PhD Courses in Denmark

Course aim 

Through participation in this course, the PhD student acquires knowledge and understanding of the use of a number of professional online tools designed to support a career in research. The course emphasizes acquisition of both theoretical and practical knowledge about research registration, profiling and evaluation, as well as the growing focus on Open Science.  

The course leans on the idea behind Scholarly Communication, which is defined by the Association of College & Research Libraries as "the system through which research and scientific publications are registered, subjected to quality assessment, disseminated to the scientific community, and preserved for future use." (ACRL Scholarly Communications Committee2003)  

 The purpose of the course is to enable PhD students to create their own sustainable strategies for publishing and disseminating research and research results, and to provide them with tools for evaluation. The course will address both traditional academic tools and introduce more recent methods.  

The course specifically addresses the following topics:  

Open Science/ Open Knowledge - including Open Access publishing  

• Scholarly Communication: What does it mean to you as a researcher? 
• Research registration - introduction to research registration and researcher profiles in VBN (Aalborg University's research portal) and associated systems
• Researcher profiling – to strengthen the exposure of ​own research and research profile
• Research evaluation – introduction to traditional and new methods including citations, h-index and alternative metrics
• Copyright and plagiarism for PhD students with a primary focus on the thesis
• The course is aimed at all PhD students, and the teachers will facilitate an interdisciplinary discussion among the participants. 

Course frame 

The course is an independent part of the course series offered to PhD students at Aalborg University Library. The course is announced at Plan2Learn and Moodle, where more information and course material are available. The course is available to PhD students from all Danish universities. 

The course varies between presentations, exercises and plenary discussions. The exercises take place in groups where the students either discuss or do course-related hands-on assignments. In addition, there is a final test, which is assessed as "passed/failed". In order to obtain course ECTS points, your presence is required on the course day along with a “passed” final test. 

The course is primarily aimed at PURE users. If you do not have access to AAU's PURE installation, you will still be able to use what you have learned when you get back to your own institution. However, there will be local differences in the options offered by the system. 

The course is in English. 

There is a reading list attached to the course. 

Planning and teaching: The VBN Team 

Course learning targets: 

• The course provides the PhD student with a toolbox for strategic focus on researcher profiling, including:
• How to get an overview of registration and dissemination requirements for PhD research results in a scientific context. This includes the actual PhD  thesis, as well as preparation of different types of publications and profiles. 
• How to acquire new knowledge regarding opportunities and strategies for publishing research, including Open Access.   
• Providing the PhD student with skills to develop communication strategies. This may include an understanding of how to work with Open Science e.g. through qualitative and quantitative metrics. 

Organizer: Kathrine Bjerg Bennike og Anna Stegger Gemzøe

Lectures:   Kathrine Bjerg Bennike og Anna Stegger Gemzøe

ECTS: 1

Time: Marts 19, 2025, 09:00 - 14:30

Place: Kroghstræde 3, 9220 Aalborg Øst, room 4.130 (Darwin).

Zip code: 9000

City: Aalborg

Number of seats: 25

Deadline:  February 26, 2025

NB: Coffee and tea will be served during the course as well as cake after lunch. However, please note that you will need to bring or buy lunch in the canteen.

Course reading list 

Fecher, Benedikt, and Sascha Friesike. 2013. “Open Science: One Term, Five Schools of Thought.” Opening Science, 17–47. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00026-8_2 

Kathawalla, Ummul-Kiram, Priya Silverstein, and Moin Syed. 2021. “Easing into Open Science: A Guide for Graduate Students and Their Advisors.” Collabra: Psychology 7 (1). https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.18684

Leonelli, Sabina. 2023. “Philosophy of Open Science”. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009416368 Read the introduction

Melchiorsen, Poul Meier. 2019. “Bibliometric Differences – a Case Study in Bibliometric Evaluation across SSH and STEM.” Journal of Documentation 75 (2): 366–78. https://doi.org/10.1108/jd-07-2018-0108

Stoustrup et al. 2023. “ AAU Research Indicator: For the advancement of scientific publishing, impact,  collaboration, visibility, openness, and innovation at Aalborg University,” Aalborg University. https://doi.org/10.54337/aau524581687

Watson, Mick. 2015. “When Will ‘Open Science’ Become Simply ‘Science’?” Genome Biology 16 (1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-015-0669-2

Further reading:  

Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment (ARRA) (2022) https://coara.eu/app/uploads/2022/09/2022_07_19_rra_agreement_final.pdf

Bornmann, Lutz, and Robin Haunschild. 2018. “Alternative Article‐Level Metrics.” EMBO Reports 19 (12). https://doi.org/10.15252/embr.201847260

Cintra, Paulo Roberto, Ariadne Chloe Furnival, and Douglas Henrique Milanez. 2018. “The Impact of Open Access Citation and Social Media on Leading Top Information Science Journals.” Investigación Bibliotecológica: Archivonomía, Bibliotecología E Información 32 (77): 117. https://doi.org/10.22201/iibi.24488321xe.2018.77.57874

The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) (2012) https://sfdora.org/

Schönbrodt, Felix. 2019. “Training Students for the Open Science Future.” Nature Human Behaviour 3 (10): 1031–31. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0726-z

Smart, Palie, Sara Holmes, Fiona Lettice, Frederick Harry Pitts, Jeremy Basil Zwiegelaar, Gregory Schwartz, and Stephen Evans. 2019. “Open Science and Open Innovation in a Socio-Political Context: Knowledge Production for Societal Impact in an Age of Post-Truth Populism.” R&D Management 49 (3): 279–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/radm.12377

UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (updated 2023) https://www.unesco.org/en/open-science/about?hub=686

Voytek, Bradley. 2017. “Social Media, Open Science, and Data Science Are Inextricably Linked.” Neuron 96 (6): 1219–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2017.11.015

Important information concerning PhD courses: We have over some time experienced problems with no-show for both project and general courses. It has now reached a point where we are forced to take action. Therefore, the Doctoral School has decided to introduce a no-show fee of DKK 3.000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start. This can hopefully also provide new students a chance to register for courses during the year. We look forward to your registrations.

For inquiries regarding registration, cancellation or waiting list, please contact the PhD administration, aauphd@adm.aau.dk