Research Support

The University of Twente is a research university that stimulates international cooperation. Carrying out research in a setting of international cooperation can be highly valuable. However, it is important that you recognise knowledge safety risks or export control issues that might arise.

Before continuing with the next steps, it is necessary to out the risk-assessment checklist  for knowledge security: Internalisation and Foreign Affairs: Knowledge Safety and Export Control.

This will also help you, and us, to assess whether any legal restrictions may apply. 

Scientific integrity

Good and trustworthy research is based on proper scientific behaviour. When starting your research, pay attention to the issue of scientific integrity.

Ethical review

Ethics committees and advisors at the UT facilitate and monitor the ethical issues of all research involving human subjects and/or personal data. Read more about ethics assessment for research on the UT scientific integrity page.

Strategic Business Development (SBD) supports UT employees in project management. SBD has a dedicated project management pillar to support researchers in their European and national projects. 

From the start of your research you can use general ICT facilities, such as a work station. When you need specific hardware or software the ICT account manager in your faculty can help you or your group.

When setting up your research you and your colleagues may want to collaborate in an Office document and see everyone’s changes the moment they occur. In this case you can use real-time co-authoring in UT Sharepoint or with Microsoft Teams. If you want to store, share and collaborate with externals (non-UT employees) Unishare is the best choice.  This tool can help you to find the best store, share and/or collaborate solution for your research project.

When for example you are looking for a flexible, efficient and scalable infrastructure for simulations and computations, you can make use of a Virtual Research Environment (VRE). Other possibilities are shown at Compute facilities for research.

There are different research labs available at the UT. LISA can offer ICT support for setting up and maintaining a research lab.

For support contact the ICT account manager of your faculty or send your question to the Research Support Desk.

One of the first activities when starting a research is reading literature on the subject. For searching and using scientific information use the digital library. You can use the FindUT search tool to discover the collection of the UT library, most content is full text available. Furthermore the digital library presents an overview of available literature databases and other (scientific) information sources. You can also find advice about searching for scientific information per discipline in the subject guides.

To learn how to search and use scientific information effectively and efficiently, you can follow the Scientific Information course.

Research data management helps you to work more efficiently, improves the integrity and impact of your research. Writing a data management plan is the best start for this and is required by many research funders.

Data management Plan

A Data Management Plan (DMP) describes what data you will collect and how, the way you will store and share them securely during the research project, and how you will make them sustainably available afterwards. It also addresses legal issues, such as copyright, the right to use the data and the treatment of sensitive data.

You can find more information about writing a DMP on the research data management page.

To learn how to write a DMP a course is available.  

Funder requirements

Research funders like NWO, ZonMw and the EU have a policies regarding research data management. An important part of these policies is that the researcher must deliver a data management plan before or during the start of the funded project.

You can find more information about funders' data management policies on the research data management page.

When doing research you will need time and effort in searching and using scientific literature and, in some cases, finding suitable data sources.

Literature sources

The digital library is your starting point for finding scientific information about your research topic. You can use the FindUT search tool to discover the collection of the UT library, most of it full text online available. Furthermore the digital library presents an overview of available literature databases and other (scientific) information sources. There is also an advice section about searching for scientific information per discipline. 

Data sources

To discover data relevant for your research have a look at the following portals and/or data providers:

During your research the collected or generated data need to be stored safely. Therefore, in principle all research data, including related materials (e.g. protocols, models or questionnaires), must be stored in the ISO 27001- and NEN 7510-certified UT storage facilities. 

Moreover, you often want to share or in some cases collaborate on the data with fellow researchers. When you need to collaborate on data or documents you can use web-based, collaborative platforms offered by the UT.

Selection tool

Use this tool to find the best UT facility for handling research data during your research.

Especially when research data are to be considered as confidential, for instance in case of personal or sensitive information, data security is needed. When you are processing personal data you need to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in Dutch: the Algemene Verordening Gegevensbescherming (AVG).

Relevant issues are for instance how to avoid data loss or theft, or unauthorized access to research data. In many cases encryption is strongly advised, both of the device (e.g. your computer harddrive) and the data files. 

Pseudonymization or anonymization is needed when working with personal data. In short, pseudonymization is a method to substitute identifiable data with a reversible, consistent value. Anonymization is the destruction of the identifiable data.

