The Industrial Forum entitled “Current and Future Digital Skills for Researchers” was held in conjunction with Research Carnival Month 2023 on 14th May 2023. Organised by the School of Graduate Studies and Post-Graduate Student Society UTM (PGSS UTM), the forum panelists comprised of an interesting melting pot of minds from the industry and academia such as Dr. Muhammad Abd Hadi Bin Bunyamin, Executive Researcher at the Vice Chancellery Department, UTM and also a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, UTM, Dr Matej Guid, Founder of InstaText.io and Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Dr Phil Gooch, Founder of Scholarcy, Emma Warren-Jones, Co-Founder of Scholarcy, and Puan Anita Adnan, Founder of Doctorate Support Group FB Page and Megabase Group of Companies. Moderators were Rozita Jayus and Evarina Amiron, both PGSS UTM members and PhD students from FSSH, UTM.

The panelists discussed 3 main questions which were; the current and future digital skills required by researchers when using digital tools to enhance research workflow, how to mitigate the ethical and reliability issues faced when digitizing research skills, and lastly, how AI digital tools, in particular, influence the skills and quality of researchers. Responses from the panelists included short demos of the research tools used for literature review of articles and for the writing process. These demos emphasized the digital skills required and how a combination of tools used can increase the critical analysis of literature and also ensure clear and concise writing. In summary, the forum panelists highlighted that researchers should be akin to a ‘critical friend’ to AI and digital tools by critically analyzing the results, combining the use of several digital tools according to suitability in the research process towards the goal of ensuring the reliability of results, have clearly structured and edited writing of research and enhance originality of research by adding our own ‘voice’.

All in all, the forum discussion added new perspectives on the digital skills required by researchers to enhance the originality, reliability, criticality and writing of research from the views of industry practitioners and educators. Overall, the audience were satisfied with the forum discussion and hoped more similar sessions on current issues would be held in future.