Postgraduate Research Handbook
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The Library can support you throughout your research journey from initial literature search through to publication and beyond.
You can find out more information about our libraries, opening hours, online resources, full-text sources, catalogues, archives and special collections, and other services on the Library website.
You will be able to find support including how to:
The Library works with the Doctoral College, Faculties, and other University services to provide face-to-face and online training, and guidance on a range of research-related topics. Courses can be booked via the Doctoral College and one-to-one sessions via Deskside training. These sessions are offered by our specialist Research and Academic Engagement Librarians, who also have responsibility for your research areas, and you can contact them if you need further assistance.
The Academic Skills service provide help with general academic, writing, and research skills, and offers bookable online appointments. You can also book one-to-one writing support for specialist guidance on issues such as structure, critical analysis and referencing. Details of all library courses can be found on the Training and Workshops page.
Keep up to date, ask questions and chat with the library academic community using our online library chat service, or via Facebook or Twitter.
The University of Southampton Institutional Research Repository hosts research outputs, such as research articles, conference papers, poster presentations, working papers, as well as the electronic version of your final thesis and research data. These outputs, where appropriate, will become publicly accessible via ePrints Soton. You are responsible for uploading your papers (accepted manuscript) and research data to the Repository via Pure in line with the University policies on access to research. You can also record engagement activities, produce your CV and register for your ORCiD ID in Pure.
You are encouraged to familiarise yourself with University policies on Open Access and Research Data Management so that you are aware of what is required. The University Library offers guidance and courses on these, and on other research related topics, online and via Gradbook. See the University Library section above for further information.
The University’s IT support service is called iSolutions and provides help and support to students, staff and researchers across all aspects of IT. More information can be found here.
If you need IT help or advice, you can contact iSolutions via ServiceLine, its dedicated helpdesk (telephone +44 (0)23 8059 5656 or 25656 (internal calls)) or by logging your query online via ServiceNow. See the Getting Help section of the website.
iSolutions offers a range of services aimed at the research community:
IRIDIS, The University of Southampton’s High Performance Computing facility, is one of the top academic supercomputers in the UK and is hosted at our main datacentre. The facility is available to research students and members of academic staff from any Faculty, who have the need for compute resources substantially greater than a desktop PC.
iSolutions offers enterprise level resilient filestore for the secure storage of research data, hosted in our main datacentre.
If you require web hosting, iSolutions provides support for multiple content management systems, including SitePublisher, SharePoint and LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP).
We provide several hundred pieces of software to staff and students at the University, and many software packages can also be installed by students and staff on their own systems.
The University offers a supported Linux build, automatically patched without the need for user intervention.
iSolutions offers the option to purchase a VM (Virtual Machine) for your server needs, hosted at our datacentre, providing a scalable, secure, resilient and high performance service.
As a member of staff or postgraduate researcher, you are entitled to a mainstream desktop or laptop computer. If a mainstream computer is not suitable for your needs, iSolutions can assist you in the purchasing of a higher specification computer (subject to uplift cost).
Funding and research grant organisations are now making increasing demands that suitable protective arrangements for data are demonstrable in applications. iSolutions, in conjunction with the Library, can provide support and guidance to help ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of your research data.
Further information and costs (where applicable) of the services listed above can be found on the iSolutions website.
There are several institutionally approved locations available for storage of research data. Appropriate data location can be assured by following these guidance notes:
Important: You should never store institutional research data in an unapproved cloud storage location i.e. one not on the list below. These alternate solutions often locate data outside EU / UK geographic boundaries leading to data sovereignty concerns, do not offer compliance and governance features required to support research council requirements, and may not comply with GDPR demands.
The University of Southampton provides a significant (initially 5TB per user) Office 365 OneDrive for Business quota to all members of the University. Think of OneDrive for Business as approved personal cloud storage.
This storage facility is appropriate when:
Also part of the Office 365 offering, Teams is a collaborative working platform which includes data storage capabilities. Think of Teams storage as approved shared cloud storage.
This storage facility is appropriate when:
The University of Southampton provides a highly resilient and performant storage platform to host and protect valuable research data. This facility is located in University owned datacentres and is considered a critical University IT service.
This storage facility might be appropriate when:
Registered students at the University of Southampton who would like help with their English language and academic literacy skills can attend the free English language support courses provided throughout the academic year. Please see the English language support website for more information. The library also offers periodic writing workshops.
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