You can run each cell in the notebook, or create your own account to develop custom visualizations that best support your research needs. 

 

✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Training: Getting started with Zotero for PhD research

作者Laura Mesotten
2023年4月17日 21:16

This event is only open to KU Leuven researchers and staff. 

Do you need a better system to organize your reference materials? Or do you already work with a reference manager like Zotero, but feel that you’re not taking advantage of all the features of the software? Come join us to learn more about the various Zotero functionalities!

Programme

This session will start with an introduction to the basic functionalities of Zotero including the various ways to add references to your Zotero library, how to incorporate citations into your Microsoft Word documents using the Zotero plug-in, setting up a tagging system, annotating references in Zotero, and generating bibliographies.

Following this introduction, the hands-on session will take place in small groups. During this portion of the workshop, participants will try out all the basics while a group leader is available to help with issues or answer questions. Finally, the workshop will close with a Q&A session and the opportunity to learn about more advanced features of the software.

Practicalities

Target audience: KU Leuven researchers and staff
Date: Monday 15 May 2023
Time: 14:00 – 16:00
Location: MS Teams (link will be sent to participants a few days before the workshop)

The training is free of charge but registration is required. To see full details about the training, including the required preparations, and to register, please visit the OneButton event page.

✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Training: RDM workshop for PhDs (KU Leuven)

作者Laura Mesotten
2023年3月1日 16:33

This event is only open to KU Leuven researchers and staff.

Research data management (RDM) refers to how you handle your data during and after your research project to ensure they are well organized, structured, of high quality and Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). During this session you will learn best practices for the management of research data according to the FAIR data principles. We consider the technical, legal, and ethical aspects of research data, secure storage of materials, documentation and metadata, research data sharing, reusing data shared by others, and more. This solid grounding in basic RDM skills will help you make informed decisions on how to handle your research data. Additionally, you will learn how to write and maintain your own Data Management Plan (DMP).

This training is mainly aimed at doctoral researchers, preferably at the start of their PhD or project. Sessions are organized per group:

Registration is possible up until 1 week prior to the planned training.

Please contact rdm@kuleuven.be if you have a question or consult the website.

✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Conference: KU Leuven Open Science Day on 2 May 2023

作者Laura Mesotten
2023年3月1日 16:23

Join us at the annual KU Leuven Open Science day on 2 May!

Program

The KU Leuven Open Science Day is an annual event where KU Leuven researchers from all career stages share knowledge and exchange examples of how they implement Open Science principles in their research. It offers a platform where researchers can inspire, learn from each other and discover how their research can benefit from these principles.

Keynote speakers are Muki Haklay (UCL London) and Thomas Margoni (KU Leuven’s Centre for IT & IP Law). Muki Haklay is a Professor of Geographic Information Science at University College London (UCL) and a renowned Citizen Science expert. He will share his insights with a presentation about Citizen science in Open Science, discussing how Citizen Science fits in. Thomas Margoni will give a talk about the (legal) datafication of Open Science.

Consult the full program on the event website.

Practical details

  • When: 2 May
  • Where:
    • In-person: at the Irish College (Janseniusstraat 1, 3000 Leuven) – register by 17 April
    • Online: link will be sent a few days before the event – register by 28 April
  • Registration: click here to register
  • More info: check out the event website for more information
✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Webinar series: Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship

作者Laura Mesotten
2022年12月22日 18:08

The Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship at McMaster University is pleased to announce that “DS Bytes: A Lunchtime Speaker Series” is now open for registration! The lectures are open to all:  register for all sessions here.

Program

This six-part series includes events on data, artificial intelligence, critical literacy, and social justice. All events have virtual attendance options. 

The full slate includes:

Practical details

  • When: January 19 to March 21
  • Where: every session can be followed online
  • Price: free
  • Registration: click here, event URL will be sent via registration email

More info

The Sherman Centre also has a repository of 70+ event recordings, asynchronous webinars, and text guides on Digital Scholarship methods, topics, and approaches including social media research ethics, podcasting, and more.

✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Recap: How do you do it? A behind-the-scenes look at research workflows

作者Laura Mesotten
2022年12月8日 16:14

To kick-off the Digital Scholarship Module, a training for first-year PhD researchers at the Faculty of Arts, we, at Artes Research, hosted a training session dedicated to research data workflows. Three researchers from the Faculty of Arts offered a behind-the-scenes look at their research workflows by outlining how they approach and structure their research, the tools they use, and with what kind of data they are working. The goal of the session was to provide examples of more advanced workflows for the first-year PhD researchers as they embark on their research journey.