If you have lost personal or confidential data (data breach), please immediately check the Cyber Safety page.

For more information about the topics above see the Research data management page.

When processing research data you may need specific infrastructure, computing services, and software.  Furthermore, data labs and data visualization can offer you a solution to certain data analysis demands. 

Compute facilities

Here you can information about the UT Compute facilities used for data analysis with research data.

Research software

When you need to develop software for your research you can get support from the Netherlands eScience Center, the Dutch national center of excellence for the development and application of research software to advance academic research.

Research labs

For specialized data processing researchers can also make use of specific research labs.

Data visualization

Visualization makes it easy to identify connections between data or gain other insight into your datasets. SURFsara offers a powerful remote visualization service that combines high performance with ease of use.

The UT Language Center (UTLC) provides support while you develop your professional presentation and writing skills, for example when working on a conference presentation, a scientific poster, a PhD thesis or a journal article.

As a University of Twente researcher, teacher or student, you will inevitably have to deal with copyrights. You might be infringing copyrights of other people’s work or transferring copyrights of your own work without realizing it. On the University Library website you can read about issues such as what copyrights are, if you are the copyright owner of your work, how you should handle copyrighted material, and how you can protect your copyrights.

Your scientific work is an extension of the work of those who went before you: you build on other people’s work to create your own. When you use someone else’s work without referencing, you are plagiarizing: You are giving the impression that their work is your own, which is forbidden. In the light of the Code of Conduct for Academic Practice, referencing is of utmost importance.

On the University Library website you can read about how to reference as in-text citation and in a reference list, the use of a reference manager, how to avoid plagiarism and plagiarism detection software.

Publishing the results of your research starts with writing a good paper, article or thesis. During this process issues come up, such as publication strategy, selecting a journal and the process of submitting an article.

For support on publishing please check the University Library website.

When you publish open access, the peer-review process and often even the journals are the same as for traditional publishing. The difference lies in the number of people who have access to your publication.

The advantages of publising open access are enormous for researchers and research. And chances are that you can publish open access for free in top journals in your field, thanks to agreements between Dutch universities and publishers.

For support on Open Access please check the University Library website.

For researchers and research organizations visibility of their scientific work is essential. 

To publish your research data it is important to choose a trusted repository which means that is has a so-called Coretrustseal. One of the important services of a trusted repository is the issue of a persistent identifier for the purpose of sustainable access and citation. 

Once you have published your data, you can enhance your publication(s). This process is two-fold: You need to let your dataset refer to your article(s), and vice versa.

More information about publishing your research data can be found the Research data management page. Information about FAIR Preserving and Publishing data can be found here.

Research impact is the significance of research within and outside of the academic world. Individual researchers as well as institutes are expected to show their research impact as part of various important processes. For managers, these can for example be SEP Evaluation and recruitment and promotion. For researchers, examples are applications for research funding and tenure track selection at intake. 

The University Library offers support for researchers and management on determining, increasing and maintaining research impact. It provides platforms and expertise to support processes in which evaluation of research plays a role. One of these is Altmetric Explorer that aims to capture the attention that your scientific work gets in, and especially outside of the academic world. Another is SciVal, a tool that enables you to visualize research performance, benchmark relative to peers, develop collaborative partnerships and analyze research trends.

Science and society demand accountability and transparency from scientists. Therefore, besides publishing their work, individual researchers, research units and the university should preserve their research output, which mainly entails publications and research data.

Preserving publications is facilitated by Pure Research Information, which is also being used for publishing your research output.

Preserving research data means archiving them in a sustainable way. Archiving research data is facilitated by Areda, offering also the possibility of sharing these data within your research group or with specified people outside the group.

For general information, see preserving and publishing data (FAIR).

Managing your information is important during a research project. You as an employee have a responsibility during this process. It is your task to provide for conditions that may keep the documents that were made up or received by you in good order during a certain amount of time or even permanent.

LISA department Archive helps you managing your documents (‘records’) during its life cycle. It may ensure that your records of historical, fiscal, and legal value are identified and preserved, and that non-essential records are discarded in a timely manner according to Dutch guidelines and identified legislation.

More information about project archiving. 

For support contact the archive specialist/record manager of your faculty or send your question to the Research Support Desk.