Digital Scholar Series 2025 - Quarter 3 Schedule

07 Jul 2025
dss_background Quarter 3 Image
07 Jul 2025

2025 3rd Quarter Digital Scholar Series

The Digital Scholar Series is back. A jam-packed schedule for the 3rd quarter of 2025 showcases digital practices and tools available to enhance your research skillset, with a focus on efficient research data management.Primarily for postgraduate researchers, sessions are hosted by Digital Scholarship Services (DSS formerly Digital Library Services), of UCT Libraries, and are open to all.

Topics cover the management of digital materials (what some of us call “data”) throughout the research lifecycle. The sessions are aimed at making your digital scholarship more efficient, so that your data gives you less hassle and you have more time to focus on your teaching, learning, and research. Our primary focus in the second half of the year will be on topics covering the middle and later stages of the research process, such as updating your Data Management Plan, cleaning your data, and best practices for sharing—highlighting working with sensitive data and using licences for data publication.

After registering for an event, you will receive an email with a calendar invite attached. All sessions will start at 1 PM, with the topics and dates listed below. The sessions will be hosted on MS Teams and will last 45 minutes, with an extra 15 minutes for questions or discussions. DSS staff will be present to moderate the chat and help answer any questions you may have.

See the full schedule and register.

Return of the DMP

  • Wed 2025-07-30
  • Time: 1PM SAST
  • Register: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/calendar/libraryevents/dss-return-dmp
  • Completing a Data Management Plan at the start of your research project is the best way to start managing your data. But at some point, during your project, it might be time to do some updates and rethink your answers. As the UCT DMP platform always keeps your living document editable, this session takes you through updating your DMP with the information you have learned so far during your research project.

Capture and Manage Data with Forms

  • Tue 2025-08-05
  • Time: 1PM SAST
  • Register: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/calendar/libraryevents/dss-capture-forms
  • Collecting and capturing data is likely a key part of your research project. In this session, we expand on practical ways to use forms and spreadsheet tools to make capturing and managing your data more consistent and efficient to make your life easier. After this session, all options will be dropdowns!

Cleaning your data in spreadsheets

  • Thu 2025-08-07
  • Time: 1PM SAST
  • Register: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/calendar/libraryevents/dss-data-clean
  • This session will look further into using spreadsheets to tidy up your data. We will explore some of the possibilities available to you through the use of tools, formulae and basic logical operators, as well as a brief look into how to find out more about the tools available in spreadsheets. Let's formulate a plan to clean up your data!

Cleaning your Data for Analysis with Open Refine

  • Wed 2025-08-13
  • Time: 1PM SAST
  • Register: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/calendar/libraryevents/dss-data-openrefine
  • This follow-up session will take a more detailed look at Open Refine. This data cleanup tool can be a powerful ally in organising your data and preparing it for analysis. We will explore the tools’ basic functionality and look at some of its more powerful transformation and cleanup features, such as clustering. After this session, you will be ready for analysis!

GIS: Pro-specting, finding GIS gold

Data & Visualisation

  • Thu 2025-08-21
  • Time: 1PM SAST
  • Register: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/calendar/libraryevents/data-viz
  • Lets tell your data analysis story using pictures! But which is the best data visualisation tool for your needs? Finding the right tool may take some trial and error, so in this session we will look at a number of options, from Excel to Tableau to ggplot, to show various possibilities. We will also share some principles for getting your data ready for visualisation, as well as outlining available choices when designing graphic data outputs. After this session you will be able to say thousands of words with your pictures!

Sharing and Publishing Research Openly with ZivaHub

  • Wed 2025-08-27
  • Time: 1PM SAST
  • Register: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/calendar/libraryevents/fair-zivahub
  • Research outputs become more valuable once they are shared, allowing others to use them to glean information, build knowledge, and acknowledge the original authors in a scholarly manner. In today's academic landscape, you get credit for publishing the data you produce and share, leading to new opportunities for study. To do so, your data must be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). We look at how you can make your data FAIR by sharing and publishing it on UCT's data repository ZivaHub. After this session, DOIs might be your new best friends.

Sensitive Data

  • Tue 2025-09-02
  • Time: 1PM SAST
  • Register: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/calendar/libraryevents/sensitive-data
  • Data is powerful and with great power comes great responsibility. In this session, we explore sensitive data, how to identify it and how it should be handled during a research project. We explore topics such as de-identification, secure storage solutions, open licenses and appropriate embargos to assist you with ensuring that you are not on the wrong side of ethics and laws. After this session, you should be more sensitive about working with data!

Digital /A.I. Scholarship

  • Thu 2025-09-04
  • Time: 1PM SAST
  • Register: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/calendar/libraryevents/ai-scholarship
  • AI is changing the way we work with data in research—but how much can we rely on it, and how do we use it responsibly? In this session, we explore practical ways AI tools can support your research data workflows, from automation to analysis. We’ll also look at how to verify AI outputs and stay on the right side of ethics. After this session, your digital scholarship boundaries may be safely extended! (please note this blurb was written with the assistance of CoPilot AI)

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