Elisa Nelissen: applying digital tools throughout the entire research workflow

Elisa is a PhD researcher under the supervision of Jack McMartin, working on the interdisciplinary project “The Circulation of Science News in the Coronavirus Era” in collaboration with the KU Leuven Institute for Media Studies. Her research focuses primarily on how science news about COVID-19 vaccines travels to and from Flanders, and the inter- and intralingual translations it is subject to.

Elisa started off the session by introducing us to the tools she applies during various steps of her research workflow, leaving us with plenty of food for thought.

Literature collection

For collecting all the literature that holds potential relevance for her research, Elisa uses Zotero as it has some very interesting features such as full text searches (which makes it easy to look up specific concepts), highlighting and color coding interesting sections or terms, etc.

Go check out our blog posts about Zotero if you are interested in learning more!

Reading literature and tracking progress

After gathering the relevant literature, reading all the collected material naturally follows. Here, Elisa had a very useful tip for those that, just like herself, easily lose focus when reading a text: why not try turning text into audio files? This helps Elisa to follow the text more closely and take notes while listening. She also keeps close track of her reading progress by using the productivity application Notion. Apart from creating reading lists, Notion also helps her to keep an overview of her project’s progress, upcoming tasks, etc.

Data collection

Also for collecting her data, Elisa had to make herself acquainted with new digital tools. A first important piece of data for her research are news articles. As Elisa did not yet know how to code, she followed some online courses on Python to learn the basic skills needed. Thanks to this, she can now scrape websites for metadata of news articles. Another important element in her data collection is conducting interviews, where she finds it very important that you invest in proper recording systems and equipment to guarantee the usability of the material.

If you are a KU Leuven student or staff member, you can borrow audiovisual equipment from the lending service of LIMEL for free! Check out all the details here.

Next to interviews, she conducts surveys with Qualtrics. The best advice here is to test your surveys thoroughly. Once sent out, you cannot change the survey questions anymore, so you have to be sure that the chosen questions will deliver the needed results.

KU Leuven researchers can purchase a Qualtrics license through ICTS, more information can be found here.

Data analysis

First, in order to correctly organize and analyze all the collected data from news articles, Elisa felt the need to build a relational database in FileMaker. It helps her to organize her data, compare texts, and keep track of her overall workflow.

If you are interested in knowing more about FileMaker, check out this training session given by Tom Gheldof in the context of the DH training series organized by the Faculty of Arts.

Secondly, for transcribing the conducted interviews, she uses sonix, which is an automated transcription service. It offers good quality transcriptions that you can edit yourself afterwards. Elisa stresses the importance of anonymizing your interviews before sending them in, to make sure you do not unwillingly share any personal data! Lastly, for coding the interviews she uses NVivo.

KU Leuven researchers can purchase an NVivo license through ICTS, more information can be found here.

To conclude her talk, Elisa left us with a useful tip: it might be interesting to try out a different browser (in her case Sigma) as this might give you new perspectives about how to structure and manage your daily work.

Sara Cosemans: using digital research methods to deal with information overload

Sara is a Doctor Assistant in Cultural History at KU Leuven and a part-time Assistant Professor in the School of Social Sciences at UHasselt. The digital method discussed below was developed during her PhD at KU Leuven, together with data scientists Philip Grant, Ratan Sebastian, and computational linguist Marc Allassonnière-Tang. Learn more about her digital approach in this blog post.

Sara Cosemans

Sara’s presentation was based on her PhD project entitled “The Internationalization of the Refugee Problem. Resettlement from the Global South during the 1970s”, which initially started off as a very analogue project. However, when facing some serious challenges, Sara started to explore digital methods. Her journey was one of trial and error, with a lot of investment in, on the one hand, educating herself in how to use digital tools, and, on the other hand, building a network of digital experts to collaborate with.

Sara’s project required a lot of archival visits in various countries. When going to the archives, she did not yet know what she was looking for exactly, making it necessary to scan every piece of information that held potential relevance. An analysis of the content would have to wait. However, when finalizing her archival visits, she ended up with an unimaginably large corpus of about 100,000 pages. She quickly realized that she would never be able to read everything and needed to come up with a digital solution.

To photograph the archival documents, Sara used her iPad as this had a big enough storage capacity and rendered high quality pictures. By using ABBYY FineReader she could subsequently apply Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which converted these photographs into fully text-searchable documents.

We recently organized a two-day workshop devoted to OCR, you can download the slides on this webpage that collects information and resources about the DH trainings offered by the Faculty of Arts.

The next question, however, was how to search through all these files. A first idea was to build a relational database in FileMaker, which would mean entering all the metadata of the files coming from different institutions into the database, with the ultimate goal of making relations between those files. Unfortunately, entering the metadata was so time-consuming that it could only be completed for one institution. Therefore, she needed to come up with another solution. Since all her photographs were now searchable documents, a first quick way to find information that she was already expecting to find was simply using the CRTL + F function. But how can you find what you don’t already know? Here, natural language processing (NLP) proved to be the solution.

