Research Support

Before the start of a research project you need to search for financial resources and write a project proposal for grant application. 

Searching for research funds

Research staff, PhD's and students looking for (additional) funding can use the global subsidy database ResearchConnect. ResearchConnect offers specific search options, email alerts, calendar alerts and newsletters on selected research areas and types of financing.

To learn how to search in ResearchConnect a course is available. For more information see the Searching for grants page. 

For questions or help, contact information specialist Hanneke Becht.

Grant application support

The Grants Office of the University of Twente supports researchers in their grant applications. You can find more information about these services and the programs they support on the Grants office page.

For improving your publication list for grant application LISA information specialists can help you identify which of your articles are highly cited or which journals are the best (e.g. Q1 journals) in your field.

When setting up your research you may have to deal with the following issues:

Searching and using scientific information

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 of it full text online 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.

ICT facilities for your research

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.

When you are looking for a flexible, efficient and scalable infrastructure for simulations and computations, you can make use of a Virtual Research Environment (VRE). For more information and support you can visit the VRE-Portal.

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.

Registering your research project

In the course of your research project, you should to add the following information and output in Pure Research Information.

• The description of your project
• The descriptions and full text of your publications
• The descriptions of and link to the data sets

All descriptions and, when allowed, also the full text of the publications will be presented on the public portal UT Research Information.

Archiving your research project

During research it is important to provide for conditions that preserve project documents (in archival terms: records) certain period or even permanent.

The Archive department of LISA can help you with:

• ensuring your records of historical, fiscal, and legal value
• identification and preservation of your records
• discarding non-essential records in a timely manner, according to Dutch guidelines and identified legislation. 

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

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.

Good and trustworthy research is based on proper scientific behaviour. When starting your research, pay attention to the issue of good management and scientific integrity as well as to ethical review and relevant UT policies.

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.

Data policies

The University of Twente has an overall data policy on how to handle research data. This policy serves as a starting point for tailored data policies of faculties and/or institutes, and research groups. Data policies give regulations and guidelines regarding data management plans as well as the storage, security, documentation, sharing and archiving of research data.

• BMS Data policy
• ET RDM policy
• ITC Data policy
• UT Research data management policy

If available, check also the data policy of your group for specific facilities, guidelines and responsibilities.

Open access policy

From the start of your research it is important to be aware that the University of Twente is in strong favour of open access to the results of publicly funded research. The advantages of open-access publishing are enormous for you and your research. Your Open Access publications are available for anyone with an Internet connection. This increases your article’s visibility, downloads, citations, and impact.

Visit the UT Open Access page for more information.

Privacy and security policy

The University of Twente researcher has to work safely and securely, especially when working with personal data. On the Cyber safety page you can find the most relevant national and UT policies and regulations.

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. Moreover, you often want to share or in some cases collaborate on the data with fellow researchers.

Storing and sharing of and collaborating on data refers to its dynamic phase during the research project. As soon as your research datasets are stable and static they can be archived for long-term preservation. For more information see: preserving research data.

Storing and sharing research data

The data you collect, generate and use during your research are a valuable asset. At any cost you should avoid loss, theft or unauthorized access to these data. 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. 

Copies for sharing or collaborating can also be stored on other facilities. In any case, never use the local drive on your laptop or computer as the main storage medium for research data.

More details, including a help functionality for choosing the best storing and sharing solution for your research data, can be found on the research data management page.

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

Collaborating on research data

When you need to collaborate on data or documents you can use web-based, collaborative platforms offered by the UT: e.g. Sharepoint, Surfdrive, Google-workspace (aka G-Suite), Onedrive, or Microsoft Teams. 

When collaborating it is important to have a Version Control System (VCS) or DevOps system like GitHub/Gitlab for tracking changes in computer files and coordinating work on those files among multiple people. It consists of a client and a server. It is primarily used for source code management in software development, but it can be used to keep track of the changes in any set of (text)files. For more information see the Systems for Version Control and Devops (Gitlab) page.

Selecting the best UT facility

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

For support contact the data steward in your faculty or send your question to the Research Support Desk.

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.

For more information 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 servers

If you need to perform computer calculations during your research and you are unable to run these on your own system, there are a number of possibilities.

For information described in the columns see the text in the list below:

• JupyterLab: are you an UT employee, teacher or student and you are looking for an environment where you can easily gain knowledge or use various programming languages for prototyping, education, research or self-study. Then use UT-JupyterLab environment;
• Docker container / Kubernetes cluster: are you a UT employee and do you have an application in the form of a docker container / image and are you looking for a place to run it? Then request resources in our Kubernetes cluster.
• Virtual Research Environment (VRE). When you are looking for a flexible, efficient and scalable infrastructure for simulations and computations, you can make use of a Virtual Research Environment (VRE). For more information and support, see this link or you can visit the VRE-Portal directly;
• Buying your own IT-Equipment. In case you have budget for purchasing your own IT equipment for High Performance computing (HPC), contact the ICT account manager of your faculty for advice about and support for setup, maintenance and housing.
• Hiring computing capacity at SURFsara. SURFsara is the Dutch national supercomputing organization that facilitates high performance computing infrastructure. For large computer calculations you can submit an application (funding/grant) for SURFSara HPC-capacity to NWO.
• Cloud computing using Azure or Amazon. Instead of using a VRE you can choose to use cloud computing such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon's Web Services (AWS). If you want more information about cloud computing and the possibilities for UT researchers contact the ICT account manager of your faculty.

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 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.

When you need to organize an event, such as a symposium or conference, you can get support from CongresAssociatie Twente.

Making and publishing proceedings

For making digitally available contributions to a symposium, workshop or conference organized by you or the organization you represents, a suitable platform is UT proceedings. You can choose to make these contributions available before or after the event. Especially if you want to make the contributions available before the event, pleadse be aware of the planning of depositing and ingest of the publications.

For support contact the information specialist of your faculty or send your question to the Research Support Desk.

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 advice on publishing please check the University Library website.

Doctoral thesis and PhD defence

When you are in the process of finishing your doctoral thesis and preparing the doctoral defence it is advisable to be well informed about the procedures (doctoral regulations) and requirements. The University Library offers support when publishing your doctoral thesis. 

For more information about the doctoral defence, see the PhD info page.

Publications in UT Research Information

Your publications will be presented on the UT Research Information portal when you registered your research output in Pure Research Information. 

Publishing a journal

At UT there is an open journal service available. It uses Open Journal Systems (OJS/PKP), which is open source journal management and publishing software. 

Applying for an ISBN, DOI or ISSN

Independent publications (books, theses and reports, etc.) must be officially registered with an ISBN (International Standard Book Number). With a unique ISBN, you increase the findability and the accessibility of your publication. 

For an digital publication you need a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). This is a unique electronic address for an digital document, e.g. a journal article. A document's DOI is a permanent identifier, and provides a more stable link than a URL. 

Here you can apply for an ISBN or DOI.

For a serial publication, such as a journal, an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is assigned. 

Apply for an ISSN at the National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek)  

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 open-access publishing 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.

Visit the UT Open Access page and discover the advantages of Open Access (OA)!

Would you like to request a presentation for your research group about your options for open-access publishing, based on your publications? Would you like personal guidance in publishing your work open access or do you simply have a question about it? Please contact the information specialist of your faculty or send your question to the Research Support Desk.

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 UT Research Information (Pure), which is also being used for publishing your research output (see Publish your research)

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.

IMPORTANT: The system is currently in an evaluation of the user experience.

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.