Research Assistance | CMU Libraries

Research Process
Research Services
Schedule a Consultation

Whether you're looking for funding or seeking opportunities to amplify the impact of your work, connect with our experts, services, and tools at every stage of your research process.

Research Process

Discover Your Research Topic

Discover and refine your research topic with resources that connect you with specialists and databases.

Make an appointment with your departmental librarian or browse our complete list of faculty and staff to connect with a research specialist.
Search specialized databases, eResources and tools to further your research.
Explore topic-specific research guides for curated resources across disciplines.
Learn how to perform comprehensive and reproducible literature reviews or contact our Evidence Synthesis Service for support with systematic reviews and other research synthesis methods.
Browse the Libraries Catalog to view records for the majority of our physical and digital collections. If your materials are unavailable at CMU, you may be able to borrow them from another library.

Find Funding & Collaborators

Uncover potential collaborators and the funding to support your project.

Use resources like Dimensions or SciVal to discover relevant research, track funding in your field and see the impacts of your research and that of your peers.
Libraries faculty are available to collaborate on projects and can be written into grants as expert personnel for systematic reviews, data management, or other information science skills.

Manage Information & Data

Work with our specialists to evaluate, select, and implement the tools to organize your data and keep your project on track.

Manage data, work with collaborators, and share your research with the Open Science Framework.
Request guidance on how to better manage your data to enhance data reuse and preserve it for future research.
Learn how to use Zotero, Mendeley and other citation management tools.

Publish & Share Your Research

Navigate the many options for publishing your research to optimize its accessibility and impact.

Deposit published work in KiltHub, the scholarly repository for CMU researchers.
Learn more about your copyrights and how to manage them while complying with university policies and US law.
Schedule a consultation to learn how library funding can enable the open access publication of your work.

Measure Impact & Manage Your Digital Identity

Identify when and where your research has been cited, as well as the scope of its reach.

Track social media reach of individual publications with Altmetric Explorer.
Register for the major bibliometric databases to manage your identity as an author.
Consult with a librarian to develop your faculty profile for publications in Elements, a tool that tracks your research output for easier reporting.

Research Tools & Guides

Managing Citations -This guide provides information on using and managing citations.
Research Databases - Use databases to find articles, proceedings, reports, datasets and other material for your assignments and research projects.
Research Guides - Browse the complete list of research guides for curated resources across disciplines for specific topics and course information.
Services Directory - Explore a list of services and tools available to you at the Libraries

Research Specialists

Our research specialists are trusted academic partners who play an essential role in supporting teaching, learning and research by helping you and your students make the most of your work.

We invite you to make an appointment with a research specialist to learn more about how we can support you and your teaching and research needs. Search by topic or academic discipline.

See the Staff Directory for a full listing of library staff and to search by name or job title.

Research Information Management Services (RIMS)

Research Information Management Services (RIMS) brings together information about scholarship, creative practices, and funded research endeavors, as well as teaching, service, awards, and leadership accomplishments. This powerful suite of services can help individual faculty as well as teams, labs, centers, or institutes with various data insights. Additionally, RIMS supports numerous operational and institutional needs such as applying for federal funding, completing annual reviews, creating CV documentation, dashboards for data analysis, and finding new collaborators.

Research Metrics Services

The University Libraries provide research metrics services to CMU students, faculty, and staff. Research metric is the measurement of the impact of published research based on various metrics. Research metrics support includes analyses of your work's overall impact, analysis of your department's research impact, tracking your research work in social media, enhancing the visibility of your research, and citation mapping.

Schedule a Consultation

If you need in-depth help with a research project, from a first-year assignment to dissertation work and beyond, request a consultation with a research specialist.

Fill out the form and the specialist for your subject area will meet with you one-on-one to help you build an effective research plan.

Please provide as much information as possible to help the specialist plan your consultation.