Since Sara did not have the time to learn natural language processing methods like topic modelling and clustering herself, she invested her energy in networking at DH conferences, which led to finding researchers who were very eager to work with her data. They developed a Google Colaboratory notebook in Python to do topic modelling on all files, determine topics, and make visualizations. They then created reading lists about the most important documents so that Sara could start with reading those files. This close reading made it possible for Sara to find new topics, which she could then explore further in other documents by using her CRTL + F method.

Sara concluded by saying that while she needed digital methods to make her research manageable and to help her find relevant connections, the analysis of the material still depended completely on her. The computer will never fully replace the close-reading, deep-thinking historian.

Marianna Montes: reproducibility and versioning as two important keys to a successful coding project

Mariana’s main research interests lie in corpus linguistics and cognitive semantics. The goal of her PhD project is methodological triangulation of distributional methods (namely, comparing vector space semantics, behavioral profiles and traditional lexicographical analysis), with case studies in English and Dutch. Some of the tools developed and used within the project can be found on her personal webpage. She recently also started working at ICTS, where she supports research data management.

Marianna’s interest in digital methods and tools was spiked when studying languages for which she needed to acquaint herself with statistics and programming. During her talk she therefore stressed the importance of challenging yourself to learn new skills and to use new digital tools. Over the past years, she has actively helped fellow researchers in their process of trying out new methods to achieve greater efficiency in their work.

Her main expertise is in R. She showed us how R can be used in multiple ways throughout your research: creating plots, making interactive reports, presenting slides, coding workflows, and so forth. On her blog, Marianna wrote an interesting piece about how you can implement R-project tools in your workflow.

Marianna also underlined how your work should be reproducible for both yourself and other people. During her research, Marianna experimented a lot with running various codes, trying out different clustering algorithms, etc. She ended up forgetting how she reached her results, making it necessary to double- or triple-check everything. Therefore, she started to carefully register all steps in her workflow in order to put into words the reasoning behind her coding. This way, she could answer questions like “What decisions did I make, and why?”. Marianna has written more extensively about how your old, current, and future self might not understand your decisions in this insightful blog post.

In the same vein, Marianna highlighted how versioning can be a true life-saver. For this, she uses Git. Git allows you to control versions, keep track of the differences between files, retract files that were removed, and make a screenshot of the state of your files at a given time. This way, you create an online backup, that you can also share with other people.

KU Leuven hosts its own GitLab, you can find more detailed information here.

To conclude with an important message that was shared throughout all the presentations: doing a PhD, despite popular belief, should not be done in isolation. Instead, you should look for potential ways to connect with other researchers. A willingness to make the process of developing the dissertation visible can only help to improve the project and stimulate collaborations, which might lead to solving the problems you are facing or opening up new research avenues and generating new perspectives.

✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Training: Sharing and publishing research data (KU Leuven)

作者Laura Mesotten
2022年11月14日 16:47

This event is only open to KU Leuven researchers and staff.

Do you want to know more about depositing, publishing, sharing, and reusing data? Learn all about data sharing best practices, what research data repositories are, and get hands-on experience with RDR, KU Leuven’s institutional research data repository. During this training session, RDM experts at KU Leuven will introduce you to the basics of data sharing and publishing and are there to answer all of your questions on how to share your data in a sustainable and effective way.

Dates and registration

Click on the link of the session to register!

Program

Presentations

  • Data sharing introduction: Learn what a research data repository is, how to find a repository to share your data on and what to look out for when you want to share your data.
  • Metadata & documentation: ​​​​​​Find out how metadata can help make your data mor​e findable and how metadata and documentation are key elements to making your data more FAIR in the data publishing process.
  • FAIRification of software: Discover how the FAIR principles can be applied to research software and which practical techniques you can use to achieve this. Examples and code samples will be presented through KU Leuven’s institutional software management platform GitLab.
  • RDR introduction: Get to know KU Leuven’s new institutional research data repository. In RDR, you will be shown how all the previously mentioned elements of data sharing are actually put into practice in a research data repository.

Hands-on demo session RDR

During this part of the training session, researchers get the opportunity to try out a demo version of RDR where they can test the repository environment with a ready made dataset that will be provided. Our data sharing experts are there during this session to answer any questions that may come up from the previous presentations or from testing out the repository demo environment. No preparation necessary. It is advised to take a laptop with you if possible.

 

✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Call for contributions: KU Leuven Open Science Day

作者Laura Mesotten
2022年11月10日 17:57

The Open Science Day of KU Leuven is a yearly event for KU Leuven researchers to exchange Open Science experiences. The 2023 edition will be a combination of classical paper presentations, debates, and posters.

