Department of Student Affairs Manager's training: Appropriate journal selection and EndNote

On Monday 30 January 2023, training on appropriate journal selection took place for a few of the unit managers at the Department of Student Affairs. The Department of Student Affairs is comprised of the following units: student development, student governance, student counselling, student health, and the disability unit. Dr. Matete Madiba, who was the Director of the Department of Student Affairs, requested the training on behalf of the staff. Staff wanted to become familiar with the concept of high impact factors and be able to identify journals with a high impact factor for the different areas of work within the Department. 

The training program for the first session included the following: 

• Typical questions about where to publish research. 
• Bibliometrics terminology explained.
• Where to find and how to use the accredited journals list.
• Transformative agreements journals list.
• How to use Scopus sources.
• How to use Clarivate’s Manuscript Matcher.
• Which other comparable products exist to match one’s manuscript to a suitable journal?
• Explanation of the difference between impact factor from Clarivate’s Web of Science and CiteScore from Elsevier’s Scopus.

The second half of the training was about EndNote (a reference management software). Mr. Lathola Mchunu, an Information Specialist for the School of Engineering in the EBIT faculty library, presented the second half as a practical session. The Department of Student Affairs managers, along with available staff, were trained in how to populate, use, and manage their references using EndNote and Microsoft Word.