The Carolina Grants and Innovation Hub is just what it sounds like: a comprehensive hub of resources for research development. One vital partner in supporting USC’s research ecosystem is University Libraries, which provides a wealth of support mechanisms and tools to faculty, staff and students.
The CGI Hub launched its affiliate program in its early days, immediately bringing library faculty members on board for the complementary services they provide throughout the proposal development process. Through relationships between the Hub and Libraries, the teams have built an effective network to make referrals, directing researchers to the expertise and resources they need to make progress.
If you think about the life cycle of research, University Libraries wants our researchers to be covered throughout. From identifying funding sources and writing a data management and sharing plan to free data analysis and statistics support, we can help. If you need a systematic review, want to make sure you publish in the right place, or need support integrating AI into your research, we can help with that as well. We have a lot to offer.
What we offer
University Libraries provides access to hundreds of thousands of publications that faculty members, staff and students can rely on when conducting their own research.
- Acquisitions and Scholarly Communications curates and provides access to collections to ensure researchers can use the content to lay the groundwork for conducting their own research.
- Through University Libraries, those affiliated with the University of South Carolina have access to Scopus, the world’s largest peer-reviewed database, as well as Web of Science.
Research liaisons are also available for every college, school or department at USC, ready to assist with research instruction, scoping reviews and systematic reviews during the literature search portion of the grant application process. Find your research & instruction librarian and schedule an appointment.
University Libraries is in its third year offering research data analysis and statistics support. For researchers seeking support in the following areas, the libraries offer free in-person or virtual assistance:
- Exploratory data analysis
- Statistical tests
- SPSS
- R and RStudio
- Python
- MATLAB
- Excel
- Excel Macro
- C programming language
The library staffs a data visualization librarian, Glenn Bunton, and AI/data science specialist, Vandana Srivastava, who can offer additional assistance with creating dashboards and learning coding languages such as Python and R.
The libraries can also assist researchers with data management plans, documents that outline the logistics of consistently and appropriately preserving research data for public sharing. Visit the CGI Hub Toolbox for a list of data management and resource sharing plans available to you.
The research impact librarian works directly with researchers and administrators to help track, monitor and assess the impact of their research. This resource is helpful in writing a research impact statement. Reach out to the research impact librarian for help with the following:
- Discuss which research metrics to pull when developing grant proposals
- Identify how your previous work has been applied, where you’ve been cited and what difference that has made
- Explore how your work has more broadly impacted communities and society
University Libraries also maintains an institutional repository for researchers who are unable to publish open access right away or for those who wish to archive published research.
University Libraries regularly offers workshops across a variety of topics from coding to artificial intelligence to library research, available for free online.
Check out the workshops calendar.
Research and Instruction is available to educate students at various experience levels on how to use the library.
Funding agencies often require faculty members to make research materials publicly available as a condition of receiving grant funds. University Libraries offers:
- Web hosting support
- Library staff can help researchers publicly share their works that are otherwise behind paywalls, allowing other scholars to access, use, cite and build on that research.
- University Libraries offers a platform where researchers can share their work in an eBook or monograph format.
- The libraries have a relationship with 14 open access platforms and can help connect researchers to high-impact, high-value publications, journals or even monographs to publish at no cost. Get started with publishing open access.
- Data archiving
- The research data librarian can help researchers identify appropriate repositories to disseminate data required to be shared publicly. This information is helpful not only at the end of the research process but at the beginning while developing a data management plan.
Start your research journey with University Libraries.
There are many ways to get connected. Check out the libraries’ online guides, schedule an appointment, send an email or walk in! University Libraries is ready to provide as much or as little support as you need to kickstart your research project.
Meet our CGI Hub affiliates
- Amie Freeman, Assistant Head of Acquisitions of Scholarly Communications: Freeman negotiates and implements open access agreements to help researchers meet funder mandates and make their work publicly accessible.
- Stacy Winchester, Research Data Librarian: Winchester promotes open science principles and helps researchers plan for and implement good research data management practices to ensure long-term access and facilitate data sharing.
- Valerie Vera, Research Impact Librarian: Vera compiles and analyzes a variety of metrics to help researchers clearly communicate the significance and reach of their work in grant proposals.
- Sharon Verba, Head of Research & Instruction: Verba coordinates a team of ten Research & Instruction librarians who provide expertise in resources and research methods across the disciplines and assist researchers through one-on-one consultations, instructional sessions and workshops.