We welcome both in-depth analyses of Open Science topics and practical hands-on contributions that focus on best practices. The idea is to explore the opportunities and challenges related to Open Science from a researchers’ point of view. So contributions may showcase the implementation of Open Science principles in a research project, or they may address barriers and difficulties in the journey towards Open Science, discussing small steps which might be taken to tackle them.

The abstracts and slide decks of accepted papers, as well as accepted posters, will be published in the proceedings of the KU Leuven Open Science Day available on PubPub, together with the biography of the presenter(s). Details about this publication (including submission deadlines, which will be at the end of April) will be communicated after notification of acceptance.

Possible topics

  • Open Access, the future of scholarly publishing, novel publication formats, preregistration, preprints, choosing a publishing venue, rights retention strategy
  • Copyright issues, authorship roles, intellectual property rights, reconciling openness and valorization
  • Research data management, FAIR data, open sharing of software, licensing, metadata and reporting standards, repositories
  • Open educational resources, sharing and reuse of educational material, integrating Open Science practices in education
  • Contributing to Open Science as a supervisor, coping with the challenges of system change as an early career researcher, metrics
  • Citizen science and participatory research, collaboration with non-academic partners
  • Feel free to make your own Open Science suggestion!

Submission details

All KU Leuven researchers are welcome to apply. We are looking for diverse contributions, from early career researchers and senior academics. To submit a contribution, researchers are kindly requested to provide:

  • an abstract, 350 words max
  • a short bio, 150 words max
  • the presenter’s name and affiliation, as well as contact information
  • type of contribution: paper or poster
  • contributions will be accepted in English

Closing date for submissions: 8 January 2023. Proposals will be assessed by a committee of Open Science experts and KU Leuven researchers. Notice of acceptance will be given by 4 March 2023.

Send an e-mail to openscience@kuleuven.be to submit your contribution.

Practicalities

  • The Open Science day will take place at a hybrid event on 2 May 2023, in Leuven and online (more details will be announced closer to the date).
  • Website: https://www.kuleuven.be/open-science/events/2023/open-science-day-2023
  • Contact: openscience@kuleuven.be
  • Feel free to contact us if you have any suggestions for this study day or for the further development of Open Science at KU Leuven.
✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Training: RDM workshop for PhDs (KU Leuven)

作者Laura Mesotten
2022年10月26日 17:10

This event is only open to KU Leuven researchers and staff.

If you are a PhD student and would like to learn basic RDM skills and how to write a Data Management Plan (DMP), this training is definitely for you!

In the RDM workshop for PhD students, you learn best practices for the management of research data according to the FAIR data principles. We consider the technical, legal, and ethical aspects of research data, how to securely store materials, how to generate documentation and metadata, how to share research data and reuse data shared by others, and more.

This solid grounding in basic RDM skills will help you make informed decisions on how to handle your research data, no matter what your discipline or academic field happens to be. Additionally, you will learn how to write and maintain your own Data Management Plan (DMP). This training is mainly aimed at doctoral researchers, preferably at the start of their PhD or project.

Sessions are organized per group:

Check out the RDM website for more information about the program and registration, or contact the RDM Support Desk!

✇比 - 鲁汶大学（KU Leuven）

Training: How do you do it? A behind-the-scenes look at research workflows (KU Leuven)

作者Laura Mesotten
2022年10月18日 15:11

This event is only open to KU Leuven researchers and staff.

The Artes Research team and the ABAP council will kick off the new academic year with a special “How do you do (it)?” (HDYDI) session dedicated to research data workflows. It will take place on Thursday 10 November, 15h30-17h30, in the Justus Lipsiuszaal (Erasmushuis, Leuven). 

Program

15h30-16h

To help you through the afternoon slump, we will start with coffee and cookies which will be served in the central hallway on the 7th floor of the Erasmushuis.

16h-17h30

We will then move up to the 8th floor (Justus Lipsiuszaal) to start the session which will feature talks from researchers at the Faculty of Arts who outline their research workflows: how do they approach their research, what tools do they use, with what kind of data are they working, etc. We will get a behind-the-scenes look from:

  • Sara Cosemans (History, Cultural History since 1750)
  • Mariana Montes (Linguistics, Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics)
  • Elisa Nelissen (Translation Studies, Translation and Intercultural Transfer)

There will be lots of time for questions and getting to know each other’s workflows.

Practical details

  • When: Thursday 10 November, from 15h30 to 17h30
  • Where: coffee in central hallway 7th floor and session in Justus Lipsiuszaal (Erasmushuis, Leuven) with online option: if you would like to join online you can let us know at artesresearch@kuleuven.be and we will provide you with the link
  • Price: free
  • Registration: no registration required
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